Guild Wars 2

Hi all. So after a 4 year break, I rediscovered my love for this game and all it has to offer. However, I’m finding it really difficult to choose a profession (I love them all so far). I will say that I am looking to play ranged after playing melee in WoW for so long. I’m wanting to pvp, wvw and pve evenly.

So my question that you probably already guessed is, how is Necro in all aspects of the game at the moment? Also, what makes Necro more fun than other professions (in your opinion)? And how is balance in this game in general? Does it stay pretty stable, or are there wild profession changes that leave others in the dust from time to time?

Thanks for your time!

Necro is unloved in much of the game, right now. It is felt to offer no real party support, and relatively low DPS, so is “out of the meta”, and “out of pvp”, sadly.

Opinions vary about balance, but personally, I think it is both generally good, and generally relatively stable. The meta, however, changes dramatically as people (IMO over-) react to changes to classes.

Also, tomorrow is a balance patch, so … dice are rolled, and what is favored changes again, probably. Likely over similarly small real world performance changes as last time.

PvE: Necros never die. We’re gods.
PvP: Needs a good team to do well; you won’t be able to carry with Necro. You should be able to beat most classes with the right skills&build, but generally we aren’t too good.
If you’re ignored and your team isnt all glass cannons, you can wreck a teamfight with epidemic and all the boon corrupt.
Raids: Sometimes taken for the condi dmg. No real worthwhile purpose or buffs, so very stingy people will send you away. In some raids, epidemic is awesome though, so groups doing those raids will likely be OK with a necro in the squad.
WvW: I don’t know. Some say epidemic is incredibly overpowered here though, and i believe it since i’ve used epi in pvp a lot and that tends to kill all enemies within about 3 seconds.
(Epidemic copies up to 25 of every condition from one target to 4 foes around the target.)

Necromancers are and (to my experience) always have been doing well in WvW. Their roles in different parts of WvW has fluctuated but is stable. I main necromancer roaming/havoc and zerging and they are in a very good place.

WvW: Good for group/zerg but not good for solo roaming (mainly because mobility is king and we dont have much mobility). But dont misunderstand we can solo roam, it is just that we dont have stealth or high mobility to escape from a bad situation thus we will most likely die.

PvE: Best open world profession. I am not sure about raids and high level fractals but considering we dont have much support and our dps is medicore at best, i dont think we are in a good spot.

PvP: Medicore? With a good group we can be amazing, without one it can be frustrating. But we arent unplayable. Power builds are less group reliant so they do better in soloque.

Muchacho.2390:

PvE: Best open world profession. I am not sure about raids and high level fractals but considering we dont have much support and our dps is medicore at best, i dont think we are in a good spot.

We are the King of T4 fractals and against some raid bosses we can be good

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Necro is…….“out of pvp”, sadly.

From what I’ve been told, Necro is one of the best PvP classes alongside Thief and (I forget the other one I was told but I think it is) Elementalist. We have a second health bar and in a 1v1 scenario we can wreck, especially with Minions (Rise! for example). Not saying we’re the best PvP class, but I’ve never heard of/been told Necros being considered ‘out of PvP’.

To answer the OP: Necro is (imo) the best solo class. We have strong sustain, can handle mobs pretty well and can be pretty diverse when it comes to builds (at least more diverse than Revenant and Thief). We do underperform when it comes to damage, however, but since Shroud is essentially a second health bar (and additional skills) I find that slightly justifiable (though I still want us to at least be able to do some kind of damage). When it comes to PvE (not including Raids/Fractals because I don’t have enough experience in those sectors yet to give proper input) I find Necros are the best, though that’s just my personal opinion. I’ve tried Thief and Revenant, for example, but I always return to Necro. I’ve always been a Necro main (in any MMO) and I feel like ANET captured the essence of what a Necro should be like. So if you like sustain, summoning your own help and being able to roam PvE freely with little fear/worry (Group Bosses are a different story) then join us. We’re not the ‘worst’ class (I honestly feel like Revenant is currently the most underpowered/weak) and can be pretty fun. I only play PvE btw, so if you’re looking for a class that ‘excels’ in every game mode I can only give you a third of the info you’re looking for.

Thanks for all the input! This has helped immensely.