Guild Wars 2

I feel a nerf coming since the last dev blog livestream where they once again show their obsession with melee classes.
Considering that i find it quite obvious the dev’s have a baise towards those classes (becaus i assume direct damage is way easier to balance and since the one dev i found in spvp actually said in mapchat he has no clue ho to play necro after being instagibbed 5 times in a row)

That said, here is another rant.

I have been playing around with glasscannon and bunker builds for classes and i found necro to be the least useful in either.
NB: I consider evade ele’s and thieves S-rangers bunkers too since they can keep a point contested decapped forever if not the engie ^^.

Since i did mm builds, tanky builds, condi-builds, power builds, and hybrid i found necro has so many shortcomings in every field i’m considering putting her down for spvp.

Took my power DS build added all the LF gain on it i could find and found myself rendered useless since your damage without DS is nil. (unless you consider #1 on any weapon damage)

Next to that i still see loads of bugs on the necro. (report about 3 different bugs per day) retal doesnt work [cough …and is useless]
-When traited, heal on leaving DS is just silly and often doesn’t work or is so minimal you wonder why it’s in traits in the first place.
-Stunbreaks if i spend all my utilities on them, and i do, i still get trained down in seconds since i have 3 {vs 7 sec cd’s on stun kd’s etc) and a last resort plague. Still after using them i die because of no movability at all!!!!’
-Artricion went out of the window the moment Anet decided to make necros not sustain bursts at all.

-Making me to pop SW before battle and hoping to kill something before it runs out..

I can say that 1vs 1 necro can finally stand up to some classes, but the more you fight bursts [higher tiers] the more you find out necro is a terrible prof to play since the options in builds get reduced to deep bunker to counter bursts while dealing pitiful non damage conditions..

people complain about conditions, but don’t realize other professions can deal 10x more damage in seconds then necro will ever be capable of.

Oh and chainfear is a myth only discovered by really really bad players.
So yeah getting more and more dissapoited in this game everyday.

On another note, saw the dota2 finale yesterday looks like a interesting and balanced game that requires skill and real tactic instead of the crap put into guildwars pvp.

If anyone wants love for the necro i would suggest speaking up in spvp because noone ever checks these boards

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

On another note, saw the dota2 finale yesterday looks like a interesting and balanced game that requires skill and real tactic instead of the crap put into guildwars pvp.

This. I love Guild Wars 2 because of the world and because of WvW but if i want s/tpvp, i play dota2.
Its mechanics are way better documented, their patchnotes are complete and you dont have some weird crap in each update where you dont know if it is a bug or intended or a bit of both. (but dota2’s mechanics also lack a bit of consistency, just like gw2)

btw: yesterday? for me it was 5-6am in the morning when the last game of the Grand Finals finished. >.<

If anyone wants love for the necro i would suggest speaking up in spvp because noone ever checks these boards

then why do you post that thread here and not in the pvp-forums?

Well, when it comes to conditions necros are king right now, but they are lacking in every other corner compared to other classes. I think Death Shroud is suppose to make up for that. and that is why condi necros suck at generating LF.

RashanDale.3609:

then why do you post that thread here and not in the pvp-forums?

Because there are Devs that post regularly on the sPvP forum and since last patch there have been two anti Necro threads with Dev responses in the sPvP forum. A quick nerf to Necro(PvP) was done after one of those threads, expect another nerf soon, probably DS#3.

Not all Necros look at PvP forums. I didn’t until I found out that the game is “balanced” around PvP, which is causing tons of frustration for those players who mainly do dungeons or WvW.

The OP does reflect my sentiments using a necro in sPVP. There’s a reason why I main the engineer in sPVP, and that is basically it.

People complain about necromancers being OP all of the time, but whenever I play them, I never see it. They talk about terror chains being uncounterable and unfair, but I rarely managed to pull it off. It seems like every player I fight that I try to chain stun just breaks out of the fear and then teleports away/dodges/gains stability, ruining the whole chain. That, or they counter-stun me and then I’m on the defensive because Necros don’t have the best stun breakers.

They paint the necro as incredibly tanky, but I get focused and killed the moment I’m not pole positioning with the staff at 1200 range. Unless I actually build myself to be really durable, most classes just dance around while stabbing me to death. Even when I go minion master with PVT, I still get smacked around. The only time I’m really durable is when I have a full Life Force pool, and that only happens after I’ve leeched a few 2 vs 1 kills to fill it up.

They talk about how well we can stack conditions… but that is actually something we do well. The thing is, though, is that necromancers don’t stack conditions the fastest. Rangers and Mesmers get that distinction, stacking 4 or 5 bleeds every second. Necros can burst conditions in an AoE, but they have to blow nearly all of their cooldowns to accomplish this. Epidemic is touted as being overpowered, but it is extremely hit or miss, since to work it needs a series of specific circumstances to ever work, and even then the long windup and bad line of sight errors make it so epidemic rarely works. You end up copying 2 bleeds and a cripple most of the time. Of course, I’ll sometimes fight a super aggro class that has so many cleanses stack onto themselves that I get neutralized. The most effective strategy I’ve thought of isn’t even used in tPVP.

