Guild Wars 2

Define what you think a Necromancer is, because it is not a standardized fantasy theme. I feel very much like a Necro when I play.

Bhawb.7408:

Define what you think a Necromancer is, because it is not a standardized fantasy theme. I feel very much like a Necro when I play.

I think of it as Communicating/Using with the dead/unborn by raising their spirit or body and sacrifices or rituals using dark magic.

The only thing that gets close to that is summoning kitten pets or the staff marks

I intentionally made my character to not feel much like a necromancer – I find it amusing to run around healing people on a necromancer dressed in white.

I had one CoF p1 run where I used flesh worm to teleport across the boulder tunnel, and the rest of the party sat there waiting, until one of them eventually asked “so, are you going to portal us?” and I had to tell them that I wasn’t a mesmer. (We did have a mesmer in the party, but they were standing at the start of the boulder tunnel with everyone else).

Someone who speaks with the dead, similar to any other mantic art.

Necro meaning Death, Mancer meaning Divination. I do not feel like a master of Death as NONE of our skills revolve around death unless you consider summoning Golems made of Flesh as part of Death mastery.

No, instead I feel as though I’m a glorified Nigromancer (Black Divination) or Dark Sorcerer. A Necromancer would turn the corpses of his enemies into horrifying mindless monstrosities. A Necromancer would feed off of his connection to death, becoming stronger the closer he gets to it. A Necromancer would be IMMORTAL, undying, becoming a variable God upon actual Death (Lich).

A Necromancer would command an army of undead and loyal servants created from the deaths of others. He would command all death, no matter how big or small. Turning the internal organs of someone into undead Wasps to burst from the bodies and attack others. They would also be able to summon Demons to do their bidding as well (Flesh Reaver, for instance). They would instill weakness and death simply from their presence. The ability to bypass all mortal forms of physicality, to attack someone directly at their soul.

Instead, we get to spam Dots. Yay.

If you are considering Necromancer that way (a much more realistic representation) then yes, I could totally see why Necros don’t give that feel. We don’t really commune with the dead at all, the Guild Wars lore places Necros in a different position.

Why not just cut the middle man out and call us “Warlocks”

Different lore, slightly different themes. Not going to say it doesn’t share a common theme, but GW Necros are distinct from Warlocks (I’m assuming you are referring to WoW).

Sometimes I feel like a thief with no burst and no stealth. Other times I feel like a guardian with no boons. Most of the time I just feel like a mesmer with no glam.

But a necromancer? Hm, no, can’t say I’ve ever felt like that.

I once felt like a frilly princess dancing through AoE dots.

Necro should be totally weird. They should be totally unpredictable. They should be totally illegal. They should have the most creative of builds. Their traits design should allow for much more freedom than other professions. They should be extremely hard to control, just like the MIG-21, yet shines in the hands of a master.

Necro already carry the burden of being “evil”. They already carry the burden of being “illegal”. What’s the point when these evil magic aren’t even all that special? Why not just play that holy guardian or holy elementalist instead? They are more powerful and everyone loves them in town. So what’s the point?

A necro should counter absolutely everything a guardian and a elementalist stands for. Guardian stands for buffs and walls? Necro must be able to debuff 3 guardians at once and disable that wall. Elementalists stands for speed, heal and nukes? Necro must be able to nullify any speed from 3 elementalists, reduce any heal from 3 elementalists and interrupt any nukes from 3 elementalists.

CHIPS.6018:

Necro should be totally weird. They should be totally unpredictable. They should be totally illegal. They should have the most creative of builds. Their traits design should allow for much more freedom than other professions. They should be extremely hard to control, just like the MIG-21, yet shines in the hands of a master.

They already sort of are. We have more viable builds than any other class. However, I do agree with you about your second point: It’s a little odd to be a evil dark master of death helping Farmer John clear out rabbits with summons of the blood stained pits of the underworld for 20 copper.

Thematically, I’d like to see a necromancer class more like the Giovanni from the WoD—mechanically a high evasion cc class with low overall damage. More “Ghost Whisperer” than “Frankenstein”. Something that makes me feel one with the machinations, politics and workings of the spirit world.

This profession is on par with other games’ interpretation of the word: A mishmash of heavy metal and goth cliches.

Necromancers in real life, are emo freaks.

Necromancers in most mythology, are all powerful sorcerers that generally keep to themselves.

