Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played for a while and started playing again shortly before the patch. Until then I played here and there. Of course I went back to my lovely necromancer.

Now I have a small problem. Everytime I get downed and try to fight for my life, I get the feeling that it is a futile mission.
Is there something I didn’t grasp yet or am I doing something wrong (well except the fact that I am dying)?
I would be thankful for any ideas and advice.

Some scenarios, PvE:

1.) Five or six warriors/guardians/thief/ keep smaching at me: Well I have Life Leech, which targets one enemy. And it is super slow. Fear targets only one enemy. Fetid ground … well pretty useless. Most of the times I am dead before I can triger it. If I can, it is too late anyways.

2.)Champions: So I am lying there and … Fear ifs often useless. Often I get th hnice red text invulnerable on my screen or the boss stops for 3 secs, seems to stare at me, and keeps attacking me. In any case: I am dead really fast.

3.)AoE: In case of AoE: you are just lying there, and hoping that a team member comes up and saves you, which is a pretty stupid idea in case of any AoE damage like burning, poisen, etc. Otherwise you just hope to survive. Just lying there and chillin’!

4.)Couple of Ranged targets : They are standing all apart, so you can decide which one to leech, fear, poisen, until you hope fullyrally. To spice things up: imagine some melee classes hitting you.

So, how do you do it?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining that you are dead in case you fail to rally. I mean you are down and dying and fighting for suvivial. But somehow you lack all of the survivability. We play a class which symbolizes and thrives in death, so why are so week in death? I rondevoused with Thief and Mesmer and one thing struck me. While the thief can disappear and come up in a different location and a mesmer can set up illusion to distract foes, why don’t we have the ability to summon ghosts, to bury ourselves like a dead body, to blind foes with flies or use fear in an AoE manner.
I mean our skills make us pretty much an easy immobile target. We just lie there and hope to fear away one target, while the rest just thinks meh, not so scary, or we hope to DoT our enemies to death, while they keep up with their dps. In a fight with champions like Lupi: we lack some of the evading factors of other class anyways, so as a necro you might get downed and then with his AoE … well dead.

In pve as a mesmer you use your clone to distract, then you see that en if thee mob is lv 5 and youre downleveled kitten , you see the mob comming back to you without even nothicing the clone you left… (of couse shame at you dyign to a lv 5 mob, but you know im exagerating) but as guardian, mesmer and thief, the only usefull downed state ive seen is the necro one… with thief even if you use the stealth and reapear somewhere else the mob is so intelligent that he knows he hasnt finished his work and will agro you until you lie DEAD… the necro paired with the guardian (and ranger) that can heal himself while dealing damage in downed.

I’ve killed far more n downed as mesmer and thief than I ever had as necro. When you stealth as thief your next hit will poison them (weaken too if you traited for it) and can buy you a lot of time. Also each hit cripples, so if you teleported away they can’t immediately rush to you. As for mesmer, if you immediately start hitting them as soon as you stealth-clone away then yes they will come right back for you. Use your brief stealth time to use the #4 while you can. Your clones will keep stacking up those confusion stacks on them. The ninja phantasm (#3 skill) will finish something off pretty fast if you can stall long enough. On that note though, if you do find yourself getting downed a lot on necro you can trait for Death’s Embrace for 50% more dmg while downed (also if you traited for vampiric, it works while downed too and you can actually rally yourself with #1 skill if nothing is hitting you) as well as the oh-so-useless-90 second cooldown trait Fear of Death which fears all enemies around you when you get downed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you though, it’s massively useless and a waste of a trait slot. Death’s Embrace, however, isn’t too bad. Other than those tricks, there’s really not much more you can do. Necro is meant to just hang on just long enough to get ally assist, but strangely enough it rarely works out that way. At least they finally got the 33% less hp bug fixed in pve (while downed) but still doesn’t help much when your downed skills don’t do a whole lot to help you.

ohh yes in pvp the stoy is… pretty much diferent, in pvp youre downed? no one is rezing you? no one near you is nearly dying? GG

I actually find Necros to have one of the best downed state in the game.

