Guild Wars 2

So after reading the State of the Game thread, I decided to help Anet out by point out what the Necro needs to most: Attrition.

That’s right. Necro needs attrition. This is a theme that I would say 90% of the necro agrees. Necro should be the best attrition class in the game, pure and simple.

So what is attrition? Let’s look at the dictionary.

“A gradual diminution in number or strength because of constant stress.”

To further clarify:

I) Number or Strength. This means all of the following:
-enemy’s health & healing
-ability to use skills
-ability to deal damage

II) Constant Stress. This means all of the following:
-weak to mediocre damage and effects
-rapid firing
-easy to hit
-fast recharge
-prevent disengage

To fulfil the above, I broke down the class into the following sectors:

1) Large HP pool – counters enemy’s health, healing & damage by having more.

2) Healing – Same as above.

3) Damage avoidance and “leap” skills – counters enemy’s ability to deal damage.

4) Damage reduction – counters enemy’s ability to deal damage.

5) Counters and interrupts – counters enemy’s ability to use skills.

6) Weak to mediocre damage and effects – so the class aren’t overpowered.

7) Rapid firing – attacks so many times that just some of the attacks hitting would be enough to deal moderate damage.

8) Easy to hit – attacks are so easy to hit that it constantly deals damage.

9) Fast recharge – even if the attacks or spell misses, you can rapidly cast them again.

10) Prevent disengage – because an attrition class kills his enemy slowly, it is very important for them to prevent the enemy from escaping. Else all his effort would be for nothing.

So here is how I would rate each of these 10 categories for the necro:

1) Large HP pool – Necro take the cake for this one. With DS a necro can have 40k hp. 10/10

2) Healing – Necro got decent healing to counter incoming damage. They also regenerate life force as they fight. However that Life Transfer healing doesn’t heal the necro himself, because he is in DS. So that’s a conflict of interest, self contradiction. Life Siphon also doesn’t scale with healing power. 7/10

3) Damage avoidance and mobility – They got Spectral Walk and Flesh Wurm, but that’s about it. They do have a few snares, but they are better used offensively than running away. Necros cannot survive in Fractal level 40+ because Hp pool doesn’t matter when mobs hit you super hard. You need to avoid those overwhelming damage to survive. 3/10

4) Damage reduction – Necro is very weak here. The protections, weakness and blindness that a necro cast cannot be sustained. Spectral Armor’s cool down too long. And when the enemy cast a Meteor Shower right on your Spectral Wall, will you still try to stand in it? No immunity & blocking skills. 1/10

5) Counters and interrupts – Necro got a few fears and pull skills. However their cool down is too long. They are also unreliable since both fear and pull often fail. Necro also cannot cause confusion. Weak stability. 3/10

6) Weak to mediocre damage and effects – I think this section was done well. Almost none of the necro’s skill deals very high damage. The exceptions will be wells and a well placed Epidemic. So necro won’t be overpowered. 9/10

7) Rapid firing – I think most of necro’s skills are rapid fire. Scepter and dagger both attacks pretty rapidly. Channelling skills are all rapid fire. Marks and wells can be casted quickly and in succession. The only exception would be staff 1, which attacks pretty slowly. 9/10

8) Easy to hit – This varies from weapon to weapon, utility to utility. For example scepter is very easy to hit. Staff 1 flies very slowly and its hard to hit. Dagger is single target and only hits in melee range. Marks and Wells are aoe so they hits pretty easily. However wells are melee range unless you trait them. Single target skills like Epedemic and Corrupt Boon is easy to hit in pve and spvp, but hard to hit in wvw because in zerg vs zerg locating and hitting the correct target is nearly impossible. Certain long cast time make hitting difficult. Overall 5/10.

9) Fast recharge – This is a weak section. Most necro utilities skills have a very long recharge, From signets to wells their recharges are easily 45+ seconds unless you trait for them. At the same time most necro weapons recharge are decent. But the time gap between weapon skills and utilities cannot be ignored. 3/10

10) Prevent disengage – This is another weak section. Yes necro has a few snares here and there. But their recharges is often too long and their effects are easily removed by the enemy. Rarely does an enemy have problems getting away from a necro. 2/10

Overall 52/100. Barely pass, and a far cry from being the BEST attrition class in the game.

52/100 for attrition. For us to be labeled this I think we need to be 80/100+. I’d be interested to see how people would rate thieves.
Math>me lol

Overall 52/100. Barely pass, and a far cry from being the BEST attrition class in the game. So what’s urgent? Here are the top 5.

I) Damage reduction – those necro skills that gives protection need to be buffed.
II) Prevent disengage – snare skills need to be buffed
III) Damage avoidance and mobility – This on theory need to be buffed. But since Anet made it clear that they want necro to be “slow” and “get hit by everything and just tank though”, maybe leave this as the last resort.
IV) Counters and interrupts – There are a few options to consider. Maybe make fear work against all bosses. Maybe make fear non-evadable. Maybe fixing the various bugs on Spectral Grasp so it becomes more reliable. Maybe implement my Remove DS: Implement LF skills idea so we can use LF to counter enemy skills.
V) Fast recharge – skill recharge of signets, wells and many other skills need to be reduced.

Small tip: Staff #1 might not be fast but it does hit at about 1400-1500 range and its a railgun type.
Its either a bug or a bad tooltip (hopefully the 2nd).
There is also the lack of beeing a support build because of plague signet beeing broken ever since launch and no boons outside wells.
The systained healing as a healer isnt exactly bad ,not great but not bad either.

I’m not sure I agree with all your categories… Some of them seem redundant (No high damage abilities? That doesn’t necessarily mean attrition…)

Categories I’d use would be something like:

• Survivability (Health, healing, other defences) – 7/10
  High health, Heal skills are good (Consume Conditions = Amazing especially for attrition) and DS is great survival tool. Let down by the lack of dodges, limited boons (Protection, Vigor, Regeneration (Outside of Staff)) and limited defence from utilities

• DPS (How much damage is dealt, how easy is it to sustain, how can it be countered) – 6/10
  Direct damage isn’t very high and hard to maintain as there’s limited movement capabilities and lockdown (Outside perma-chill builds) and boons will counter it as anti-boon tools favour condition builds.
  Condition damage is good, not reliant on high stacks of Bleed so condition removal tools have limited effect, can convert boons into conditions and transfer conditions from self to targets. Conditions also have relatively short cooldowns allowing them to be reapplied fairly easily.