Man, I would prefer to be a D2 style necromancer and cast from behind my voracious pack of undead eating everything in front of me by far but GW2 just doesn’t work like that. I am happy being a vampiric dark caster style necro with daggers and wells but to me, it would be more appropriately named Warlock.

I actually really like the style of necromancer in gw2 dictated by their skills. Harbingers of plagues and disease, insects and vermin following us. I love the concept of corruption skills and how you can infest/infect your foes, and spread the disease around.
They thrive on corrosion and decay, which is very much in sync with the physical aspects of death. It’s not the kitsch concept that necromancers simply summon skeletons, ghosts, and zombies which you see in virtually all other videogames.
Theyre a mage that uses disease and decay instead of fireballs and lightning bolts, which I think is a more organic concept of a death-centric mage than a summoner of corpses and spirits.

Not greatly I don’t. I think its the pervasive green theme, I wish each prof wasn’t quite so strongly single color associated. But if it has to be, ours should be black, would give a more Necro-y feeling I think.

“A necro should counter absolutely everything a guardian and a elementalist stands for. Guardian stands for buffs and walls? Necro must be able to debuff 3 guardians at once and disable that wall. Elementalists stands for speed, heal and nukes? Necro must be able to nullify any speed from 3 elementalists, reduce any heal from 3 elementalists and interrupt any nukes from 3 elementalists.”

I feel that we do these things pretty well honestly. In the meta I feel like the anti tank weapon that can punch through these classes pretty hard. Post ele nerfs especially as I never had problems with guardians.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Necromancers in real life, are emo freaks.

Necromancers in most mythology, are all powerful sorcerers that generally keep to themselves.

Problem being: all-powerful tends to not help game balance much. There is no way to make Necros feel like they are in most lore (all powerful sorcerers and masters of the “dark” arts) while retaining any semblance of gameplay balance.

As for “real life”. Real life Necromancers are pretty close to your local Psychic, just involving a more ritualistic approach to their divination. Of course during the Medieval times they got the “Black Magic” blanket generalization which led to the fantasy lore, more or less. Unfortunately divination by calling up spirits isn’t exactly super fun gameplay either.

ANet has made their own unique (and interesting in its own way) lore for Necromancers.

Wow Bhawb, I as totally gonna say something about the “all-powerful” problem until I got to your post. Totally agree.
Agreed also that necromancer means diviner using spirits, but I really REALLY like what it has become in fantasy lore- primarily a caster that deals with death, anti-life energy, and the undead.
I also LOVE what they have done with necromancer in this game. In most games that include necromancers, they are stuck as a poison/curse type class with an undead pet. I can be an undead army creater (my personal favorite), or a healer/debuffer, or a vampire, or whatever. I really feel like they did such a great job on necromancer compared to the other classes in this regard.
Try being an elementalist specialized in only one element, or a guardian centered on smiting enemies with holy magic. I personally tried that last one. You can do it, but it’s not very viable.
Similar to DelOnasi, I normally wear gold and white robes , and use my undead… erm… friends to protect the innocent townspeople. I have never seen necromancy as evil, but a tool, like a tank or a gun…. well, assuming you don’t, ya know, kill people and drain their life essences to fuel your own immortality or something…

The GW2 Necromancer? Oh hell no, This Necromancer is what Twilight’s Edward is to vampires.

i do feel more like Vampire instead of nercomancer and we really need more equipment that are suit for nercomancer !!

I feel like a low IQ Necro since the minions seem to spend half the time looking at something far away in the opposite direction of the action..

So its like my foe sees my Necro coming, fear fills his chest at the site of all the horrid minions only when I am near he starts laughing at my mindless moronic minions that ignore him while he bashes my skull in :/

I use Death Shroud..MIGHTY DEATH SHROUD, to soak that BIG hit and buy some seconds for my heal to come back…but guess what he smacked me on the head with a CC and he also got to enjoy those few seconds for his heal to come back!

Honestly I feel like a level 2 Mage in WoW starting area with an army of vanity pets :/

Thanks for all the posts so far.

Now while playing necro i feel like a kitten Twilight vampire with some idiotic minions following me (If i’m using minions). Also we are lacking gear that looks necrotic.

Now i’m not saying that necromancers are bad because they are NOT bad at all, infact i think it’s one of the strongest professions at gw2 if not the strongest.

