Guild Wars 2

I know we have Death Shroud and yada yada, but I changed from Necromancer to Mesmer in sPvP to see how it would go. The results: I barely ever died. I was more mobile and WAY more defensive than Necromancer (sword offhand, teleports, that phantasm that takes half your damage, distortion). There was really no comparison. Maybe the playstyle of Mesmer fits me easier, but back on Necromancer, it feels like when something happens, there’s not as many hard counters to get away or reduce damage. Blind is only on 2 skills, spectrals are long recharge, going into Death Shroud takes away my normal good bar… Are we really that bad off?

I wouldn’t know, not playing any sPvP and never going beyond lvl 15 on any Mesmer, but…I feel extremely non-squishy on my necro in PvE oO

Recently I tried to build bunker, just to see if it’s possible and reliable.
In the end I feel I was incredibly hard to kill. In a game I resisted two thieves spamming heartseeker strike and their other noobish combos.
But I don’t do damage.
The problem is: you can build to resist, but you don’t deal damage. You can build to deal damage, but you can’t resist.

With mesmer it is just you have a lot of evading and moving abilities so, in the end you just deflect your damage, not absorbing it. Necromancer can’t go out of combat, we have no abilities to escape. So you can just delay a combo with some crowd control but just delay, not broke it. After a few seconds your opponents CD wears off and they can continue to deal damage (this is especially true for warriors).
We have only Death Shroud and I don’t feel that when we master it we’ll become very strong (developer words, I believe in their work but I think this idea of mastering the Death Shroud and becoming strong reside only in their wettest dreams).

One side note: in any build I spend some trait in one or both Blood and Death magic, and usually this is quite enough for avoid to be a pure glass cannon, I think there is no reason to build purely damage with no resistance. But anyway I resist the right amount of time to try to counter my enemy (usually it’s about a couple of seconds) but as I told you our game is to kill our opponent before he kills you, because there is no way to escape.
Learn to avoid a combat entirely since if you engage a fight it’s till the end.

Necro hasn’t been remotely competitive in sPvP since BWE1 and then we were OPed because DS was godly. Beating up on bad players doesn’t count. :P

The problem is that ANet thinks that flat health and some armor keep people alive, but this is not the case. What is keeping people alive are boons like Stability, Protection, Aegis and Vigor and also blocking/evading skills.

Necromancer is the only class that has no real access to any of those boons or any blocking/evading skills, and Blindness, Chill etc. conditions do not even come near replacing them not to mention that other classes have access to them while having access to the boons, blocks etc.

Arcades Saboth.5139:

With mesmer it is just you have a lot of evading and moving abilities so, in the end you just deflect your damage, not absorbing it.

Yes! I love Blink for one. You’d think with the cripples Necro has, it would compare, but it didn’t really.

On a side note, I found Shattering to quite fun, even if it resorted to illusion spam to shatter. I really like the trait that removes boons on shatters and Ether Feast was really reliable too, it was easy to continually meet the requirement for 2-3 illusions. Somehow I didn’t get the same reaction with Consume Conditions.

Best i can tell that ours major in DS damage source, and our major out of DS damage source do not overlap. Drop into DS and we have two solid damage abilities. One that pop of once pr second, meaning we have about 25 seconds, with 12 of them spent doing reduced damage. Another that do AOE every 40 seconds or so (and may well attract more attention than we like).

For this we give up all access to our weapon and utility skills for the duration.

No other profession makes such a trade off. Nearest are Elementalists and Engineers juggling their atunements and kits.

I would have less issue with DS if Life Blast had a fire rate on par with cepter. Hell, i would even trade its pr attack damage for a higher rate.

Honestly, i find it weird that they would even consider giving any of the auto-attack skills a lower fire rate than half a second. This because a second feels like a eternity when you have something coming after you with murderous intent.

I have both of these toons at 80 in full exotics, both with similar condition damage type of builds (mix of Rabid and Carrion gear), so I can discuss briefly how they fare in WvW. The Necro has both good and bad points in comparison to the Mesmer.

