Guild Wars 2

In your opinion, what’s the necro’s greatest strength? And what is the necro’s greatest weakness? You can focus on one single skill, or an aspect of the game.

Here is mine:

Greatest Strength: Well of Blood
This is probably the best team healing skill in the game. Very useful in wvw, from zerg vs zerg to sieging a door. Its light combo field means condition removals.

Greatest weakness: No damage avoidance at all.
Everything enemies throw at us, we always get hit unless we dodge.

I’d say our greatest strength is Death Shroud. No other class can get down to 1k HP and then instantly have an effective 27k HP, and be able to do that every so often (depending on build).

I would say our greatest weakness is the very start of a fight. As a necro, you really need to always be the person to initiate the fight, so you can stock up life force, and stack up the early conditions. If you start off the fight by being bursted, you’re in deep trouble (unless you have managed to stack LF before hand, in which case you’re still needing to burn LF just to keep up, instead of pull ahead).

CHIPS.6018:

Everything enemies throw at us, we always get hit unless we dodge.

That a necro has no way to increase his endurance regen (outside of an on weapon switch sigil or food).
On all my other classes I tend to at least take a trait to increase regen or have access to vigor, it makes such a big difference in longer fights.
DS compensates a little, but the cooldown and limited UI make it a bit of a hassle when the going gets tough imo.

For biggest strength I’d say the amount and quality of my crowd control.
I tend to run with the staff and the warhorn (both traited) so that’s an AoE chill, AoE fear and AoE daze on fairly low cooldown and the single target chill and fear from DS as well.
Timed correctly (for rezzing and stomping for instance) they are gamechangers.

To me it is support for the rest of the team through condition management and survivability. I am not too worried about my own absolute damage but I am focused on supporting the group through weakening the mobs/enemy and applying constant condition pressure. Weakness wise as mentioned above…being tunneled and opening burst as we have few escapes…some “oh kitten” abilities but limited.

Edit: weaknesses.

Greatest Strength: Consistent Damage and Death Shroud. Death Shroud is the absolute best class mechanic. You can use it offensively, defensively, or simply to boon stack. Our damage while we don’t see the giant numbers we are the most consistent damage class out there.

Greatest Weakness: Casting times and slow ramp up speed in a fight. I hate the casting times on half of our abilities. Long CD’s with extended casting times make for a tough starrt to any fight. As Bhawb pointed out, we are at a severe disadvantage when we don’t initiate and survive the first burst of some of the other classes.

Necros excel in team fighting when left alone, they’re also useful at peeling for your team. Mobility is a real issue for necromancers though.

Only thing we can do better than the rest, (i’m a condition necro i can´t talk about power necros, i tried a time ago and it sucks),

1) Best condition management,
2) The amount of fear sources, and the hability to do damage with it,
3) High vitality,
4) Great utility skills like corrupt boon, epidemic, blood is power,
5) Best self heal in game, (consume conditions),

With the cost of…

1) Slow motion speed,
2) Eternal cast times, (worst part of the class in my opinion),
3) Almost no damage avoidance, (LF doesn’t count we are taking damage anyway),
4) Horrible trait tree, (i hate it, i hate it so much…),
5) No chance to catch fleeing enemies,
6) No chance to get away from enemies,
7) Some abilities like dark path don’t work as intended,
8) In spvp LF is completly broken, starting with 0 LF and no white creatures is a serious drawback,

Just my humble opinion,

Greatest Strength: Staff Marks
I really like my Staff and the mark abilities that come with it. It makes me an excellent team support, siege support, crowd control and condition management all in one while keeping a safe distance from enemies.

Greatest Weakness: Attack Animation Speed
In my opinion, some of the necromancer’s skills have slow cast or firing animation, spectral grasp and dark path come to mind. Maybe increasing the speed of the projectiles/moves just a little bit would be nice.

I think we suffer from a few general problems like toughness not scaling well vs damage (I know this is hard to balance with other classes having blocks,sort cooldown blind and aegis), mid range weapons are a little in the weak side for almost all who have them, and it’s hard to make a power/ tough build in spvp due to the fact the knights gives +vit instead if tough for spvp.

Biggest Boon would have to be DS and how well we can control an area with wells.

Greatest: Condition control and management! Hands down, it trumps everything else cuz its so awesome.
Weakness: Starting with 0 life force =[, stunbreakers have long cooldowns, on the slow side when it comes to killing speed.

Greatest weakness has to be the effin terrible condition cap/stacking mechanics that ruins group DPS if there is more than one person applying conditions. I just ran CM with 2 other condition builds and at some points I had only two – EFFIN TWO – bleeds ticking while the mob was loaded up with 25 stacks of bleed. I’m tired of feeling coerced into playing power/crit builds because they’re significantly more efficient and don’t suffer from the possibility of compromising overall group DPS should more than one person build for it.

Answer to both is Death Shroud.

weakness would be getting out of a fight.

I dont agree with most posters here on other negatives, mostly you either dont know your skills well enough or you having a build that creates the weaknesses.

DS is a good oh-crap button.