I kind of do when I play my power necro. Sure, I don’t have undead minions following me around. But my character does seem to know a lot about life and death and diseases and she seems to be able to harness that knowledge to prolong her own life while shortening that of others. While she does not summon zombies or skeletons, I think of Death Shroud or Lich Form etc. as summoning spirits to gain their power. And of course she can also travel through the spirit realm :P

Original necromancy was about talking to the dead to see things they knew, not about summoning undead monsters to fight for you. The overarching theme of manipulating life and death and spreading or curing diseases is also present in other fantasy settings. I feel right at home in GW2.

When summoning minions i feel more like Dr Frankestein than a necromancer.They all look too “fleshy” and created in a lab than raised from the dead.Other than shadow fiend that is.
The undead theme is lacking on the summoning department.The rest feels fine imo.

Mostly i feel like the dumpster diver equivalent of a sorcerer. Instead of blinding flashes of other-worldy energy, we fart dark clouds whenever we use any of our spells. Our minions look less like agents of death and more like an assortment of giant aborted animals. And rather than transforming into “death incarnate”, we morph into what looks like a homeless guy that fell into a toxic vat.

All that being said though, i still do greatly enjoy playing this class.

I feel more like a mad scientist gone wild. I run around with dopy looking failed science experiements for minions that sometimes attack. Seriously, I feel that these minions look more stupid than scarey, like B movie monster creations. Think of all those bad horror movies you watched when you were young; that were created in the early 80s. The two little bone minions look like kitten looking rat monkeys with a human skull for a head. The flesh golem looks like a linebacker without his skin off, and two hook like arms, and an idk what kind of kitten looking helmet. The shade is the only decent looking creature, though it minimally decent, and dont forget the dumb looking lakittenail minion. Seriously, did someone set of a nuclear bomb at a high school football game to create these minions?

Oustide of failed minion experiments, I throw poison on the ground (rarely because its so ineffective), and summon up space/time wells that radioactively strip your boons or damage you. I cause people to bleed somehow with some kind of rod/scepter, or i just get an axe our and do soem dopey moves to do damage.

The only time i feel like im a magic user is with the staff. Wells have some cool sound effects, but i never feel necroy. I dont summon the dead, i summon the above, and i do conditions, almost as well as other classes, but they are none unique. They are just the same things a ranger, thief, engineer, etc. can do. So basically im the kittenized version of creativity left over from all the other classes thrown together in ANETS only little leftover stew of abilities. I really feel they threw the necro together last minute. Its bad.

Its my favorite class, but its a failed science experiement that sometimes has reh tahrd (said with my allen from the first hangover movie pronunciation) strength, but mostly piddles int he corner and eats your leftovers.

I don’t feel at all like a Necro.

I actually disagree about the minion appearance issue most of you seem to have, as I think they look adorable, but I do miss the GW1 style of Necro. There, we really were an anti-tank class. Well. Sorta. Blood Magic Necros, played well, never died although they walked a razor’s edge between life and death (Blood Pact until you were at really low health, then Grenth’s Balance on an untouched target. Gimmicky, I’ll admit, but fun as hell. Until you got Dazed). Curse Necros could debuff the bejeezus out of anyone (although I think Mesmers might have been better for pure degen, but I’m biased as I never liked Curses). And then the Minion Masters. Oh God, the Minion Masters.

Walking around with about 15 walking corpses (nerfed now, thanks a lot ANet) was a great feeling. Just wonderful. I actually made it all the way through the Factions campaign with the starter armor set, because Minion Masters NEVER got hit if they were doing it right (didn’t hurt that all the Factions missions had a large supply of convenient corpses lying around). My party would outnumber the AI in basically every fight. All I needed to do was watch the minion count, and summon replacements whenever they died. There were SOME parts of the game that were hard as a Minion Master (blasted Celestial Kirin and their Ray of Judgement spam >.<) but for the most part, I really felt like an all-powerful lord of the dead.

Also, the profession armors. You could actually LOOK like a Necro in GW1, because all the armor you could get was designed with a Necro feel to it. None of that frilly Mesmer bull or overly-revealing Ele junk, Necros had spikes, blades, high collars and awesomeness.

TL;DR – ANet should’ve made GW2 Necros like GW1 Necros.

CHIPS.6018:

A necro should counter absolutely everything a guardian and a elementalist stands for. Guardian stands for buffs and walls? Necro must be able to debuff 3 guardians at once and disable that wall. Elementalists stands for speed, heal and nukes? Necro must be able to nullify any speed from 3 elementalists, reduce any heal from 3 elementalists and interrupt any nukes from 3 elementalists.