Best:

Necromancer: Life Steal + Dmg, Fear to keep them off of you (does good dmg is traited) and poison. It’s overall pretty good dmg + the heal from life steal.

Mesmer: I can easily put 7-8 stacks of Confusion on a foe which dies from hitting the Phantasm with confusion, best downed state imho.

Ranger: The pet heal. Enough said.

Medium:

Warriors: If you have it traited, just 1/2 until it’s low enough, then Vengance up and it’s an assured revive.

Egnineers: The knockback/condition help, it’s decent damage, but not the best.

Guardian: Good damage, pushback + a ground heal, pretty good, but not enough for best.

Bad:

Thieves: Oh my god, I hate their downed state. It’s the worse, in my opinion, small damage, from only 1 skill, long cooldowns on the other 2. I hate it so much, I rarely kill anything even with the stealth > 1 combo.

Elementalists: Poor damage, no sustain. I rarely get up unless the mob is like at 5% hp. And Mist Form is useless since foes usually just follow you.

Despite Xan Thav’s attempts to put a smiley face on the Necro downed state, your best bet is to simply let the death be complete and respawn.

Rigel.3092:

Despite Xan Thav’s attempts to put a smiley face on the Necro downed state, your best bet is to simply let the death be complete and respawn.

I’ve been main-ing Necromancer since the BWE 1. To this day, I still havent had any trouble with reviving in PvE nor PvP (obviously not WvW, because that’d be a miracle to solo rez). So it’s not me “trying to put a smiley face” on the Downed State, it’s me pointing out my personal experience and success with it.

Pick a weak target to try to rally off of while fearing whatever is doing most dps. Our main strength is that life siphon lets us tank on our back for a bit which may buy time for that rally.

Putting necro downed above mesmer, ranger (who arguably has the best, I’ve facetanked a champ in downed state as ranger before, multiple times), and thief is nonsense. Just because you can’t figure out thief downed timing doesn’t make it bad. I’ve been able to down 2 people at once trying to stomp me, then a teammate rezzed me, we stomped them together after i stealthed us both = good troll. Try pulling that off as a necro. If you’re quick enough in pve and smart about your targets, then yes you might be lucky a lot of time with rallying. But in pvp where everyone stomps in invulns or stability, your only defense is worthless because it does nothing. Now as for engi downed, yeah totally pointless. I don’t even attempt trying to fight downed on engi unless they are almost downed too. Guardian is good for a kd troll, occasionally the symbol can rally you if you time it all right, but undeniably the worst is ele. All it does is stall for time. Warrior is- well it’s warrior. Either they get vengeance and guarantee rally, or they don’t. No middle ground on it.

Xan Thav.5369:

I actually find Necros to have one of the best downed state in the game.

Best:

Necromancer: Life Steal + Dmg, Fear to keep them off of you (does good dmg is traited) and poison. It’s overall pretty good dmg + the heal from life steal.

In theory, yes. No practice, no. You fear one foe. Great, others are still there delivering nice damage. The heal is rarely sufficient enough to heal while the damage is just to low. There is nothing with what would you buy time so you could rally.

We are not talking about dying against a single target or two of them. Against multiple ones.

Thanks for the advice, though.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Putting necro downed above mesmer, ranger (who arguably has the best, I’ve facetanked a champ in downed state as ranger before, multiple times)

The order in each tier has no meaning, I didn’t put Necro above Ranger/Mesmer, I find them equal. Thinking about it now, I should put Engineer on Bad tier, it is indeed horrible.

Tomcio.9605:

Xan Thav.5369:

I actually find Necros to have one of the best downed state in the game.

Best:

Necromancer: Life Steal + Dmg, Fear to keep them off of you (does good dmg is traited) and poison. It’s overall pretty good dmg + the heal from life steal.

In theory, yes. No practice, no. You fear one foe. Great, others are still there delivering nice damage. The heal is rarely sufficient enough to heal while the damage is just to low. There is nothing with what would you buy time so you could rally.

We are not talking about dying against a single target or two of them. Against multiple ones.

Thanks for the advice, though.

I’m not a big WvW’er player myself, I’ll probably start playing much more WvW soon, but for now i’m talking mainly PvE.