• Lockdown (How much disable is available, how easy is it to get it off, how effective is it) 3/10
  A few chills, a cripple and an immobilise. Can be built for perma-chill but still can only lock a single target down reliably. Has access to a few fears aswell, but only 2 are reliable and are on pretty long cooldown with short (1 second duration)

• Mobility (How easy is it to move around, how easy is it to prevent being controlled, can you stay with your target) – 5/10
  Conditions such as Cripple, Chill and Immobilise can be removed and/or sent to opponents preventing loss of mobility. The lack of movement speed and gap closers (Outside DS #2) hamper keeping up with classes with mobility tools (Such as Ride the Lightning, Rush, Leap of Faith, Infiltrator’s Arrow, Swoop, Super Speed, Portal)

Giving a score of 21/40

I’d end up giving a P/D Thief (Attrition based build):

Survivability – 10/10 Regen in stealth, can spec for heals when using initiative, stealth to try and avoid being targeted, can get extra dodges through Feline Grace giving 25% endurance back after dodging

DPS – 7/10 Constant pressure from multiple bleeds, as well as a not-too bad direct damage from applying them and using CnD to stealth

Lockdown – 3/10 Can perma-cripple but uses up initiative that’s needed to deal damage, can use Scorpion Wire to pull someone in but that’s about it aside from Basalisk Venom Elite skill

Mobility – 5/10 has access to multiple Shadow Steps which can allow movement and condition cleansing but they tend to have moderate to high cooldowns. The weapon set doesn’t have much mobility itself and it would cost initiative and therefore lower DPS if used.

Giving P/D Thieves a total of 25/40. Which while not great still beats out Necro’s

our cast times are to kitten slow in this bouncy jumpy dodge focused game. you have to lead your target, and its too unforgiving to land a skill because a, it takes to long, b there is lag, and c, everyone and their mother is moving around like a mexican jumping bean. all our utility skills take forever to get off, scepter 2 and dagger 5 makes me want to beat the crap out of someone because i cant get them down before someone dodges 1000 times before the skill goes off, because it takes so kitten log to cast. our long cast times make us so targetable, and prone to being interrupted, or rag dolled aroud by CC. So basically, axe 2, 3, dagger 2,5, scepter 2, focus5 are all interrupted a bit, plus the fact that now when we cast our long cast time utility skills, epidemic, people can just get out of range before the kitten spell goes off.

wake up anet

This was well done CHIPS, and I agree for a class that is supposed to be heavily attrition based we doing a pretty poor job. Still that being said necro’s can survive a lot long then most classes when I’m in a dungeon and it’s a party wipe most times I’m the last man standing.

So they’re doing something right, but yes there is room for improvement.

Taril.8619:

I’m not sure I agree with all your categories… Some of them seem redundant (No high damage abilities? That doesn’t necessarily mean attrition…)

Categories I’d use would be something like:

• Survivability (Health, healing, other defences) – 7/10
  High health, Heal skills are good (Consume Conditions = Amazing especially for attrition) and DS is great survival tool. Let down by the lack of dodges, limited boons (Protection, Vigor, Regeneration (Outside of Staff)) and limited defence from utilities

• DPS (How much damage is dealt, how easy is it to sustain, how can it be countered) – 6/10
  Direct damage isn’t very high and hard to maintain as there’s limited movement capabilities and lockdown (Outside perma-chill builds) and boons will counter it as anti-boon tools favour condition builds.
  Condition damage is good, not reliant on high stacks of Bleed so condition removal tools have limited effect, can convert boons into conditions and transfer conditions from self to targets. Conditions also have relatively short cooldowns allowing them to be reapplied fairly easily.

• Lockdown (How much disable is available, how easy is it to get it off, how effective is it) 3/10
  A few chills, a cripple and an immobilise. Can be built for perma-chill but still can only lock a single target down reliably. Has access to a few fears aswell, but only 2 are reliable and are on pretty long cooldown with short (1 second duration)

• Mobility (How easy is it to move around, how easy is it to prevent being controlled, can you stay with your target) – 5/10
  Conditions such as Cripple, Chill and Immobilise can be removed and/or sent to opponents preventing loss of mobility. The lack of movement speed and gap closers (Outside DS #2) hamper keeping up with classes with mobility tools (Such as Ride the Lightning, Rush, Leap of Faith, Infiltrator’s Arrow, Swoop, Super Speed, Portal)

Giving a score of 21/40

I’d end up giving a P/D Thief (Attrition based build):

Survivability – 10/10 Regen in stealth, can spec for heals when using initiative, stealth to try and avoid being targeted, can get extra dodges through Feline Grace giving 25% endurance back after dodging

DPS – 7/10 Constant pressure from multiple bleeds, as well as a not-too bad direct damage from applying them and using CnD to stealth

Lockdown – 3/10 Can perma-cripple but uses up initiative that’s needed to deal damage, can use Scorpion Wire to pull someone in but that’s about it aside from Basalisk Venom Elite skill

Mobility – 5/10 has access to multiple Shadow Steps which can allow movement and condition cleansing but they tend to have moderate to high cooldowns. The weapon set doesn’t have much mobility itself and it would cost initiative and therefore lower DPS if used.

Giving P/D Thieves a total of 25/40. Which while not great still beats out Necro’s

you gave the thief the same score for mobility as a necro, you are so clueless it isn’t even funny.

Thief is easily in the top 3 for mobility classes.

Okay so I haven’t read it personally, but if ArenaNet has made it clear that we’re meant to be an attrition class that takes hits but keeps coming, whittling down and out-lasting, they’re only giving us some of the tools we need to do so without falling short in some other category or spreading ourselves too thin.

As DeathenShada said, Necros CAN survive longer in dungeons. I’m sure some of that has to do with the wise use of our powerful class mechanic, knowledge of mechanics, player skill, etc., but the other other part is probably because last-man-standing Necros are specced/geared with toughness and vitality beyond what other classes typically add. It’s also much easier to survive if you’re always fighting from 900/1,200 range. And that’s where I take issue with where Necromancer currently stands compared to ArenaNet’s vision for the class.

If we’re supposed to take hits and soak damage since we’re less mobile, why is it at the cost of burning up our class mechanic or doing piddly DPS? I’d enjoy being able to use Death Shroud a little more proactively/offensively than the current “Oh kitten, im out of endurance (which is all the time) and here comes a huge burst! Better pop into DS!”

As for this quote: "“Necromancers are a bit slower as a profession, they need to move into that kill radius in order to get somebody locked down, but once they start pounding on somebody it should be that that person should have to run away or die.” Here’s where I think we have some balance issues. For me, we have 2 options:

1) Pile on toughness and vitality in order to go toe to toe against other classes or mobs in that kill zone. Meanwhile, we’re hitting like limp noodles (relatively, not "oh look at my 8k Axe #2! What’d you have to do to get that? Complete glass cannon.) and more often than not our conditions are being removed before those ticks are any cause for concern. We aren’t able to pound hard enough for the risk we take by close range fighting. Sure, landing a dagger #3 that isn’t removed and dropping 2 wells on someone hurts, but then it’s on cooldown for how long…

2) Leave T&V at the door to ramp up DPS, but then be unable to enter that kill zone without facing some very harsh realities. Drop marks & axe/scepter autoattack from range, then pop epidemic – hardly “pounding someone until they have to run away”.

Trying to create some sort of more survivable hybrid or DPS build just sees us being underwhelming in all areas. I’m aware of and actually run the Juggermancer and similar builds, but no critical hits or condition damage is pretty wasted on the Necro, wouldn’t you agree?