Necros are by far king of the debuffs. poison cloud for stacking weakness, weakness upon entering DS, weakness on D off hand, blinds, etc. Well of suffering and you get fast stacks of vulnerability, Necros are pretty awesome at tossing out the debuffs you are hoping for to counter buffs, not to mention a well that literally eats the kitten buffs.

reducing healing effectiveness of an ele? poison, we’ve got a score of methods for applying it not to mention all the chill we can also toss around to end mobility (multiple sources too to override cleanses).

If that is not enough, plague form it up, you can literally do all the above and be the biggest asset to your team in a group fight.

Out of all classes I have played so far, necro has offered me the greatest debuff potential weakness/vulnerabilty/poison/blind as well as CC chill/fear/cripple. And I can apply the debuffs regularly and keep some of them permanently stacked.

Iv got to say no. Theres too much poison stuff, and to me poison is more of an assassin thing rather than a necromancer.

I do like the design of the minions, sorta. I think if they spent more time they could have looked alot better than simply, “use ribcages for everything!” but the idea of the necro creating his own minions then animating it shows a higher tier of necromancy than simply raising a zombie off the ground. Its shows he actually practices necromancy and studies it.

if the animations and graphics of his skills has more spirits and souls in them instead of just poison, poison and more poison, it would help. But I also hate alot of the abilities them selves.

Then the transformation abilitys, omg so bad. DS is SOO out of place, not only for lore but also balance wise, so bad. And the huge lich mode and plague(more poison) dont fit. First off, once you go Lich, you dont go back. And what part of controlling death would cause you to burst into a swarm of insects? Summon as swarm of undead bugs, ok sure, but not become a swarm.

Theres so much wrong with the “necro” it would be faster to just wipe it and start fresh than to try and fix every problem.

Locusts, maggots, and certain other insects are often associated with plagues, death, disease, and decay, which all fit.

To me a necro is more a warlock than a necro. Necromancer implies using corpses. Warlock is more one that uses curses, debuffs. And facetanks damage through lifestealing / high hp pool. A necro would use dead things to kill you, a warlock would outlast you disabling your body’s processes and defenses through curses that benefit the caster at the same time (lifesteal/staff/boon stripping or transfer) . And most current necros play the latter.

Oh, see, I find it so ironic that I actually like the things a lot of you say you don’t like. Chill (as in, of the grave) is a great condition for us, and I have always thought poison was THE necromancer thing, and I’m actually annoyed we don’t have more of it. This is especially true in this game where it decreases healing- as in, actually stops life from entering the body.
I like the look of minions because it’s different, and it’s more socially acceptable, as necros are accepted more by general society in Guild Wars than other games (presumably because people don’t like sweet Aunt Bertha returning from the grave to fight for some jerk). Also +1 to what was said above about necromancers actually creating their minions instead of just animating some schmo that died on the ground.

Also, a lot of the stuff you guys are talking about is a good indication that they did Necromancer right, where some feel like it’s a warlock, some say shaman, others that it’s a curser or a vampire, etc. I like seeing things like that because it means you can make your necromancer more your “own” version. Heck, you can even take Well of Blood and Spectral Wall and stuff like that +staff and be a cleric/priest-type character. Bloody brilliant.

Now, it looks like some ppl does not fell like a necro, what do you think would fix this?

Nothing. You can never make everyone happy. People have vastly varying opinions as to what a Necromancer should be, and there is no way to cover all of those bases.

If you play small E.T. rat race, no wonder you don’t feel like necromancer. Try Charr instead. Gritty voice, scary apperance, kitten Death Shroud look.

Well i went through all the stages of the nerfs on the necromancer in gw1,and barely enduring my silky gw2 necromancer with his mesmery look.
I dont feel like a necromancer in this game,or even a working class for that matter.
As far what would fix the class aside glitch/bug fixing that would be variety.
A necro should be able to pull a lot of tricks,a lot more than a petty thief with a pistol or a dagger hiding behind a chair or a dust molecule.
The class should be the equivalent of engineer in variety and utility but with a dark magic theme.

Rym.1469:

If you play small E.T. rat race, no wonder you don’t feel like necromancer. Try Charr instead. Gritty voice, scary apperance, kitten Death Shroud look.

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