In PvE the damage from Life Steal + Traited Fear + Poison chained with the permanent Life Steal from the #1 skill i’ve been able to tank (and rally) groups up 5+ high-end foes. And if I can’t rally, #1 Life Steal gives my team mates more then enough time to come revive me.

Now for WvW/sPvP, I wouldn’t really be able to tell you, since i’ve yet to play enough to have a solid argument for those game modes.

Necro downed == Necro killed. The fear only affects not-so-big-mobs: you will never put a champion on the run. And the life stealing is a joke: the 4 skill heals you more than the life stealing! It should be (imho) as good as the Ranger pet’s heals.

Necro downed state is most effective against a single target, due to how Life Leech and Doom work. I find it to be passable in PvE contexts, but in PvP you really need your group to come through for you.

That said, you can make a really funny cheese build that is very capable of killing anyone who can’t pull a stability / stealth stomp off on you. (Rabid/Cavalier terror build with Death’s Embrace, Fear of Death, bloodthirst and vampiric precision to start, and maybe a bowl of Fire Salsa?)

You will be stomped by anyone with stability or stealth. There is just no countering it. That said, against people who do not have access to this cheese a downed necromancer can be really difficult to deal with.

But yeah, the downed state is just extremely poorly balanced overall at the moment.

The only time our downed state seems good to me is when someone else gets downed at close to the same time I am, in which case the siphons make a big difference. But mesmers, rangers and warriors can still win a downed vs downed fight, it seems.

We have one of only a few downed states that can’t get away/stealth/AOE interrupt. I wish downed #2 was an AOE fear, personally.

2+ Targets, stability/stealth = bye bye.

I’d also like to point out, Ranger pet heal. Corrrrr! I don’t think a necro can lay down enough damage to stop that. So run and stomp x2 (1x blind) within 7sec.

If you look at it that, every now and then you avoided death after being dead… or that it’s only pretend dead, and you can tele somewhere close and not even have to run around as a ghost…

Softspoken.2410:

Necro downed state is most effective against a single target, due to how Life Leech and Doom work. I find it to be passable in PvE contexts, but in PvP you really need your group to come through for you.

That said, you can make a really funny cheese build that is very capable of killing anyone who can’t pull a stability / stealth stomp off on you. (Rabid/Cavalier terror build with Death’s Embrace, Fear of Death, bloodthirst and vampiric precision to start, and maybe a bowl of Fire Salsa?)

Sad thing is I did that as a troll build and yes it works against baddies. Lets you know real fast who to avoid and who you can duke it out as long as you want because you’ll always win in downed. Only works in pvp though, wvw and pve, forget it. Wouldn’t work with a guardian pulling and an ele pushing.

Fungalfoot.7213:

You will be stomped by anyone with stability or stealth. There is just no countering it. That said, against people who do not have access to this cheese a downed necromancer can be really difficult to deal with.

But yeah, the downed state is just extremely poorly balanced overall at the moment.

Even playing as a necro have never once second guessed a necro in downed state. I finish them off quicker than any other class. It’s even funnier when you stomp them as thief without stealth by simply blinding them first so the fear doesn’t work. Ultimate troll. People who get downed by a downed necro or thwarted stomps are just baddies plain and simple. No other clas other than ele can equate to that, but even ele can stall longer by even staying still than a downed necro once they hit vapor. Or Engi, those two are the worst in the game right along with necro assuming the engi is sluggish with their elixer (only takes a second or two for elixer R to fully rez, can sometimes beat a stomp if done by a skilled player. I do it all the time, epic troll).

If you are running full zerker Necro like I am, down’d state Necro is one of the strongest in Pve. (I have a Warrior, Mesmer, Thief, and Engie also at 80 in full Zerker).

Necromancer’s life drain heals, but the biggest thing is that it attacks so fast which allows a ton of crits to be done. No, I usually do not kill half Health Champions (lol who does?), but I have no problem killing off a full health normal mob at Cursed Shore if I’m fighting only him or killing off a low healthed mob when there is a group on me. The damage is tremendously high.