Guild Wars 2

As a new player that has been playing this game for about 3 months I wonder, do Necromancers have a real ELITE skill worth a kitten . I feel that none of their ELITE abilities are really useful except for [Mark of Horror] which is an ability in Lich form that has a 180 second cooldown timer.

Can’t speak for PvE, but Chilled to the Bone is an awesome elite skill in WvW and sPvP. Plague can be useful in some WvW situations along with Lich. Pretty much the only elite that is useless is the golem, but it could be good if anet make some tweaks to it.

I feel fairly similar (at least as far as PvE is concerned).

I rarely use plague or lich form. They lock me out of utilities and I’ve never found a build that fits them super well. Lich Form #4 was good for awhile, but it got changed and that has hindered its usefulness given the lich form’s high CD.

Chilled to the Bone! Is alright I suppose. Still somewhat underwhelming for me given its an elite skill.

I use Flesh Golem the most and that’s only because the active can decimate a break bar. Plus if I’m traited in DM then I get some free condi removal.

That’s purely from a PvE perspective – haven’t really gone into PvP or WvW with my necro

For general PvE use I’d say Flesh golem is best. It has better CC than Chilled to the bone and does ok damage + cripple. If you’re going WvW then take Cttb. Can’t speak for PvP, I haven’t done it since HoT release.

The golem is good if you play as a Minion Master, also good for common PvE.
For sPvP Chilled to the Bone is really good, granting you our only access to Stability outside of Reaper Shroud (and the well that grant only one stack), also inflict a big damage and stun for 2 seconds.
Another good elite for sPvP is the Plague, that grant you high toughness and can Spam Blind AoE, a thing really useful for a team fight.
The Lich Form was good for sPvP time ago when it was our best way to inflict huge damage, and still now it can be good but is heavly countered by every mesmer or engineer you find (and there’s always one ready to moa you when you active your best skill…).

Our elites are not at the same level of other classes elites (mesmer can moa two times, just to say), but they’re still viable in different situations.
In common PvE or Dungeon you can use CttB or Flesh Golem, in WvW anyone you want unless the golem. You can use the Ligh Form against some bosses to inflict huge direct damage, for example. It was really used in raids to spam minions, but that thing had been nerfed and no one use it anymore.

We don’t have any real elite that shine as other classes, but they’re still good.

Flesh Golem and Chilled to the Bone are useful most often.

Flesh Golem is the best Elite skill there is in most game modes. Practically unkillable, endless DoT that has activatable knockdown? Yes please. Look at the garbage eles and alot of other classes get, they’d kill for Flesh Golem.

flesh golem is boss
makes you a break bar monster in all harder pve content

Use Lich for Tequatl burn phase and AA standing in the right spot.

Lich is almost useless now in spvp due to all the blocks and reflects and invuln or just losing.

I’m hoping they revamp the Necro elite forms like they did with Guardian Tomes (though make both useful). Make Lich form into some sort of party support – give a big aoe damage buff and call it “unholy power of the lich”. Then base Plague on the Human racial elite Reaper of Grenth – but a much better version with maybe a damage reduction.

Lich and Plague both need huge utility buffs but Necromancer cannot be the only profession that has skills made irrelevant by power and defense creep.

Plague is good in zergs i wvw and not anywhere else.

I’ve found myself going racial elites on necro because the class ones are so bad.