The Mesmer can be set up to have good escapability and survivability, but it requires the use of 1-2 of their utility spells to be devoted to this (Blink, Decoy, Veil, Portal). The have some other options, such as Sword #2 and Distortion Shatter, though these suffer from still taking condition damage, as well as a long CD on the Shatter. Chaos Armor/Field is also quite nice for the boons.

The Necro is designed with less mobility and escapability, likely the least amount of any profession in the game. Pre-BWE, Dark Path was actually a ground target teleport ability similar to blink, and they changed it to an enemy based teleport. I think it is expected that if we want mobility, we should have to utilize SW. I also believe the design philosophy was for Necro to be more tanky than avoidance based.

The Necro makes up in its lack of mobility and escapability with the high health pool, great condition management, and obviously DS. It is en vogue to rag on DS, but even untraited it is a fantastic tool for survivability. Coupled with a high amount of toughness, our incredible condition control, and innate large HP pool, my Necro absolutely can ‘tank’ more damage than my Mesmer.

My tl;dr is basically this:

If you want to have a more reliable class that can escape and get away, the Mesmer is much stronger at this. If you want to remain in the fight, tank and continue to be engaged, the Necro does a better job with that.

Swadow.6213:

The problem is that ANet thinks that flat health and some armor keep people alive, but this is not the case. What is keeping people alive are boons like Stability, Protection, Aegis and Vigor and also blocking/evading skills.

Necromancer is the only class that has no real access to any of those boons or any blocking/evading skills, and Blindness, Chill etc. conditions do not even come near replacing them not to mention that other classes have access to them while having access to the boons, blocks etc.

I think ANet considers necros to have all these boons because of Well of Power. If you bleed yourself (Blood is Power) and WoP you get Vigor, if you get Vulnerability (Epidemic) and WoP you get Protection, Weakness (Poison Cloud) and WoP is Might.

Table of what boons conditions become: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Power

Heh, must admit i have barely touched WoP. Likely because it has a long cooldown. This makes it really unforgiving when used too soon. May have to take a closer look tho.

Well of Power has too long cooldown for it to be considered having the boons. Now if Necros had a low CD utility or weapon skill that transformed conditions into boons on themselves only then perhaps.

we can survive long enough to take down enemy.

28K health, 23K Death Shroud Health, 2500 Toughness and 2 full condition removals.

Not really

Mesmer is arguably the most well rounded class atm in PvP. It combines amazing dmg with incredible utility, mobility, survivability, and support. On top of which it’s not hard to play and only gets better the more comfortable the player becomes with it.

They’ll get nerfed. Hopefully not gutted though. I do like to play mine, but not in long intervals at present due to the lack of challenge it creates.

Agreed about the lack of boons. I can’t really see one long-ish utility skill (WoP) as being compensation for having virtually no other way to generate Boons. My Ele can keep Regen, Protection, Fury, Might, Swiftness up almost constantly through a fight. I don’t expect my Necro to be able to produce the same since we can corrupt boons so easily but I’m really kind of puzzled by the almost total absence of boons generating on my Necro.

edit: that being said I run a power build with berzerkers amulet/jewel and no, I don’t feel squishy. I don’t feel very elusive though either.

The game has TONS of dmg flying around, and necro isn’t able to just avoid it like other classes can, they have death shroud and a bit more health, but that’s it. So they end up actually squishier in some cases.

If weakness wasn’t so bad we could basically have some of our protection be from our offensive conditions. Weakness doesn’t even come close to protection however, it needs to be a flat 25% dmg reduction.

With 10 points in spite, 15 in curses and 30 in soul reaping we can maintain a constant fury and a near constant retaliation by cycling DS every 5 seconds.

Knote.2904:

If weakness wasn’t so bad we could basically have some of our protection be from our offensive conditions. Weakness doesn’t even come close to protection however, it needs to be a flat 25% dmg reduction.

I would expect at some point weakness made into a flat damage reduction, or reduces the chance for the target to critically hit you. Right now it is, by far, the worst condition in the game.

You feel squishy cause we can’t run away, we have no invulnerabilities besides DS. And if you get caught without life force you feel like you’re screwed.