Sure, we can opt for a glassy power or hybrid build if we’re unsatisfied with Necro’s lackluster DPS, but foregoing any survivability as light armor wearers is asking for it in any game mode. Furthermore, in a game that seemingly punishes melee in most PvE content, running such a build requires some extremely knowledgeable/skilled/careful play when moving into axe/dagger/untraited well range.

Now, I realize Death Shroud plays a huge role in our ability to win the war of attrition. Having a secondary health bar to absorb damage that would otherwise down us – and other classes, for that matter – can’t be discounted. But even with DS in the equation I still feel as though we fall short of what ArenaNet says we should be like. As of right now, we’re too squishy (without enough damage mitigation BESIDES Death Shroud) to live up to their vision of us “getting in and pounding” (lol). And if we try to compensate for being too squishy, our DPS suffers to the point at which people can either get away before we finish them or they can make us exhaust all of our wonderful, touted ways of extending our life ‘til we’re out of options, and are then too immobile to escape with our lives.

Please don’t misunderstand – I absolutely love this profession and everything it stands for (whether it was advertised to stand for it or not). The community is great too, which is an added bonus. I know there are those who are quick to come to its defense, and I’m aware that there are problems that plague the other professions and there are X threads in the other profession forums complaining about how their class is UP and broken and whatever else…but are we really satisfied with the state of the Necromancer? I don’t want to cry UP and I’m not saying we’re broken (which we’re clearly not since people are still able to have success in all areas of the game). It’s just the degree of that success and what we have to do to obtain it that I’m questioning. I honestly think that sometimes your guys’ love for and skill at playing this class (which is NOT easy) and the game in general gets in the way of maybe realizing that indeed we are missing a piece or two of the puzzle.

Thoughts?

destijl.3769:

Trying to create some sort of more survivable hybrid or DPS build just sees us being underwhelming in all areas. I’m aware of and actually run the Juggermancer and similar builds, but no critical hits or condition damage is pretty wasted on the Necro, wouldn’t you agree?

Sure, we can opt for a glassy power or hybrid build if we’re unsatisfied with Necro’s lackluster DPS, but foregoing any survivability as light armor wearers is asking for it in any game mode. Furthermore, in a game that seemingly punishes melee in most PvE content, running such a build requires some extremely knowledgeable/skilled/careful play when moving into axe/dagger/untraited well range.

Now, I realize Death Shroud plays a huge role in our ability to win the war of attrition. Having a secondary health bar to absorb damage that would otherwise down us – and other classes, for that matter – can’t be discounted. But even with DS in the equation I still feel as though we fall short of what ArenaNet says we should be like. As of right now, we’re too squishy (without enough damage mitigation BESIDES Death Shroud) to live up to their vision of us “getting in and pounding” (lol). And if we try to compensate for being too squishy, our DPS suffers to the point at which people can either get away before we finish them or they can make us exhaust all of our wonderful, touted ways of extending our life ‘til we’re out of options, and are then too immobile to escape with our lives.

My remarks are about pve (well mostly fractals).
Necromancers dont give up that much when going from damage to tanky compared to most other classes (being 2nd on ability to be credit to team list, just a tad above ele and a microscopic bit under guardians because we cant do as much facetanking as they can), because we cant do that much compare to others in the first place, 10~15 continous bleed stacks is nice with really high cond damage (sharing max possible cond damage with mesmers – 10% of toughness to condition damage with undead runes), but having a thief who swaps between 15 and 25 stacks every few seconds is better in a group scenario; and except for lich forms 30 seconds of glory our power setups are medicore at their greatest because of cooldowns. Healing setups are efficient (highly so), but lack the ability to boon up, making a ranger who can help with spirit effects or even a theif giving off perma regen effects with mini stealths a better option than us if a guardian isnt in team/opted for supporting.
Melee is sometimes highly punishing/creates insane difficulty spikes, but in most cases its just ground being gray with foiliage/bumby terrain that covers giant dark hued red circles instead of them being a bit above the ground in the orange-red like when a target selected for a special cast.
On the last subject i agree, damage reduction effect in DS, a reliable form of stability and out of DS lifesteal scailing does need improvements (im fine with us being squishy pieces of cloth outside of ds with a giant hp pool, what im not is that ds falls from 100 to 0 by a hit that wouldnt kill me if i werent in it in the first place).

Dredlord.8076:

you gave the thief the same score for mobility as a necro, you are so clueless it isn’t even funny.

Thief is easily in the top 3 for mobility classes.

Yes, thieves can have high mobility, but in their attrition spec (P/D) they have very limited mobility. P/D has none (#3 is a melee move to shadow step backwards, but uses initiative and lowers their damage) swapping to SB lowers their damage (No decent bleeds, costs initiative to move thus lowering damage) thus removing the constant stream of damage that is required to be a good attrition build.

Their utilities may provide some mobility, but it’s typically on a long cooldown: Shadowstep 50 second cooldown, Roll for Initiative 60 second cooldown, Shadow Trap (Haha… Like anyone really uses traps on thief) 30 second cooldown.

I do know about this as I have mained both Necro and P/D Thief.

Necro gets a good score for mobility since they can easily remove any conditions that slow them down with Consume Conditions, Deathly Swarm and Putrid Mark there’s a lot of on demand removal of multiple conditions, Thieves don’t have this luxury in a P/D spec they’ll have maybe Withdraw (Most likely Hide in Shadows though for more stealth and offensive condition removal) Shadow Step (50 second cooldown…) and possibly the remove conditions while stealthed (One when entering and one every 3 seconds in stealth)

Taril.8619:

Dredlord.8076:

you gave the thief the same score for mobility as a necro, you are so clueless it isn’t even funny.

Thief is easily in the top 3 for mobility classes.

Yes, thieves can have high mobility, but in their attrition spec (P/D) they have very limited mobility. P/D has none (#3 is a melee move to shadow step backwards, but uses initiative and lowers their damage) swapping to SB lowers their damage (No decent bleeds, costs initiative to move thus lowering damage) thus removing the constant stream of damage that is required to be a good attrition build.

You can always just go D/P as the secondary weapon set and have a infinite engages and disengages.

Andele.1306:

You can always just go D/P as the secondary weapon set and have a infinite engages and disengages.

And also do very little damage due to BP > HS needing a lot of initiative to pull off and D/P having no condition damage (Whilst P/D is all about condition damage)

Thieves don’t have infinite initiative to spam off all their abilities all the time.

They have a pool of 12 (15 if traited) and regen 1 initiative every 1.33 seconds, outside of this regen they only have a few traits that allow them to gain initiative:

Opportunist (Critical Strikes 15) – 20% chance on crit to gain 1 initative (1 second cooldown)

Infusion of Shadow (Shadow Arts 10) – Gain 2 initiative when going into stealth (Bearing in mind stealthing without using Heal/Utilities costs 6 with off hand dagger or 9 with D/P)

Patience (Shadow Arts 20) – 1 initiative per 3 seconds in stealth (Unlike other in stealth traits it doesn’t proc instantly upon stealthing. Also stealth lasts 3 seconds (4 if traited) meaning that to get the extra initiative they have to wait until most of their stealth wears off)

Quick Recovery (Acrobatics 20) – Regain 2 initiative every 10 seconds.

