Guild Wars 2

I am a into pets or minion class type , so when I started playing gw2 my first choice was the ranger and I love it, the class was very independent and I felt unstoppable but after hitting 50 the class felt plain and boring so I change to necro.

I am a lvl 20 necro atm and my experience as a necro has been nothing close to what I felt with range. This class survival has been horrible I feel like I am made out of wet paper and my pets die way to fast.

I have added points to blood magic and death magic which pretty much are necro survival tree and gear my self with healing , +vit and T gears using healing food and using staff/scepterfocus and it hasn’t been enough to keep me or my pets alive , If I end with 3 or more mobs I end up barely alive mean while as a ranger I was able to take on 7 to 10 and didn’t had to brake a sweat.

Now on my past experience with other MMO like ffxi,wow,aion,rift and stwor there always has been that 1 class that is horrible to lvl until you reach a certain lvl, is necro this class ? Does it gets better after 30 and gets access to flesh golem? Is flesh golem more durable then the other minions?

Also whats the deal with necro pets not healing back to full when a figth is over but ranger pet does heal when a figth is over.

If you’re looking for the ability to kill more effectively in 1v1 scenarios you may want to stick with your ranger.

The class you’re describing as the “difficult to level, great at the max level” would be the mesmer.

And the flesh golem does regenerate health outside of combat, making it easily the best pet we have while leveling- and it will greatly improve your survivability while doing so. Just keep in mind that unlike the ranger pet, the flesh golem dies a lot. You won’t be able to chain groups of 3-5 mobs back to back, but you’ll be able to handle those situations more easily.

If you’re looking for more aoe damage, I’d recommend trying out one of the various condition specs posted on the forums, and learning to kite with it well.

The combination of the flesh golem and aoe capability with conditions makes leveling a necro pretty easy, once you get the hang of it.

Also the good news is the golem likes to pull targets for you as well so you might not even have to move.

Kayotik.5790:

If you’re looking for more aoe damage, I’d recommend trying out one of the various .

Is not the aoe damage I care for but to be able to handle multiple mobs with out the need to panic. I am more interested on survival

If your intention is to tank 5 mobs simultaneously and kill each one individually, you will be sorely disappointed with the necromancer. Even at 80, if you get stuck with 5+ mobs, you either aoe them down or die trying to pick them off singularly.

To put this in perspective, our 4 second life drain channel heals for less than a single hit of damage. Even with the fastest weapon available, the life on hit heals for less than a single stack of bleed damage. Our regeneration boon requires you to be in melee range. And the worst part is that outside of regeneration (and a 32 second cool-down heal) we scale extremely poorly with healing power.

Drakent, I can’t speak with much specificity on the matter (not my primary class), but my general impression is that in spite of the brokenness of much of the Necro class, when played properly it is actually very durable, and capable of killing large groups of enemies (if more slowly). I’ve certainly seen this in action, and seen several guides in this forum demonstrating as much. Perhaps there are some playstyle tips other could provide for you to help you adjust to what the Necro actually is, as opposed to what you thought it might be? One thing worth noting is the relative crappiness of Necro pets right now, and thus the weakness of minion-focused builds as opposed to condition or power focused builds.

So for what i am reading the necro pretty much has a crapy survival trait and the only way to handle mobs it to take them down faster then they could take you.

I guess sadly necro wont be for me. I love playing a class that is hard to kill or slow to kill then a class that can kill fast or easy

If you still wish to continue with the necromancer, despite the information I’ve given you on it’s poor performance in sustainability during a prolonged encounter (in this case, being a tank), the only advice I can give you is to go deep into the death magic line for boon duration, place points in soul reaping for spectral ability cool-down reduction, and try to keep protection up 100% of the time that you are not in death shroud.

Trust me when I say I’m not trying to dissuade you from playing the class because “necromancers are broken.” I’m letting you know this because I had the same idea to create a tanking necromancer that performed little better than an offensive one in terms of survivability.

Any boss you may be having difficulty with at 80 will generally kill you in 2-3 hits, regardless of how “tanky” you are. The fact that we perform this role worse than others reassures the fact that in it’s current state, we are not able to do what you’re looking for efficiently.

You CAN make a tanky necromancer. But that warrior with 800 health regeneration per second and higher base armor is going to more efficiently serve the same purpose while simultaneously dealing more damage than you.