Weakness is a terrible condition. I can’t believe they made that. 50% of non-CRIT attacks do 50% damage. Who runs a burst comp without crit? No one. 50% of burst still hurts like balls.

So this is basically (assuming opponents have at least 50% crit). 25% chance of 50% reduced damage. Less if they’re crit heavy.

So the thief Bread and Butter combo Mayyybe decrease damage of around ~20%. Cause most thieves run huge burst and such high crit chance.

Also I feel poison is underwhelming. I’ve seen people just heal through it, and it barely decreases the amount of healing they do. I hear it used to be 66% and that sounds really too much. But all the way down to 33% is so weak. I was thinking 50%. Also not to mention our poison doesnt last very long anyways nor do we have ways to access it often.

Berullos.6928:

Also I feel poison is underwhelming. I’ve seen people just heal through it, and it barely decreases the amount of healing they do. I hear it used to be 66% and that sounds really too much. But all the way down to 33% is so weak. I was thinking 50%. Also not to mention our poison doesnt last very long anyways nor do we have ways to access it often.

Poison is an outstanding condition.
33% is quite a strong amount of healing reduction, and the damage certainly isn’t nothing — my Chillblains does 2100 over the duration.
We have arguably the best access to Poison in the game, and can keep it on targets longer than other professions.

If you are talking about the hotjoin spvp then I think you are totally correct.
Everywhere else I feel reasonably tanky, but mesmer or even ele (which is extremely squish) is better than necro for the 8v8 spvp. Lack of mobility, stealth, escapes, clones (the more people in a fight the more confusing it is for your enemies) make mesmer way easier to play in hotjoin. I found my favourite gear for mesmer, thief was berserker amulet since they can get away with it, but I had to take a tankier amulet and traits for necro for it even to be playable. Ele you can play berserker but you have to take cantrips and will probably spend a lot of time running away. Condition spec necro was not fun in hotjoin.

Agree with the posters above talking about conditions. We get a lot of conditions which is meant to add to our survivability I think (like the anti guardians, reducing damage enemies deal instead of reducing the damage we take) except the conditions suck in comparison to their boons.

Knote.2904:

The game has TONS of dmg flying around, and necro isn’t able to just avoid it like other classes can, they have death shroud and a bit more health, but that’s it. So they end up actually squishier in some cases.

If weakness wasn’t so bad we could basically have some of our protection be from our offensive conditions. Weakness doesn’t even come close to protection however, it needs to be a flat 25% dmg reduction.

Exactly.

1. The additional health doesn’t compensate by any means the flat damage avoidance of other classes. In case of mesmer it is even more obscene because the clones take some damage and, like the thief, they can easily wiggle out of tight situations taking all pressure from them in a blink of an eye…repeatedly.

I never saw an enemy go “oh kitten, he uses DS” nor did I ever have the feeling when I face a necro myself. It is just like “oh well, this will take a little bit longer”. That says all about the class mechanic.

2. Weakness
As Knote said…it doesn’t do much. A class which is set up for dealing burst will have high crit chance which means weakness is next to worthless. A flat damage reduction would be much more apropriate.

3. Chill
Ironically it is worthless against the worst classes a necro has to face. Thieves: the snare doesn’t do much to them with their gazillion gap closers, their initiative system gives them immunity against the cooldown increase…and they can spam away their skills. In case of other classes which a problematic like e.g. mesmer…he just stealthes and the pressure is gone again, guardians seem take so long to kill the chill doesn’t do help much anyway or it gets cleansed in seconds anyway. The list goes on…

You guys saying we have best access to poison.. have you played thief? Poison on steal, spammable poison field, optional poison venom, poison on autoattack.

Kisses.1054:

You guys saying we have best access to poison.. have you played thief? Poison on steal, spammable poison field, optional poison venom, poison on autoattack.

If a thief only wanted to use the poison from the shortbow, that would be more uptime. In reality, that doesn’t happen, and Chillblains is better than Choking Gas. The others are single target and scepter keeps 100% uptime on single targets just like a Thief.

Both are the two strongest poison professions in the game in regards to Poison, but I think Necro is more reliable in this due to range and strength of Chillblains.