Kleptomaniac (Trickery 5) – Gain 3 initiative upon stealing (Base cooldown of 45 seconds on steal)

Then utilities will provide -

Infiltrators Signet – Gain 1 initiative per 10 seconds

Roll for Initiative – 6 initiative with a 60 second cooldown.

I actually think that Anet don’t understand what attrition means.

I’m not a horrible player by any means, but I just spent a bit of time playing against a pistol/dagger thief who consistently won the war of attrition by just autoattacking me when not in stealth and saving his dodges for my dagger 3 / spectral grasp. That’s pretty much all he did.

When I transferred bleeds back onto him , he’d just stealth and then pop back out a few seconds later completely free of conditions .Little by little, my health was going down faster than I could heal or bring him down, and after I had dodged two of his Sneak Attacks and was out of DS, there was pretty much nothing I could do.

This, to me, is the master of attrition. Not Necromancers. Necromancers just have a larger health pool and Death Shroud. For the rest, thieves just do it better.

Stop using a singular build as the example for why another class is “better” at attrition. Thieves have a single build (P/D) that is strong at attrition, every other build you will see them with is burst damage.

Attrition is, simply speaking, how well you can drag out a fight.

All of Thieves’ attrition is based in stealth, and using dodge rolls to stay alive between stealths. Every time they are outside of stealth, they don’t have access to the things that make them “attrition”-y. PD thieves work well because while in stealth, they lose conditions, gain HP, and can deal damage pretty safely, and out of stealth they have dodge rolls to prevent getting locked down.

Necromancers get fear, chill, weakness, poison, life siphoning, DS, regen, retaliation, condition removal/transfer, blinds, cripples, immobilizes, and boon stripping/corruption. All of our CC keeps us out of range when we need to be, and in range when we want to be. Our Chill/weakness/retaliation/blind/DS slow down incoming damage, punish it when it does hit, or in the case of DS, completely nullify entire bursts. Poison and boon stripping/corruption keeps the enemy from being able to heal, mitigate damage, or deal more damage. Condition removals/transfers keep us safe from conditions, and even turn enemy condition builds into a liability. And finally, constant ticks of life siphoning, while seemingly insignificant, really add up over time. If you have minions+your own life siphoning+regen+dolyak runes (easily accomplished via staff+minions+runes), you are getting 200-300 HP per second on your own, with another 100+ HP every time a minion hits. That is a very significant amount of things to drag fights out, they are very effective (ever corrupt boon a guardian/ele?), and they are accessible.

Bhawb.7408:

Stop using a singular build as the example for why another class is “better” at attrition. Thieves have a single build (P/D) that is strong at attrition, every other build you will see them with is burst damage.

Attrition is, simply speaking, how well you can drag out a fight.

All of Thieves’ attrition is based in stealth, and using dodge rolls to stay alive between stealths. Every time they are outside of stealth, they don’t have access to the things that make them “attrition”-y. PD thieves work well because while in stealth, they lose conditions, gain HP, and can deal damage pretty safely, and out of stealth they have dodge rolls to prevent getting locked down.

Necromancers get fear, chill, weakness, poison, life siphoning, DS, regen, retaliation, condition removal/transfer, blinds, cripples, immobilizes, and boon stripping/corruption. All of our CC keeps us out of range when we need to be, and in range when we want to be. Our Chill/weakness/retaliation/blind/DS slow down incoming damage, punish it when it does hit, or in the case of DS, completely nullify entire bursts. Poison and boon stripping/corruption keeps the enemy from being able to heal, mitigate damage, or deal more damage. Condition removals/transfers keep us safe from conditions, and even turn enemy condition builds into a liability. And finally, constant ticks of life siphoning, while seemingly insignificant, really add up over time. If you have minions+your own life siphoning+regen+dolyak runes (easily accomplished via staff+minions+runes), you are getting 200-300 HP per second on your own, with another 100+ HP every time a minion hits. That is a very significant amount of things to drag fights out, they are very effective (ever corrupt boon a guardian/ele?), and they are accessible.

Most of the things you state we can do? We can’t actually do all of them at once or can’t do it frequently enough for it to be a big enough factor, guess who can? P/D thieves.
I don’t think the game actually has any attrition builds for any profession besides P/D thieves, that’s why we keep bringing that one up.

Bhawb just please, stop this. You’re just being a mindless fanboy by this point. A P/D is a better attrition build than anything a Necromancer can do, everyone else can accept the truth.

I agree that a P/D thief is one of the better attrition builds in the game, I didn’t say anything in there that said otherwise.

Tend to see things like the bunker spec, DD-Ele and support Guardian will stick it out in a fight longer than anything else in wvw. The combination with the large amount of condition removal, healing and protection in the present system means they just keep motoring along through nearly anything.
Changes in the next system though, might alter this. At the moment, only a necro carrying a particular loadout of gear/utilities (corrupt boon, well of corruption and a focus) is really their only foil.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Bhawb.7408:

Stop using a singular build as the example for why another class is “better” at attrition. Thieves have a single build (P/D) that is strong at attrition, every other build you will see them with is burst damage.

Attrition is, simply speaking, how well you can drag out a fight.

All of Thieves’ attrition is based in stealth, and using dodge rolls to stay alive between stealths. Every time they are outside of stealth, they don’t have access to the things that make them “attrition”-y. PD thieves work well because while in stealth, they lose conditions, gain HP, and can deal damage pretty safely, and out of stealth they have dodge rolls to prevent getting locked down.

Necromancers get fear, chill, weakness, poison, life siphoning, DS, regen, retaliation, condition removal/transfer, blinds, cripples, immobilizes, and boon stripping/corruption. All of our CC keeps us out of range when we need to be, and in range when we want to be. Our Chill/weakness/retaliation/blind/DS slow down incoming damage, punish it when it does hit, or in the case of DS, completely nullify entire bursts. Poison and boon stripping/corruption keeps the enemy from being able to heal, mitigate damage, or deal more damage. Condition removals/transfers keep us safe from conditions, and even turn enemy condition builds into a liability. And finally, constant ticks of life siphoning, while seemingly insignificant, really add up over time. If you have minions+your own life siphoning+regen+dolyak runes (easily accomplished via staff+minions+runes), you are getting 200-300 HP per second on your own, with another 100+ HP every time a minion hits. That is a very significant amount of things to drag fights out, they are very effective (ever corrupt boon a guardian/ele?), and they are accessible.

Most of the things you state we can do? We can’t actually do all of them at once or can’t do it frequently enough for it to be a big enough factor, guess who can? P/D thieves.
I don’t think the game actually has any attrition builds for any profession besides P/D thieves, that’s why we keep bringing that one up.

Bhawb just please, stop this. You’re just being a mindless fanboy by this point. A P/D is a better attrition build than anything a Necromancer can do, everyone else can accept the truth.

Agreed wholeheartedly the we need to stop with the old metadata list of skills again. It really does look “cheer-squad-ish” and is actually misleading on profession builds. Like I said before, these need to be put into a viable build context so that you can actually see what is capable of being actually built.