Edit: I’m not saying necromancers are squishy burst damage-dealers. I’m saying that we are naturally tanky, and an offensive build has about the same longevity as a defensive one (in level 80 dungeons, where you continuously get hit for larger amounts of damage than you would otherwise find in pvp).

I would also like to point out that if you choose to use the aforementioned trait/utility suggestion, you may also find speccing 10 points into spite for the retaliation on death shroud with boon duration and the 30 point trait in soul reaping that reduces death shroud cool-down time favorable. You would have to get a majority of your boon duration from runes, but something like this could certainly work.

Well I guess I try a another class .

Love how ranger can handle him self but it feels plain like is missing something and after trying necro the play style was a lot more fun but I feel to squishy I don’t get the same security as I did as ranger, so I guess ill try warrior next

well thanks Kayotik your information was help full

I really do hate to see you leave the necromancer class.

If you’re not having fun with the class because it’s too squishy, there’s not much else I can help you with. Give that defensive setup I recommended a shot first, and see if you still feel the same way. It honestly sounds like you would really enjoy the play-style of a defensive guardian.

To be honest I love more a class that uses magic then anything else.

In ffxi my main was a summoner def was made out of paper but as long he had his pet on his side he was well secure.

In wow I play the warlock with the ability of self healing + pet he was well secure.

In aoin you have spirit class which was very similar to ffxi summoner

rift I play a necro and it was great b/c you had a pet tank plus a lot of self healing tools

And last was swort , they didn’t had a pet class since every 1 had a companion so I play the assassin which was like a thf that uses dark magic

so as you could see my game history I always go for the pet/magic user class is what I like the most.

So best I could do is to give necro a second shoot I guess try a different approach or wait for a update on the necro since I am hearing that pets aren’t working as good as they should and net is fixing the issue

oh yea i forgot D2 and D3 i know is not really a MMO but my favor class was the necromancer , druid and the witch dr :P

Well, the golem is tank-ish. It has more health than all of the other minions, and can knock down groups of enemies. It tends to think everything is a threat to it’s master that is nowhere near us, though, and when there is a threat, it watches you attack it.

I believe we all still love our Necros (I do, anyways), but the flaws shine brightly. You could try the Flesh Golem out first, to see if you like it. But, if it doesn’t work out for you, you could always stow your Necro for later. I am sure we would love some more Necros in the community.

With daggers I can drop 1v1 almost as fast as a thief. BUt then my AoE just sucks really badly. So this is not the class you’re looking for. If you want an easy class with bugs that get fixed as soon as they are reported, warrior is your choice

I’d say the staff is your best choice for survivability. If you trait Mark of Evasion and Staff cooldown reduction you can have permanent Regeneration. The 3→4 combo gives Chill and Weakness which will reduce incoming damage as well as transfer conditions if you’re close enough. Then you have 5 which is an AoE fear which is great for interrupting and getting some room to maneuver. The off-hand weapons all have good tools for survival as well.

Plague form will allow you to tank up to 5 enemies with Blind-chaining. You won’t do much damage but you won’t take much either. Then you have Well of Darkness which works similarly for a shorter period of time.

The biggest weakness of Necro survivability is mobility. But I think you’ll have enough tools to overcome that. I don’t know why so many people are bashing the Necro’s survivability. I can take on large groups of normal enemies pretty easily.

As with all classes you will improve alot the more you level up. As for leveling up itself you should be focusing on Minions and points in either Spite, Death Magic or Blood Magic as these will benefit your minions the most.

With a all minion build leveling and soloing stuff is a walk in the park, and traits are always resettable. By the time your 80 you should have enough points for all your skills!

Dont try to compare anything to a ranger (or guardian) in PvE.

I had a really hard time leveling up necro until I discovered two things:
1) The staff is simply amazing. The CDs are short and you can basically keep a clump of mobs crippled and bleeding while sucking out their health.
2) The Axe is a ranged weapon (just like the ranger).

So you can just circle strafe around whatever mobs you have dropping marks with the staff and hitting with the axe from range.

I’m not 80 yet on my necro but have played it over various betas and again now. I consider it easier to level than either of the other cloth classes (mesmer / ele).

So ye ol’ benny hill.