For non conditions builds, I don’t have burst. I have high sustained damage, but I don’t have a method to lock down and do a ton of damage. Wells are slow and suffer from the flaw that players can choose to not stand in them. Other than wells… there isn’t much to increase DPS other than minions. Minion builds can never catch evasive enemies, die to the AoE heavy meta, and often leaves the necromancer helpless in order to supplement offense. You’ll get some utility, but nothing too special or even notable.

I think I know why people think Necromancers are overpowered. During some particularly bad nights, I watched a dozen or so tournament videos, and I noticed a couple of big flaws in people’s builds:

#1: Most of the “underpowered” classes are running old builds and refuse to update their build. The guys in random tPVP and hotjoin don’t have a problem using a lot of stun breaks or condition cleanses, but in these tournaments they have no stun breaker, no condition cleanse, and complain when a condition class beats them. They say that they can’t use cleanses or stun breaks because it makes them useless, but bellying up to the primary offense for the moment also makes them useless. Seriously, mesmers: use arcane thievery.

#2: People are more concerned with what is on paper than what happens. In the videos I’ve watched, I saw epidemic used maybe once. I saw one fear chain that consisted of using more than one fear. Now I know that the announcers can’t see everything , but generally they keep focus on where the action is. The necro builds being run all have the exact same thing: Epidemic, Spectral Walk, and Corrupt Boon. Literally, every build I saw used those utilities. Epidemic is rarely used, corrupt boon is also rarely used, and Spectral Walk is the necro’s only tricky movement skill. That is it. Any and all combos that complain about necromancers that doesn’t use these utilities is immediately suspect.

#3: Something else necros are good at that not a lot of people mention is the condition transfers. This is highly situational, since it only really affects other condition classes in a 1 vs 1 scenario. But outside of that scenario, a necro can accumulate a lot of conditions on themselves, then suddenly transfer them all over, throwing the opponents offense right back in their face. This doesn’t mean much against warriors, guardians, elementalists, mesmers, and thieves, but against engineers and rangers it is quite dangerous.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I fully agree with your sentiments here and in your posts during the sPVP necro threads. I think the most telling aspect of the threads in the sPVP forums was the call from the developers for actual video evidence of what is being claimed.

I think the biggest problem is the lack of replay/proper game recording and spectating. Many many people get ideas and get better at playing by watching how other people react in particular situations. As it stands right now, one person get’s fear-chained because they brought 0 stun breakers because it lowers their overall dps – and suddenly this is what every necro is doing to every profession and they are complaining that they now HAVE to take cleansing and stunbreaks just to survive.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The OP does reflect my sentiments using a necro in sPVP. There’s a reason why I main the engineer in sPVP, and that is basically it.

People complain about necromancers being OP all of the time, but whenever I play them, I never see it. They talk about terror chains being uncounterable and unfair, but I rarely managed to pull it off. It seems like every player I fight that I try to chain stun just breaks out of the fear and then teleports away/dodges/gains stability, ruining the whole chain. That, or they counter-stun me and then I’m on the defensive because Necros don’t have the best stun breakers.

They paint the necro as incredibly tanky, but I get focused and killed the moment I’m not pole positioning with the staff at 1200 range. Unless I actually build myself to be really durable, most classes just dance around while stabbing me to death. Even when I go minion master with PVT, I still get smacked around. The only time I’m really durable is when I have a full Life Force pool, and that only happens after I’ve leeched a few 2 vs 1 kills to fill it up.

They talk about how well we can stack conditions… but that is actually something we do well. The thing is, though, is that necromancers don’t stack conditions the fastest. Rangers and Mesmers get that distinction, stacking 4 or 5 bleeds every second. Necros can burst conditions in an AoE, but they have to blow nearly all of their cooldowns to accomplish this. Epidemic is touted as being overpowered, but it is extremely hit or miss, since to work it needs a series of specific circumstances to ever work, and even then the long windup and bad line of sight errors make it so epidemic rarely works. You end up copying 2 bleeds and a cripple most of the time. Of course, I’ll sometimes fight a super aggro class that has so many cleanses stack onto themselves that I get neutralized. The most effective strategy I’ve thought of isn’t even used in tPVP.

For non conditions builds, I don’t have burst. I have high sustained damage, but I don’t have a method to lock down and do a ton of damage. Wells are slow and suffer from the flaw that players can choose to not stand in them. Other than wells… there isn’t much to increase DPS other than minions. Minion builds can never catch evasive enemies, die to the AoE heavy meta, and often leaves the necromancer helpless in order to supplement offense. You’ll get some utility, but nothing too special or even notable.

I think I know why people think Necromancers are overpowered. During some particularly bad nights, I watched a dozen or so tournament videos, and I noticed a couple of big flaws in people’s builds:

#1: Most of the “underpowered” classes are running old builds and refuse to update their build. The guys in random tPVP and hotjoin don’t have a problem using a lot of stun breaks or condition cleanses, but in these tournaments they have no stun breaker, no condition cleanse, and complain when a condition class beats them. They say that they can’t use cleanses or stun breaks because it makes them useless, but bellying up to the primary offense for the moment also makes them useless. Seriously, mesmers: use arcane thievery.

