Guild Wars 2

Necro roaming partner. I’m thinking Engineer, Ranger, or Guardian.

Engi for control+condis to synergize with epidemic. Guardian has boons, support, stability. Ranger for spirit buffs. What do you all think?

Guardians can give you delicious boons (21 seconds of stability, yes please), but they’re never going to focus the guard if it’s just the two of you.

Ranger’s can tank for you rather well, and spirits/healing spring is quite nice to have around in general.

I play with engineers a lot, elixer r is pretty neat, but they offer less direct benefits to you, but I find them general handy to have around.

And of course both rangers and engineers can poop out conditions for you to epi off. Oh, and rangers can use that neato horn skill before a fight then swap it out, as I personally appreciate the fury, if nothing else.

I haven’t done much dual roaming, but Elementalists and Thieves could actually be pretty good Necro partners, in theory.

A D/D Ele will be able to do a good job of distracting and CCing the enemies while not dying, giving you time to lay down the hurt. If he’s good, he could make use of aura sharing to help protect you against melee pressure. Then if you get in serious trouble, he can use Conjure Fiery Greatsword, you can pick one up, and the two of you can spam 3 and 4 to safety, neatly removing the Necro difficulty with disengaging.

Thieves, on the other hand, would act as assassin support for a tankier Necro build. While you stand there DSing through burst and generally being annoying, she could swoop in and pick off a distracted target. Then when you get in trouble, she could just pop Shadow Refuge and the two of you could skip hand in hand to safety.

The problem with thief is that you’re going to get focused since he’s cloaking a lot, of course having a friendly shadow refugee is great, but as a duo, I don’t think a thief is outstanding.

I dual roam in wvw more than anything I do in the game, and I have the most success with my brother, who plays a balanced d/d elementalist.

Generally it works like Blaine Tog said where he supplies buffs and serves to aggressively distract enemies while dealing direct damage spikes where I deal more constant condition damage and debuffs. Between his cc and my terror we can lockdown someone enough to get a kill, but we can struggle sometimes to get a spike, but we’ve gotten better at that. Plague is a necessity at all times.

I run a tankier build so together we have surprising synergy and we very regularly win outnumbered fights.

Personally I think that as long as you’re a good player, playing with another good player, it should work well. But I do think that running with a thief or mesmer could end up with you getting train focused because they are always in stealth or difficult to lock down, so they will come after the easy to catch necro.

In general I find that rolling with a more survivable friend works best with a necro, but still bringing enough damage to end a fight before your DS is gone. A pure bunker might end up with you dying without putting out pressure to win an engagement, but a pure damage class might go down too easily before you put down the enemy.

I apologize for the ranting but this is the part of the game I practice the most.

Yeah I agree that D/D ele would be the nicest party ‘in general’, as they give you so many boons, can share delicious aura’s, and can give you some good healing when you need it. All while doing good damage and still being survivable.

You guys are missing the most obvious answer to this question. Who is the best duo partner for a necro? ANOTHER NECRO. The epis are epic! It’s almost unfair.

War Mourner.5168:

The problem with thief is that you’re going to get focused since he’s cloaking a lot

Oh yeah, totally. You’d have to build really tanky, maybe go minions for the life siphoning and passive condi removal, maybe just load up on stunbreakers + Spectral Wall. The idea is, you’d be the tasty bait that’s remarkably hard to swallow, and then the thief backstabs them while they’re choking on you. Pop Plague and you’ll give your thief probably the full 20 seconds to kill them while you have them perma-blinded and poisoned.

It’d be harder to play than some of these other combinations, but not impossible. I kinda wish I knew more people in game to try it out though (to be clear, this is all theorycraft for me).

Blaine Tog.8304:

War Mourner.5168:

The problem with thief is that you’re going to get focused since he’s cloaking a lot

Oh yeah, totally. You’d have to build really tanky, maybe go minions for the life siphoning and passive condi removal, maybe just load up on stunbreakers + Spectral Wall. The idea is, you’d be the tasty bait that’s remarkably hard to swallow, and then the thief backstabs them while they’re choking on you. Pop Plague and you’ll give your thief probably the full 20 seconds to kill them while you have them perma-blinded and poisoned.