Sad thing is games are moving away from pet classes because it’s hard to do them right. Especially the Necro, that generally has more dynamic minion behaviour and not a single static pet like the ranger.
Necro in gw2 borders on severely underpowert, at least the minion aspect (which I consider to be the may draw for the necro class, everything alse is just “mage with a shadow theme” for me). Minions are not duarable enough to reliably tank for you. And since gw2 is not designt around “facetanking” and minions cannot evade they are ususally killed in 2-3 hits come endgame. Ranger at least get their bears with tons of health and generaly have more controle over them.
I recommend waiting a bit for Anet to fix necros when the first big class reworks are comming around (and some classes are in dire need of one) and make minions more viable. As I said, minions are hard to balance and probalby the part Anet didn’t care about when rushing the necro out for release.

For the meantime I can strongly suggest a warrior. It might not hit your need for a magic-based class but it simply has the easiest and most enjoyable leveling experience. You will literally feel weak with any class after playing a warrior in pve.

Kefke.2435:

Sad thing is games are moving away from pet classes because it’s hard to do them right. Especially the Necro, that generally has more dynamic minion behaviour and not a single static pet like the ranger.
Necro in gw2 borders on severely underpowert, at least the minion aspect (which I consider to be the may draw for the necro class, everything alse is just “mage with a shadow theme” for me). Minions are not duarable enough to reliably tank for you. And since gw2 is not designt around “facetanking” and minions cannot evade they are ususally killed in 2-3 hits come endgame. Ranger at least get their bears with tons of health and generaly have more controle over them.
I recommend waiting a bit for Anet to fix necros when the first big class reworks are comming around (and some classes are in dire need of one) and make minions more viable. As I said, minions are hard to balance and probalby the part Anet didn’t care about when rushing the necro out for release.

For the meantime I can strongly suggest a warrior. It might not hit your need for a magic-based class but it simply has the easiest and most enjoyable leveling experience. You will literally feel weak with any class after playing a warrior in pve.

It will take awhile for the pets to be fixed. Not months, but possibly years… If it were a simple fix, they would not have changed the description of plague and lich elite forms to say “it will kill off the pets.”

If you want to be tanky as a Necromancer the answer isn’t just Minions.
Necromancer’s minions tend to be throw-away stitched corpses that get destroyed pretty fast.
Flesh Golem is an exception.
Too bad the minion AI has a glitch where they just stand still.
Flesh Golem has one where it charges at an inanimate object and starts hitting it over and over.
Funny but annoying!

Anyway first of all if you are using the Blood Fiend I suggest you use Consume Conditions instead.
You should die MUCH less.
The fiend kind of sucks. It’s very unreliable.

If you really wanna stick with the Minions you could also use Well of Blood.
It can be handy because it also heals any Minions standing inside it.

More tips:
If you have 100% Life Force, then fall to 10% Health and hit Death Shroud in panic you aren’t really using it very well.

Use your Healing skill when you are at around 50% Health, then enter Death Shroud right after.
While you are in Death Shroud your skill recharges are still ticking.

This means that if you manage to last long enough in Death Shroud your Healing Skill should be ready for a second use soon after you exit it.
Death Shroud buys you lots of time once you get the hang of it.

As you get more confident at using it you can let your Health get lower and lower before hitting it, but usually using it at 10% or so means that you’ll get downed right after exiting Death Shroud.
If you end up in that situation it’s better to run unless you are confident that you can take out something and Rally.

Also note that Death Shroud’s first attack, Life Blast is pretty powerful when you have 50% Life Force or more. It deals much less damage after you fall below the 50% mark.

You may sometimes want to use Death Shroud at full Health and spam Life Blast until you fall to 50% Life Force and then exit it.
That way you’ve put some “free” damage on the enemy before losing any of your Health.

Sometimes I even enter Death Shroud just to use Life Transfer once and then exit it right away.

Necromancer is much more complicated than it seems on surface, but unfortunately also very locked into few viable builds because many of their skills are underpowered or have awful bugs.

jojojoon.8607:

It will take awhile for the pets to be fixed. Not months, but possibly years… If it were a simple fix, they would not have changed the description of plague and lich elite forms to say “it will kill off the pets.”

I’m guessing weeks at most.
It only took them a few months to whip up Halloween (if I understood it right) so it can’t be that hard for them to fix the two AI bugs (ignoring enemies, running at objects)

Arenanet is just probably really busy with keeping the servers stable and making sure that the Halloween event doesn’t completely mess up the economy.
Bug fixes can be made weeks in advance, they just need to go through testing and approval and then many changes are patched in at the same time.
Next patch like this is on October 5th.
If we are lucky Minion fixes might be in it.
Don’t get your hopes up though.