And to the antagonists on both sides….people are allowed to have differing opinions and should be allowed to express them without being “howled” down. People who support their opinions with facts and figures rather than mere opinion usually make much more sense.

Damage avoidance and leap skills do not belong on the necro imo. Give them the ability to tank while dealing massive damage over time while having escapability is too good. Imo the only thing a necro needs to be bumped up to 80+ in this little chart of yours is to make Death Shroud#2 pull the foe to you, rather then you to the foe. problem solved.

Taril.8619:

And also do very little damage due to BP > HS needing a lot of initiative to pull off and D/P having no condition damage (Whilst P/D is all about condition damage)

Thieves don’t have infinite initiative to spam off all their abilities all the time.

Never had any problems with initiative lack (15/0/20/20/15), but i am not interested at all in WvWvW and in terms of real pvp i only hotjoin from time to time…
Only thing on thief for me is that i cant take more than a hit while out of stealth.

I love how this entire topic shifted from Necromancers attrition to P/D Thief… o(<_<)o

DeathenShada.6397:

I love how this entire topic shifted from Necromancers attrition to P/D Thief… o(<_<)o

Because they’re one of the best at attrition style combat, where as necromancers are no where close to being good at attrition style combat.

Taril.8619:

Dredlord.8076:

you gave the thief the same score for mobility as a necro, you are so clueless it isn’t even funny.

Thief is easily in the top 3 for mobility classes.

Yes, thieves can have high mobility, but in their attrition spec (P/D) they have very limited mobility. P/D has none (#3 is a melee move to shadow step backwards, but uses initiative and lowers their damage) swapping to SB lowers their damage (No decent bleeds, costs initiative to move thus lowering damage) thus removing the constant stream of damage that is required to be a good attrition build.

Their utilities may provide some mobility, but it’s typically on a long cooldown: Shadowstep 50 second cooldown, Roll for Initiative 60 second cooldown, Shadow Trap (Haha… Like anyone really uses traps on thief) 30 second cooldown.

I do know about this as I have mained both Necro and P/D Thief.

Necro gets a good score for mobility since they can easily remove any conditions that slow them down with Consume Conditions, Deathly Swarm and Putrid Mark there’s a lot of on demand removal of multiple conditions, Thieves don’t have this luxury in a P/D spec they’ll have maybe Withdraw (Most likely Hide in Shadows though for more stealth and offensive condition removal) Shadow Step (50 second cooldown…) and possibly the remove conditions while stealthed (One when entering and one every 3 seconds in stealth)

it’s funny how clueless you are as to what actually happens in practice yet you are good at listing character abilities like you know what you are talking about.

Oldbugga.7029:

Kiriakulos.1690:

Bhawb.7408:

Stop using a singular build as the example for why another class is “better” at attrition. Thieves have a single build (P/D) that is strong at attrition, every other build you will see them with is burst damage.

Attrition is, simply speaking, how well you can drag out a fight.

All of Thieves’ attrition is based in stealth, and using dodge rolls to stay alive between stealths. Every time they are outside of stealth, they don’t have access to the things that make them “attrition”-y. PD thieves work well because while in stealth, they lose conditions, gain HP, and can deal damage pretty safely, and out of stealth they have dodge rolls to prevent getting locked down.

Necromancers get fear, chill, weakness, poison, life siphoning, DS, regen, retaliation, condition removal/transfer, blinds, cripples, immobilizes, and boon stripping/corruption. All of our CC keeps us out of range when we need to be, and in range when we want to be. Our Chill/weakness/retaliation/blind/DS slow down incoming damage, punish it when it does hit, or in the case of DS, completely nullify entire bursts. Poison and boon stripping/corruption keeps the enemy from being able to heal, mitigate damage, or deal more damage. Condition removals/transfers keep us safe from conditions, and even turn enemy condition builds into a liability. And finally, constant ticks of life siphoning, while seemingly insignificant, really add up over time. If you have minions+your own life siphoning+regen+dolyak runes (easily accomplished via staff+minions+runes), you are getting 200-300 HP per second on your own, with another 100+ HP every time a minion hits. That is a very significant amount of things to drag fights out, they are very effective (ever corrupt boon a guardian/ele?), and they are accessible.

Most of the things you state we can do? We can’t actually do all of them at once or can’t do it frequently enough for it to be a big enough factor, guess who can? P/D thieves.
I don’t think the game actually has any attrition builds for any profession besides P/D thieves, that’s why we keep bringing that one up.

Bhawb just please, stop this. You’re just being a mindless fanboy by this point. A P/D is a better attrition build than anything a Necromancer can do, everyone else can accept the truth.

Agreed wholeheartedly the we need to stop with the old metadata list of skills again. It really does look “cheer-squad-ish” and is actually misleading on profession builds. Like I said before, these need to be put into a viable build context so that you can actually see what is capable of being actually built.

And to the antagonists on both sides….people are allowed to have differing opinions and should be allowed to express them without being “howled” down. People who support their opinions with facts and figures rather than mere opinion usually make much more sense.

/agree

I wouldn’t have put it that nicely.

Attrition? There is no room for attrition in this game at all.

Why? Because no one can prevent disengages by classes that use skills intended as gap closer/engaging move as escape mechanism.

At the moment attrition based opponents are like an encounter you can just skip in a dungeon! :P

For example:
If you can’t prevent a ele from using ride the lightning to move 1200 units away in 2 seconds, then there is no room for attrition.
If you can’t prevent a ranger from using swoop to move 1100 units away in few moments, then there is no room for attrition.
If you can’t prevent a warrior from using rush to move 1200 units away in few seconds, followed by a Whirlwind Attack to move even further, then there is no room fro attrition.
[…and so on…]

As almost every classes have a very easy way to get away from the 900 units threshold of our unique gap closer, the Dark Path (a skill that is very slow and very easy to dodge) or even the 1200 units threshold of our unique come back here and fight like a man skill, the Spectral Grasp (as Dark Pat, very slow and very easy to dodge and even buggy, because the effective range of pulling is less then 1200, see Necromancer Bug Compilation Mk II for clarifications), then there is no place for attrition because almost everyone (all BUT necros >_>) can run away from a fight in a blink of a eye.

Tiborb.1453:

Attrition? There is no room for attrition in this game at all.

Why? Because no one can prevent disengages by classes that use skills intended as gap closer/engaging move as escape mechanism.

At the moment attrition based opponents are like an encounter you can just skip in a dungeon! :P

For example:
If you can’t prevent a ele from using ride the lightning to move 1200 units away in 2 seconds, then there is no room for attrition.
If you can’t prevent a ranger from using swoop to move 1100 units away in few moments, then there is no room for attrition.
If you can’t prevent a warrior from using rush to move 1200 units away in few seconds, followed by a Whirlwind Attack to move even further, then there is no room fro attrition.
[…and so on…]

As almost every classes have a very easy way to get away from the 900 units threshold of our unique gap closer, the Dark Path (a skill that is very slow and very easy to dodge) or even the 1200 units threshold of our unique come back here and fight like a man skill, the Spectral Grasp (as Dark Pat, very slow and very easy to dodge and even buggy, because the effective range of pulling is less then 1200, see Necromancer Bug Compilation Mk II for clarifications), then there is no place for attrition because almost everyone (all BUT necros >_>) can run away from a fight in a blink of a eye.

