Guild Wars 2

Necromancers, at least on my server, are very underplayed. Guardians and Warriors, who are overpowered compared to Necromancers (and Rangers and Engineers) are being buffed every single patch to make them even more imbalanced. There are various reasons Necromancers are a very underplayed and underpowered class. I will list them below.

-Minions are useless until your level is very high, and even then only if you’re specced into them. This means that Necromancers have 5 or so slot skills that are completely useless for all but one spec.
-Signet cooldowns are stupidly long, and the active is almost never worth losing the passive.
-We have very limited ability to buff ourselves, we are given a large health pool in compensation for a lack of invisibility/stability which simply does not work out. Constantly being knocked around and having no way to escape encounters other than desperately trying to run away is not worth having more HP than the other casters. If a Warrior, Guardian or Thief focuses a Necromancer in PvP, the Necromancer dies; our large health pool merely means it takes the Warrior killing us about half a second longer, whereas the Mesmer and Elementalist have various escape mechanisms. All we can do is throw marks around and once the good marks are on cooldown we are destroyed. Necromancers are particularly awful against Thieves as positioning a mark for an invisible target is about as easy as it sounds. If Necromancers are conceptually adept at absorbing damage rather than avoiding it like the other scholars, fine; but as it stands they’re not. Fear is our only real crowd control and it has a gigantic cooldown, and we can’t get swiftness to run like an Ele (unless we have a useless offhand detailed below) or turn invisible like a Mesmer. If you want Necro to be tanky rather than reliant on escapes and crowd control, maybe you should do something about us getting obliterated once fear is on cooldown.
-Warhorn. Completely useless. Nobody in their right mind would use it, Necromancers are supposed to focus on inflicting status conditions on the enemy to exascerbate their damage, Warhorn gives almost nothing in the way of damage and its daze is short-range. The swiftness skill is nice but it’s not worth sacrificing an offhand weapon that would actually be useful. I would suggest reworking Warhorn in totality and giving us a slot skill that grants swiftness.

There’s also the fact that Necromancers have to choose between surviving and inflicting damage. Lich form’s damage is impressive but if you use it you become incredibly frail, and as in caster form you only have a few CC skills with gigantic cooldowns to delay (not prevent, delay) being killed. Necromancers often get focused and after using their cooldowns (which do almost no damage) all they can do is try to dodge and run. A great deal of Necro spells need their cooldowns reduced or durations increased. Our siege damage is terrible because we rely on conditions for damage; which is fair enough but we should have SOME variety of decent siege damage and we do not. Our lack of stability skills is at odds with the various skills of ours requiring a channel; we have absolutely no way of preventing interruption and knockdown. Giving Necromancers a stability skill wouldn’t break the game, and it would make life easier (even in PvE) for Necromancers everywhere. I’d also like to suggest an ability that removes conditions; although we are capable of transferring conditions to our enemies the skills that do this have very long cooldowns and one often finds oneself after an encounter having killed everything but still getting downed because you have poison/bleed and no enemies to pass it on to.

res.4961:

I’d also like to suggest an ability that removes conditions; although we are capable of transferring conditions to our enemies the skills that do this have very long cooldowns and one often finds oneself after an encounter having killed everything but still getting downed because you have poison/bleed and no enemies to pass it on to.

How about Consume Conditions? Best heal in the game. Or Well of Power?

We have Deathly Swarm and Plague Signet that riquires target. Thats a LOT remove conditions spells.

So let me get this right…

You created a thread titled “Fixing Necromancers”

Not once did you offer a single suggestion on how to improve the necromancer, instead you just list off “apparent” faults with the class while somehow glossing over the the glaring issues concerning pet AI and necro UI

When you create one of these threads, just stop and think, do we really need another one of these posts? Am I actually contributing something useful of just endless whine?

Also lack of invisibility? really? since when did we become a thief, I must have missed that in the patch notes

res.4961:

I’d also like to suggest an ability that removes conditions; although we are capable of transferring conditions to our enemies the skills that do this have very long cooldowns and one often finds oneself after an encounter having killed everything but still getting downed because you have poison/bleed and no enemies to pass it on to.

Seriously your going to post that and expect me take you seriously, have you actually ever played a necro?

I sense troll

Savan.8495:

res.4961:

I’d also like to suggest an ability that removes conditions; although we are capable of transferring conditions to our enemies the skills that do this have very long cooldowns and one often finds oneself after an encounter having killed everything but still getting downed because you have poison/bleed and no enemies to pass it on to.

Seriously your going to post that and expect me take you seriously, have you actually ever played a necro?

I sense troll

That signet should be renamed “deathwish”

…I have no idea why anyone would ever use it

Ezeriel.9574:

Savan.8495:

res.4961:

I’d also like to suggest an ability that removes conditions; although we are capable of transferring conditions to our enemies the skills that do this have very long cooldowns and one often finds oneself after an encounter having killed everything but still getting downed because you have poison/bleed and no enemies to pass it on to.

Seriously your going to post that and expect me take you seriously, have you actually ever played a necro?

I sense troll

That signet should be renamed “deathwish”

…I have no idea why anyone would ever use it

Take condition from ally and Deathly Swarm it away. It has uses, but I feel the passive needs to pulse more often.

Sorry think people misunderstood

It’s called Consume Conditions

Would you like to know more
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Conditions

It’s also called Shrouded Removal, and it’s also called Spiteful Removal, and it’s also called Fetid Consumption.

res.4961:

Warhorn. Completely useless. Nobody in their right mind would use it, Necromancers are supposed to focus on inflicting status conditions on the enemy to exascerbate their damage, Warhorn gives almost nothing in the way of damage and its daze is short-range. The swiftness skill is nice but it’s not worth sacrificing an offhand weapon that would actually be useful. I would suggest reworking Warhorn in totality and giving us a slot skill that grants swiftness.

…wow. Just…wow. So according to you, interrupting healing skills is worthless. Interrupting stealth-stomping thieves is worthless. Perma-swiftness when combined with Spectral Walk is worthless. Dagger/Warhorn with Locust Swarm on is one of the fastest ways to generate life force, and your opponent can’t get away…apparently that’s also worthless.

EDIT: Sorry for the harsh tone. Warhorn is a key offhand for power necros. If you think it’s worthless, then you’re not speaking from experience.