It’d be harder to play than some of these other combinations, but not impossible. I kinda wish I knew more people in game to try it out though (to be clear, this is all theorycraft for me).

It would work very well in small encounters, but the issue is that this strategy doesn’t scale against more enemies or more skilled enemies as dodging or controlling plague is easy for most players. And when there are 3 or 4 red names around, the thief can’t blow them all up at once, so they will all be hitting you as the easier target.

It can work but in a more limited capacity, in my opinion.

I hadn’t considered D/D ele—will have to think about that. I just don’t like that eles are kind of limited on build options (aura share D/D).

Mesmer seems like it could also do a good job at helping keep pressure off.

If built for it, Engi can offer considerable control—so I’m still considering that. I love the idea of a large stack of confusion from interrupts via perplexity (and maybe pain inverter) getting spread with epidemic.

I’ve already seen via Rennoko that ranger can make a great partner as well.

Thief could work—but personally I think having a tankier friend would be better. I think thief melds better with mesmer.

I’d say Ranger. I roam with Rennoko(necro) who is condition. This video of his has a few fights where we are 2v4ish.

with direct damage thief/mesmer is good as long as you guys can just annihilate everything before you die.

guardians/dd eles are good at keeping you alive, engis are not usually very good or they don’t know how to play i’ve no clue why it doesn’t seem to work since i don’t play engi.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Oh yeah, totally. You’d have to build really tanky, maybe go minions for the life siphoning and passive condi removal, maybe just load up on stunbreakers + Spectral Wall. The idea is, you’d be the tasty bait that’s remarkably hard to swallow, and then the thief backstabs them while they’re choking on you. Pop Plague and you’ll give your thief probably the full 20 seconds to kill them while you have them perma-blinded and poisoned.

It’d be harder to play than some of these other combinations, but not impossible. I kinda wish I knew more people in game to try it out though (to be clear, this is all theorycraft for me).

I WvW with a thief or 2 a lot, it’s not like it’s a bad ally, it’s just a fact you’re going to get primaried. Honestly it’s more useful to have other power necro’s… I have a couple of guild mates who I gave my build to, and we would just run as 2 or 3 completely identical builds… It’s quite hilarious how hard we CC the hell out of people, the main burst does 14k or so damage in about 2s, it was pretty hilarious when that was 2 or 3 times stronger, and it made stripping boons off targets like double/triple stability application warriors a tad easy.

Of course that is probably not the ideal duo, but it is hella fun.

Mesmer and Necro work extremely well together. Mesmer is IMO, the most efficient at helping the necro cope with its inherent weakness. With mass invis, portal, and focus 4 you have more swiftness, the awesome disengage, and more non-condi based control that necros sorely need. In WvW for roaming necro I always play condi, so a power/crit mesmer makes for an awesome ally.

It also amplifies its strengths as mesmer/necro are the best boon strip combo save necro + S/D. If the mesmer runs staff, between the two of you there is the potential to place every single condi on the target making iWarlock beastly and making scepter #3s LF slightly less terrible. If you prefer power, in a 30/25/0/015, you gain even more percent direct dmg for condi making dagger spam under 50% extremely deadly. Not to mention TimeWarp Lich is still the best thing ever. Not to mention war horn daze + Flesh Golem + Curtain pull + AoE shatter daze + GS knock back when timed correctly can completely lock down targets as well as give numerous ways to interrupt stomps and rez.

Personally I don’t think there is any better damage roaming partner for necro than mesmer. Engi makes a good second, but I think ele/guard are just generically good roaming partners for about any profession.

I tend to reverse engineer how I want to approach running with duo, trio, small group composition.

I look at my strengths and weaknesses and try to find people, players, or in this case characters that can fill in those gaps and hopefully the same works for them.

I personally like running with good mesmers. They have many of the tools a Necro can benefit from. Stealth and the ability to pressure and peel when needed are huge on this list for me.

Little things matter in small fights. I hate it when a guardian Banishes people out of my wells, or depending on the enemy assumes I can pull off the stomp with ease. These are small examples of things I look for from a companion.