Speaking of which, I do miss GW1’s Scorpion Wire. It would have been the perfect skill to counter all these high mobility classes.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scorpion_Wire

Talentless.5708:

This is not an kitten contest. Play a necro right and you will be fine. Even talentless noobs can play this class and make walmart special videos from just an hour or two WvW this afternoon:

I’m really not sure what you’re trying to prove linking this. These are very poor examples of good PVP. This was nothing but a montage of you 2v1ing people and killing up levels.

Meanwhile…

Kravick.4906:

Talentless.5708:

This is not an kitten contest. Play a necro right and you will be fine. Even talentless noobs can play this class and make walmart special videos from just an hour or two WvW this afternoon:

I’m really not sure what you’re trying to prove linking this. These are very poor examples of good PVP. This was nothing but a montage of you 2v1ing people and killing up levels.

Meanwhile…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XubClqLgJnY

Thank you for posting this, didn’t know he made a new one lol.

Rok.5260:

Thank you for posting this, didn’t know he made a new one lol.

Oh yeah, this is by far his best one yet.

The large problem with the necro is the death shroud mechanic which was originally a downed state was suddenly revamped into a a class mechanic. All it really is another HP bar with mediocre skills attached to it.

Mobility is terrible. As far as I know this class has no leap or jumping skills, can’t exploit terrain. 2/10
DPS is kinda decent but it still pales in comparison to other classes, weapon mechanics are all clunky to me still. 5/10
Survivability is another HP bar, if your gonna get juked it doesn’t really save you. Fear would be nice if it was a small AoE around the necro 7/10
The CC is there but really it’s mostly about taking and exploiting conditions of others. Epidemic is crazy good but it’s a huge crutch. If the DPS was better you might not have to use this. 7/10

21/40 for me a C+ class and I main one.

Nothing against Yishis(thief in that video), he seems like a very good player that knows a lot about others classes too.

But I can’t get the smile off my face when you hear him say in a calm tone: I got a lot of pressure (4v1) so I have to shadowstep, I managed to down one thief, 2 thief, warrior, my stealth regen heals more than 6 stacks of bleed (granted it’s not by a heavy condition player) and it goes on. It’s world apart vs our ability to even react to those threats.

I mean come on, while not all thiefs plays like him, we can’t manage to win fights as an Attrition class against four peoples. The fight would be: I encountered 4 guys so I waypoint.. Oh wait, in combat already… I have a lot of pressure so I DS… DS down, still a lot of pressure I try to use my fear(s).. Autostability from warrior or Interrupt or you name it… Knockdown, Feared from thiefs twice for thrice as long, Knockdown, Downed.. Gonna fear, oh wait they have Stability…

There is no attrition right now in WvW with our class. I still play it and love it under certains circumstances, but it’s in no way an attrition class. On my mesmer if my first burst doesn’t down the target, I can still survive vs many opponents long enough to try it again two or three times (12-15 seconds cooldowns between each tries) while still applying a lot of pressure with good DD. And if the task seems too big, I can even try to run away and I normally am able to.

In tPvp I can understand the settings are different, but they could up the bar a bit in the WvW world to ensure we have more ways to react/survive to those type of encounters.

And anyone knows right now that true speed/mobility is not swiftness, it’s the leap/charge/teleport that lots of classes are having, on low cooldown. Swiftness is the bare minimum if you want to even start to compete.

CHIPS.6018:

Tiborb.1453:

Attrition? There is no room for attrition in this game at all.

Why? Because no one can prevent disengages by classes that use skills intended as gap closer/engaging move as escape mechanism.

At the moment attrition based opponents are like an encounter you can just skip in a dungeon! :P

For example:
If you can’t prevent a ele from using ride the lightning to move 1200 units away in 2 seconds, then there is no room for attrition.
If you can’t prevent a ranger from using swoop to move 1100 units away in few moments, then there is no room for attrition.
If you can’t prevent a warrior from using rush to move 1200 units away in few seconds, followed by a Whirlwind Attack to move even further, then there is no room fro attrition.
[…and so on…]

As almost every classes have a very easy way to get away from the 900 units threshold of our unique gap closer, the Dark Path (a skill that is very slow and very easy to dodge) or even the 1200 units threshold of our unique come back here and fight like a man skill, the Spectral Grasp (as Dark Pat, very slow and very easy to dodge and even buggy, because the effective range of pulling is less then 1200, see Necromancer Bug Compilation Mk II for clarifications), then there is no place for attrition because almost everyone (all BUT necros >_>) can run away from a fight in a blink of a eye.

Speaking of which, I do miss GW1’s Scorpion Wire. It would have been the perfect skill to counter all these high mobility classes.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scorpion_Wire

Yeah! Something like that could be the only way to force the enemy to fight against you (if they don’t change the way ride the lightning, swoop, rush, and others skill like this work) and let necros fit the attrition role w/o giving to them a high mobility skill.

They can call it “spectral bond” or “spectral leash” and maybe add it as a 5th skill of DS… but this is only a dream :/

Question: does chill/cripple reduce the distance traveled by leaping gapclosers? (Such as ride the lightning, swoop, etc.?) I was under the impression it did, but would like to be sure because reasons.

Why should necromancers be stereotyped with a “attrition” play-style?

Rather than one best build among necromancers, I would rather see more variety in Necromancer builds. I’m looking to see Berserker necros being viable in the future. Probably not ever going to happen however.

Kravick.4906:

Talentless.5708:

This is not an kitten contest. Play a necro right and you will be fine. Even talentless noobs can play this class and make walmart special videos from just an hour or two WvW this afternoon:

I’m really not sure what you’re trying to prove linking this. These are very poor examples of good PVP. This was nothing but a montage of you 2v1ing people and killing up levels.

Meanwhile…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XubClqLgJnY

That entire video, all I could think was, “Wow, Stealth is so OP (in WvW).”

The only way that type of gameplay is possible is with stealth or extreme mobility. Occasionally I’ll get lucky and stumble upon 2 or 3 people in WvW that are just terrible players, obviously up-leveled, getting attacked by a bunch of mobs, or otherwise at a large disadvantage and stomp them. But it’s nowhere reliable enough where I could hunt those kind of fights. And definitely not reliable enough where I could make a series of videos based on those fights.

And honestly, it’s fairly obvious why this is the case. There is no defensive setup that equals the amount of damage mitigation you’ll get from stealthing or teleporting away from 4-5 players wailing on you.

Panhauramix.2784:

Nothing against Yishis(thief in that video), he seems like a very good player that knows a lot about others classes too.

