Guild Wars 2

So far I have a lvl 80 Warrior, Guardian, Thief.
I’m pretty happy with War/Thief, bit less with Guardian, but I want to roll a new class now.
I ruled out Ele/Mes because I hate “mages”, Ranger because it’s boring, Engi I don’t like.

I love melee and conditions, also love high survivability and Necro seems to have all this; from a purely PvE perspective it looks interesting.
I also loved my MM in GW1, in GW2 I hear MM is unviable but I can live with this.

The problem is I see necros have zero disengages unless I’m missing something, so how am I supposed to WvW?
So far the only good Necros I met in WvW are those conditionmancers defending keeps and dotting everyone for 3-4k damage/tick, and this sounds awesome but on the other hand not being able to roam sounds pretty bad.

So would you say it’d be worth it to roll a necro for me?

looking from the class’s you played…no, but try it and see if you like it i could be wrong and minonmancy is NOT the same as it was in WvW which is why you never see it

I have a warrior, guard, thief and necro fully geared. I main a warrior and necro has equally as kitten feel that a warrior does. It’s a very solid profession, some annoying bugs and quirks, but very-very viable and strong in both pvp and pve. Condimancer is the way to go imo, although my friend who mains a necro runs glass hybrid in pve.

I just started using my lvl 50ish Conditionmancer in WvW on SoS and i kid you not i got 300 kills in 3 days. I just stay behind and spam staff combos plus Blood is Power along with Epidemic. I have found my necro to be the best antizerg tool out of all my chars. I have lvl 80 Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer and Guardian. Try it, its definitely good in WvW if you like the concept of the class.

Conditions in WvW get removed against better organized zergs and are less useful in small man groups where players have more spacing. Mostly a support role and good for wall attack/defense

A necro with Spectral Walk/Plague and wells can melt zergs or small man given support but is less useful attacking/defending walls.

Power necros can also be useful against zergs and small man groups but are practically useless in wall attack/defense.

People say conditions get removed in WvW zergs but you have to think of all the AOE conditions you can impart. Even if they remove a couple of times you can still spam more. I will switch continuously between Staff and Scepter/Dagger. Its kitten effective when you put em on retreating enemies. Also, i play on T1 server and even here i have found Conditionmancer to be extremely effective that too in the level 50 upscaled to 80 region.

Red Falcon.8257:

The problem is I see necros have zero disengages unless I’m missing something, so how am I supposed to WvW?

Same way we did in old school MMO’s where there wasn’t the sheer amount of hand-holding and coddling that goes on in GW2 classes that developers seemed to think needed some way of ‘getting out’ of things they where too stupid to get in to, in the first place!
As a primarily ranged support, cloth caster, even a tough one with a lot of hit points- “Fight where the enemy isn’t”

You can pack a lot of speed on one, you can switch out from more AOE to single-target depending on what you’re going to face and you can be places quickly so you’re not cornered. For everything else, there is sheer firepower. On a slow night I might get 30-40 kills an hour in a small group or duo, server resets it’ll sometimes go as high as 100-130 an hour rolling with a guild for hours on end.

That said, there’s a lot of bugs, busted abilities, crap pets and about 2-specs that actually achieve consistent results (condition or wells mostly) and be prepared to face some bitter disappointments along the way if you’re not prepared to play smart and think the class itself will get you past parity with any equivalent.
But you know, theres a certain satisfaction that never goes away seeing what an epidemic does to a bunch of dumb glass auto-attack spec’d zerglings gutted and dropping like flies or watching the ‘feared’ DD-Ele or buffed up Guard melt and die in 10 seconds with a corrupt boon.
(warriors and thieves are still extremely dangerous though!)

If you already have an 80 warrior and thief I doubt you will get much satisfaction from necromancer. Unless you enjoy working about 5x as hard for slightly worse results than said classes, killing things slower, and having far fewer viable build options. The main reason myself and I’m sure most people even make necromancers, the pets, are a freaking joke. They’ve got to be the most ill-conceived and worst implemented necromancer summons in any mmo that has ever had them =/ If however you don’t mind being pigeon-holed into the condition spec and don’t want to use minions, you can have success and as Thresher said, a well timed epidemic can make you smile as the screen fills up with little ticking numbers. For about 2 seconds before they’re all cleansed. But I digress!

Red Falcon.8257:

So far I have a lvl 80 Warrior, Guardian, Thief.
I’m pretty happy with War/Thief, bit less with Guardian, but I want to roll a new class now.
I ruled out Ele/Mes because I hate “mages”, Ranger because it’s boring, Engi I don’t like.

I love melee and conditions, also love high survivability and Necro seems to have all this; from a purely PvE perspective it looks interesting.
I also loved my MM in GW1, in GW2 I hear MM is unviable but I can live with this.

The problem is I see necros have zero disengages unless I’m missing something, so how am I supposed to WvW?
So far the only good Necros I met in WvW are those conditionmancers defending keeps and dotting everyone for 3-4k damage/tick, and this sounds awesome but on the other hand not being able to roam sounds pretty bad.

So would you say it’d be worth it to roll a necro for me?

Well first of all, the melee build for the necro doesn’t really focus on conditions. It can cause some, but they are not high damaging. I you already have G/W/T, the melee experience with necro isn’t going to rock your world. They have lower damage than those classes and somewhat (depending on spec) higher survivability. You get one semi-reliable gap closer in DS2, and zero escapes, so being in the middle of everything is a mixed bag in WvW where 5v5 can quickly turn in to 5v20.

Anyone saying that the lack of disengage is not a problem is crazy, and clearly never roams anywhere. I agree that in small group vs. small group, you need to play smart and avoid overextending as a condition necro, but that means you can’t stomp, and your conditions ger cleared on down.

As far as dealing 3-4k damage per tick… thats a bit of a stretch. Bleeds typically deal 130-150 depending on might stacks and with nearly max condition damage. Even if you have 10 bleeds up and poison you are only talking about 1500-1800 per tick. Assuming you could also put TERROR fear on, it would be another 1350 or so.. bringing your grand total to 3-3.5k per tick for 1-2 second until your fear runs out, where it drops back down. If you want really massive hits with conditions you want confusion, necro is more about attrition (IE slow damage).

The magical land where people sit with 20 bleeds on them for more than 2 seconds doesn’t exist, and while conditions DO work in WvW, it is all about reapplication. I agree that coordinated groups will have no issues with dots though. With eles and guardians, it is very easy to keep your group clear. Uncoordinated groups will hang around with 5-12 bleeds pretty often and are prime targets for epidemic.

That being said, if you don’t like “mages”, condition necro is basically a mage without direct burst. We have cast times for pretty much all our abilities, and that build is almost exclusively ranged.

There are more brawler style builds, but they do not focus on conditions. Condition based builds lack a certain fluidity because of all those cast times, and can feel clunky when thieves/guardians/eles are hopping all around us. But this just comes with the territory when you don’t have the escapes or invis skills. Pretty much any class can disengage if they want.

convince you? nah, try it yourself and develop your own likes and dislikes. If you have at least one level 80, and play WvW, you know what a necro is like to fight against, and likely you have fought serveral different types. If not, you don’t play WvW or pvp.

Form your own opinion.

Just switched to a mm build, quite viable now. Just make sure to launch your minions first to make sure they engage. Mm is a very tanky build. I keep losing my 1-3 fights though.: (