#2: People are more concerned with what is on paper than what happens. In the videos I’ve watched, I saw epidemic used maybe once. I saw one fear chain that consisted of using more than one fear. Now I know that the announcers can’t see everything , but generally they keep focus on where the action is. The necro builds being run all have the exact same thing: Epidemic, Spectral Walk, and Corrupt Boon. Literally, every build I saw used those utilities. Epidemic is rarely used, corrupt boon is also rarely used, and Spectral Walk is the necro’s only tricky movement skill. That is it. Any and all combos that complain about necromancers that doesn’t use these utilities is immediately suspect.

#3: Something else necros are good at that not a lot of people mention is the condition transfers. This is highly situational, since it only really affects other condition classes in a 1 vs 1 scenario. But outside of that scenario, a necro can accumulate a lot of conditions on themselves, then suddenly transfer them all over, throwing the opponents offense right back in their face. This doesn’t mean much against warriors, guardians, elementalists, mesmers, and thieves, but against engineers and rangers it is quite dangerous.

A-net start taking notes right here

People don’t complain about necro beeing OP, people complain about one specific build beeing OP. It is the same like it was with ele, mes, thief and whatever else.
30/20/0/0/20(s/d + staff, geomancy, rabid, util: SA, SoS, CB that’s what is run atm) is just a ridicoulous hard counter too so many things in the game due to limited access on condi removal and necros ridicoulously strong condi burst capabilites.
Your standard burst, consisting of MoB, chillblains → DS 3, 2, 5 → weapon swap: geomancy scep 2, dag 5 applies 16 stacks bleed (weakening shroud included), poison, weakness, chill, cripple, torment and terror. Add in additional bleed proccs from barbed prec and dhuumfire and you get close to 4k dmg in a sec. Sure this takes around 3-4 seconds to perform but even then you didn’t even use signet of spite nor CB and are likely to do a weaker version of the combo (without DS 3, but then prolly with Staff 5) in around 10 seconds.
So necro has pretty strong and easy to do again condi burst.

Builds that can compete against that offense have either high evade uptimes (ranger, S/D thief) or extremely good cleanses that can’t be achieved by other classes (shout guard, warri with zerker stance) and mesmers transfering 3 condis back every 45 sec just isn’t enough.

Apart from that one build i fully agree with you BRA, our defense is mediocre at best and utter bs at worst, “hey you, take this class mechanic, that doesn’t allow you healing. No worries it’s alrite, you get a 2nd hp bar and tonz of condi funz!”
Our offensive capabilites lack repeatable burst and are once a fight tricks, that either completely destroy things or get us destroyed by having no effect at all, see epidemic or dagger 3, 25 sec cd! immob into wells, minions in the proximity of AoE.

Remember that every talk about PvP will always be about common builds. When people say “necros are OP” they aren’t talking about glass hybrid MMs running 10/10/10/20/20, they are talking about the most common builds.

As of right now, we’re still way too tuned towards the offensive side of things. ANet needs to fix our defense and tone down the damage where needed to compensate for what should be a class with the highest base sustain in the game.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Next to that i still see loads of bugs on the necro. (report about 3 different bugs per day) retal doesnt work [cough …and is useless]
-When traited, heal on leaving DS is just silly and often doesn’t work or is so minimal you wonder why it’s in traits in the first place.
-Stunbreaks if i spend all my utilities on them, and i do, i still get trained down in seconds since i have 3 {vs 7 sec cd’s on stun kd’s etc) and a last resort plague. Still after using them i die because of no movability at all!!!!’
-Artricion went out of the window the moment Anet decided to make necros not sustain bursts at all.

-Making me to pop SW before battle and hoping to kill something before it runs out..

Just so we’re clear, you don’t think those are bugs, right?

Softspoken.2410:

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Next to that i still see loads of bugs on the necro. (report about 3 different bugs per day) retal doesnt work [cough …and is useless]
-When traited, heal on leaving DS is just silly and often doesn’t work or is so minimal you wonder why it’s in traits in the first place.
-Stunbreaks if i spend all my utilities on them, and i do, i still get trained down in seconds since i have 3 {vs 7 sec cd’s on stun kd’s etc) and a last resort plague. Still after using them i die because of no movability at all!!!!’
-Artricion went out of the window the moment Anet decided to make necros not sustain bursts at all.

-Making me to pop SW before battle and hoping to kill something before it runs out..

Just so we’re clear, you don’t think those are bugs, right?

No ^^, may have added a dash too many there..

BTW the specific buils 30/20/20 with dumbfire .. they can have it nerf it whatever..
Rather play around with direct damage and cc’s in a full on crit build, its challenging and keep you on your toes since 1 backstab or 1 too many knockdowns and its over

Still find new bugs everyday. (anyone tried the everlasting cripple animation bug on necro yet?) eat a spicy pumpkin cookie stark walking, get out of “brawlform/mummy” and immediately cast spectral walk.. after a few tries you are permanently stuck in cripple animation ^^