But I can’t get the smile off my face when you hear him say in a calm tone: I got a lot of pressure (4v1) so I have to shadowstep, I managed to down one thief, 2 thief, warrior, my stealth regen heals more than 6 stacks of bleed (granted it’s not by a heavy condition player) and it goes on. It’s world apart vs our ability to even react to those threats.

Which is exactly the point. I’m not even close to being on Yishis level, but even I have won 1v4 encounters against all level 80s on my thief. This is something no necromancer is ever going to be able to win regardless of skill level. Thieves win these kinds of fights because they can attrition via stealth. ANet is the one that called necromancers an attrition class. They did so without thinking. A pistol/dagger thief is the king of attrition.

Right now, thieves are the ultimate attrition class.

ANet also came out and said that they want necromancers to basically face tank everything, so they gave us low mobility and more HP to compensate. Sadly, they did not give us the proper tools to do so. Guardians face tank way better than we do and have half the HP to do it with. Why? Because they got the tools to do so.

Guardians are the ultimate face tank class.

ANet stated that they think necromancers have a “kill zone” and that when people enter it they begin to feel the pressure. This is a sad, sad mistake of fact. I’m sorry, but in comparison to the other classes right now, necromancers hit like a wet noodle. The title of “kill zone” class goes to warrior. If you let a warrior into melee combat with you, thats when you feel pressure. Its countered by kiting the warrior and using ranged weapons against them. If you screw up and let them get close to you, its gonna hurt. What happens when a necromancer gets close to you? You take some damage and then turn around and plant your boot squarely up his kitten Dagger is mediocre damage. Axe damage is LOL worthy. Staff damage is hilariously bad. Most people know this. If you have multiple level 80s, like most people do at this point, its obvious necromancer damage is laughable and there is no “kill zone”.

Warriors are the ultimate “kill zone” class.

Everything that ANet has “envisioned” for us is superseded by another class, and this is the problem people have with necromancers.

Dredlord.8076:

Taril.8619:

I’m not sure I agree with all your categories… Some of them seem redundant (No high damage abilities? That doesn’t necessarily mean attrition…)

Categories I’d use would be something like:

• Survivability (Health, healing, other defences) – 7/10
  High health, Heal skills are good (Consume Conditions = Amazing especially for attrition) and DS is great survival tool. Let down by the lack of dodges, limited boons (Protection, Vigor, Regeneration (Outside of Staff)) and limited defence from utilities

• DPS (How much damage is dealt, how easy is it to sustain, how can it be countered) – 6/10
  Direct damage isn’t very high and hard to maintain as there’s limited movement capabilities and lockdown (Outside perma-chill builds) and boons will counter it as anti-boon tools favour condition builds.
  Condition damage is good, not reliant on high stacks of Bleed so condition removal tools have limited effect, can convert boons into conditions and transfer conditions from self to targets. Conditions also have relatively short cooldowns allowing them to be reapplied fairly easily.

• Lockdown (How much disable is available, how easy is it to get it off, how effective is it) 3/10
  A few chills, a cripple and an immobilise. Can be built for perma-chill but still can only lock a single target down reliably. Has access to a few fears aswell, but only 2 are reliable and are on pretty long cooldown with short (1 second duration)

• Mobility (How easy is it to move around, how easy is it to prevent being controlled, can you stay with your target) – 5/10
  Conditions such as Cripple, Chill and Immobilise can be removed and/or sent to opponents preventing loss of mobility. The lack of movement speed and gap closers (Outside DS #2) hamper keeping up with classes with mobility tools (Such as Ride the Lightning, Rush, Leap of Faith, Infiltrator’s Arrow, Swoop, Super Speed, Portal)

Giving a score of 21/40

I’d end up giving a P/D Thief (Attrition based build):

Survivability – 10/10 Regen in stealth, can spec for heals when using initiative, stealth to try and avoid being targeted, can get extra dodges through Feline Grace giving 25% endurance back after dodging

DPS – 7/10 Constant pressure from multiple bleeds, as well as a not-too bad direct damage from applying them and using CnD to stealth

Lockdown – 3/10 Can perma-cripple but uses up initiative that’s needed to deal damage, can use Scorpion Wire to pull someone in but that’s about it aside from Basalisk Venom Elite skill

Mobility – 5/10 has access to multiple Shadow Steps which can allow movement and condition cleansing but they tend to have moderate to high cooldowns. The weapon set doesn’t have much mobility itself and it would cost initiative and therefore lower DPS if used.

Giving P/D Thieves a total of 25/40. Which while not great still beats out Necro’s

you gave the thief the same score for mobility as a necro, you are so clueless it isn’t even funny.

Thief is easily in the top 3 for mobility classes.

It’s easily the second most mobile class only behind eles. On Khylo thief can exploit the clocktower better than an ele could though.

Tiborb.1453:

At the moment attrition based opponents are like an encounter you can just skip in a dungeon! :P

This is absolutely true, only in WvW, and only when you are roaming. In PvE mobs don’t skip you. If you are trying to defend a supply camp and are getting wailed on by a necro, “skipping the encounter” means you lose the supply camp, which is a win for the necro. If you are defending a tower or a keep, you can’t just skip the encounter and let them take your keep. In PvP you can’t just decide you don’t need to hold that point anymore and run away because a necro can’t hold you down.

That is the one thing keeping mobility from completely destroying this game; objectives. If this were TDM, then yes, mobility would be far and above better than everything else because you couldn’t get locked down to die, and you could catch up with anyone trying to run away. But this isn’t TDM, almost all PvP in this game (besides running around killing things in WvW) is objective based. If you run away from the objective, you lose, period.

Bhawb.7408:

Tiborb.1453:

At the moment attrition based opponents are like an encounter you can just skip in a dungeon! :P

This is absolutely true, only in WvW, and only when you are roaming. In PvE mobs don’t skip you. If you are trying to defend a supply camp and are getting wailed on by a necro, “skipping the encounter” means you lose the supply camp, which is a win for the necro. If you are defending a tower or a keep, you can’t just skip the encounter and let them take your keep. In PvP you can’t just decide you don’t need to hold that point anymore and run away because a necro can’t hold you down.

That is the one thing keeping mobility from completely destroying this game; objectives. If this were TDM, then yes, mobility would be far and above better than everything else because you couldn’t get locked down to die, and you could catch up with anyone trying to run away. But this isn’t TDM, almost all PvP in this game (besides running around killing things in WvW) is objective based. If you run away from the objective, you lose, period.

You don’t WvW much, do you?

I do quite a bit.

Bhawb.7408:

Tiborb.1453:

At the moment attrition based opponents are like an encounter you can just skip in a dungeon! :P

This is absolutely true, only in WvW, and only when you are roaming. In PvE mobs don’t skip you. If you are trying to defend a supply camp and are getting wailed on by a necro, “skipping the encounter” means you lose the supply camp, which is a win for the necro. If you are defending a tower or a keep, you can’t just skip the encounter and let them take your keep. In PvP you can’t just decide you don’t need to hold that point anymore and run away because a necro can’t hold you down.

That is the one thing keeping mobility from completely destroying this game; objectives. If this were TDM, then yes, mobility would be far and above better than everything else because you couldn’t get locked down to die, and you could catch up with anyone trying to run away. But this isn’t TDM, almost all PvP in this game (besides running around killing things in WvW) is objective based. If you run away from the objective, you lose, period.

It seems like this is only true if you’re the one with reinforcements on the way. If your opponent has reinforcements on the way, then you’d want to finish the fight quickly and move on.

Phira.3970:

Why should necromancers be stereotyped with a “attrition” play-style?

Rather than one best build among necromancers, I would rather see more variety in Necromancer builds. I’m looking to see Berserker necros being viable in the future. Probably not ever going to happen however.

Because necro would never be the best blast class in the game, and they shouldn’t be. We already got thief, eles and even mesmer for blast.

Berserker should be viable for necro. But that necro would still be an attrition class, just to a lessor extend (higher damage, less survivability).

I really hope that Anet is reading this thread and considering the ideas from us. Obviously a lot of us put in a lot of time to write these up. Else it will just go to page 2 of the forum and be forgotten.

Securing an objective, even for a short amount of time, can help flip things. Last night we ran around in WvW flipping supply camps because you can easily flip a camp, build a golem, WP the golem back to a safe area, and move on to another camp. If an enemy runs away from that objective, we get a free golem; regardless of if they get the camp back in a few minutes.

Walls and Keeps are another example, even if only flip the keep or tower for a few minutes, it takes the enemy a fairly good amount of time to come back and recap it. Running away from objectives doesn’t work well, even if you can flip them back easily; it is just a slightly better alternative to wiping and having to walk all the way back and flip it again.

PinCushion.7390:

Bhawb.7408:

Tiborb.1453:

At the moment attrition based opponents are like an encounter you can just skip in a dungeon! :P

This is absolutely true, only in WvW, and only when you are roaming. In PvE mobs don’t skip you. If you are trying to defend a supply camp and are getting wailed on by a necro, “skipping the encounter” means you lose the supply camp, which is a win for the necro. If you are defending a tower or a keep, you can’t just skip the encounter and let them take your keep. In PvP you can’t just decide you don’t need to hold that point anymore and run away because a necro can’t hold you down.

That is the one thing keeping mobility from completely destroying this game; objectives. If this were TDM, then yes, mobility would be far and above better than everything else because you couldn’t get locked down to die, and you could catch up with anyone trying to run away. But this isn’t TDM, almost all PvP in this game (besides running around killing things in WvW) is objective based. If you run away from the objective, you lose, period.

It seems like this is only true if you’re the one with reinforcements on the way. If your opponent has reinforcements on the way, then you’d want to finish the fight quickly and move on.

Well to be fair the necro is supposed to be slow, so we cannot escape. However to balance that Anet “promised” us that we would be a very hard class to get away from. Necro is supposed to be the BEST snaring class in the game. The enemies that faces us should be chilled, crippled or chained in turn pretty much 24/7, even with condition removals. Our snares was supposed to be so great that even without leap skills (necro do not have any leap skills) we have no problem catching up to any foe.

That didn’t happen. Our snares are too easily removed. The cooldown is way too long. And they often miss, out of range, bugged or enemy gained stealth and immunity. And when all those fails, our low mobility doesn’t give us any chance of catching our prey.

So at the end necro can neither run away from danger, nor can they catch their prey. Once the fight starts, the option to “fight or flight” is no longer with the necro. They cannot disengage. At the same time other classes have no problem resetting the fight or running away.

Bhawb got a good point that if the necro forced the enemy to run away from an objective, the necro won. That is true. However this doesn’t make it ok, because it doesn’t change the fact that Anet broke their promise with the necro. Aside from luck and extreme skills, that enemy shouldn’t have been allowed to escape, period. Necro was supposed to be the BEST snaring class in the game. Necro should have a very easy time keeping enemies nearby.

In other words, yes we necros can “live” with Anet’s broken promises. Yes we can live without being the best snaring class. Forcing the enemy to run away from the objective is “good enough”. Yes we can “live” without being the best attrition class. We can avoid 1v1 fights by not roaming at all, and just stick with the zerg and do “good enough”.

Does that mean we necros should be happy about those Anet’s broke promises? Nope. We can “live with” being “good enough”, but we don’t have to be “happy”.

CHIPS.6018:

Bhawb got a good point that if the necro forced the enemy to run away from an objective, the necro won

Only to come back 10 seconds later after they’ve reset their HP bar. Remember that other classes have their abilities on much shorter cool downs. I do this to necromancers all the time on my thief. They’re an extremely easy class to beat down.

Kravick.4906:

CHIPS.6018:

Bhawb got a good point that if the necro forced the enemy to run away from an objective, the necro won

Only to come back 10 seconds later after they’ve reset their HP bar. Remember that other classes have their abilities on much shorter cool downs. I do this to necromancers all the time on my thief. They’re an extremely easy class to beat down.

Good point. I used to be caught in that situation a lot. So nowadays I use Snow Leopold on those rare cases when I roam. That elite skill saved me many many times. But without it, roaming would be very frustrating.

Let me just say that unless your are a Norn necro with Snow Leopold, don’t bother roaming at all. Stay with your zerg.

And with the upcoming culling fix, even Snow Leopold won’t be able to save me. I will probably need to totally give up roaming and just go with the zerg 100% of the time. >_>

Congrats, you gave the enemy team 10 extra seconds worth of points, plus the time you wasted in the first fight, and however long it takes you to actually finally kill them. If you count wasting a minute to take a single point that is going to be recapped pretty easily, a win, then I think we have different views of how to accomplish objectives.

@Chips, I think the issue isn’t snaring classes, the issue is that there are three classes that are essentially immune to snares (thieves, eles, mesmers). Any other class we really can snare and kill, but those three have far too much instant movement/stealth to snare.

Kravick.4906:

CHIPS.6018:

Bhawb got a good point that if the necro forced the enemy to run away from an objective, the necro won

Only to come back 10 seconds later after they’ve reset their HP bar. Remember that other classes have their abilities on much shorter cool downs. I do this to necromancers all the time on my thief. They’re an extremely easy class to beat down.

I’ve noticed, having dealt with various styles of Thief. The fights are always the same. They jump out, do their special combo, fight for a bit until they figure out that I’m not instantly dying, then run off.

Then they come back 10 seconds later and try again.

The most amusing one was the bleed Thief that kept tossing his bleeds on me and stealthing while they worked their magic. I wonder how long before he figured out that I was just eating them or throwing them back at him w/ Dagger 4/Staff4.

It didn’t matter, really. I cleansed/transferred all his garbage. He cleansed all my garbage. I stayed above half health for a few minutes. So did he. Then he decided he didn’t want to play anymore and left.

And there was nothing I could have done about it.

Bhawb.7408:

Congrats, you gave the enemy team 10 extra seconds worth of points, plus the time you wasted in the first fight, and however long it takes you to actually finally kill them. If you count wasting a minute to take a single point that is going to be recapped pretty easily, a win, then I think we have different views of how to accomplish objectives.

No one is talking about sPvP. There is a reason very few people play sPvP any more.