Other than that:

-Low dps
-Power specs aren’t really doable/viable on a necro
-condition specs are slow, terrible against structures and can can be completely negated, even by pve mobs
-Terrible mobility, no vigor
-Awful access to stability
-Long cast times on most spells
-Minions still enjoy their plenty share of idle time
-Wells could be good utility but are incredibly unflexible, have a long cd by default and even mobs walk out of them.
-No projectile reflect or nullify
-Not a single group buff

I’ll stop here. But don’t forget: we do things “differently”.

bytes.1650:

-Not a single group buff

Spectral Wall, Ritual of Protection, Well of Power, and Mark of Blood aren’t group buffs? One of those doesn’t even have a target limit.

Strength:

Condition application and boon removal/flipping

Weakness:

We don’t have a stop interrupt which works vs stablity, we don’t have an escape mechanism worth talking about and we don’t have a way to stomp reliably. Adding one of those three would make me happy.

Strength – Cool because they are necros, challenging to play if you want that. To be fair their one strength is they can be a survivable support class for groups.

Weakness – They have no greatest strength and are worst overall class in the game with lack of mobility, lack of damage, bad down state and lack of effective stomp boost. Death Shroud is a third set of skills that you are forced to use to play effectively which other classes do not have.

Strength: Consume conditions is probably the best overall healing skill in the game.

Weakness: Low power damage high condition damage class in a game where condition damage in group/open world content is broken and won’t likely be fixed in a reasonable amount of time (if it ever is)

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Strength:

Condition application and boon removal/flipping

Weakness:

We don’t have a stop interrupt which works vs stablity, we don’t have an escape mechanism worth talking about and we don’t have a way to stomp reliably. Adding one of those three would make me happy.

Corrupt Boon turns Stability into Fear, proper use of Flesh Wurm and DS can get you out of the worst kind of situations, and while we don’t have a way to reliably and consecutively stomp, Plague does give us a hefty 20 seconds of Stability, and we can stomp during Plague.

As for the greatest strength of the class, I’d have to say a tie between DS and Epidemic. It’s been said before, but no other class has the survivability that DS brings us. And Epidemic is the strongest AoE skill in game, period.

As for greatest weakness, I’d have to say it lies in the complete inability to apply vigor. I never noticed it until I had to farm Arah for my gear, but no Vigor is a massive hindrance. The lack of any sort of projectile reflect/blocking (with the exception of an undead army of meat shields) is another peev of mine, but it’s something I can live with.

And we don’t have an invulnerability, but a this point I feel like I’m just getting greedy.

Johnny; I know how good Wurm is, and DS is a great tanking ability – but I mean a proper escape ability – the way a thief, elementalist, mesmer or engineer can become a dot on the horizon if they’re so inclined. Wurm can only take you to where you’ve been, much like Walk.

Corrupt Boon does indeed flip stability, but I’m unable to use abilities while on my back. If you can use it to stomp someone stomping you, do let me know. Plague is handy, but it’s a 180s cooldown.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Johnny; I know how good Wurm is, and DS is a great tanking ability – but I mean a proper escape ability – the way a thief, elementalist, mesmer or engineer can become a dot on the horizon if they’re so inclined. Wurm can only take you to where you’ve been, much like Walk.

Corrupt Boon does indeed flip stability, but I’m unable to use abilities while on my back. If you can use it to stomp someone stomping you, do let me know. Plague is handy, but it’s a 180s cooldown.

I apologize, I misread the stomp interrupt part of your post. But only 3 classes ave the ability to stop a stability-stomp (Ele, Thief, Mes) so I still don’t see that as a real weakness, but I’ll stop nit-picking.

And Wurm is a ground casted AoE with a 1200 range, and will certainly take you far enough away from trouble if placed properly.

Johnny, you have shamed me by being less argumentative and more civil in your tone. Props to you.

Rangers have quickness stomp, I’m sure I’ve seen guards and wars with stability. It’s significant that every class has either a stomp breaker, a stomp aid or a solid escape ability – some have all 3! The point I’m making is that Necro doesn’t have any

Well, aside from Plague.

Wurm’s handy, but subject to terrain issues, pre-cast, and the fact you’ve gotta have cast it before afight starts.

Strength: Probably tanking, with the right build we can heal a lot of normal hp in addition to death shroud. Take well of blood for example, the thing can heal for over 10k, most of it aoe, if you use the clerics amulet (even more outside of spvp) Combine this with the fact DS is gained percentage wish means that higher vitality = more effective healing when you gain DS.

Weakness: Definitely cc, both our lack of it and our inability to deal with it. On the first we certainly have a lot of “soft cc” in the form of cripples and slows but we lack good stuns and knock backs the other classes have. In addition we have no stability unless you trait and even then its a grandmaster trait. Our stun breakers also kinda suck with our best being spectral walk.

In short:
+ conditionmancer
- powermancer (“can work sometimes and worse than other” is just not enough to be viable)

Longer:
+condition cleanse/ +often transfer
+best healing skill
+team fights (lots of aoe, high hp and range, constant pressure until even bigger group starts running- and ur group after them )
+underwater both condition/power are almost OP (i say almost cz we still have our general weakness —→ interrupts)

-condition/fearmancer means only 1,5 viable builds
-PVE: bleedcaps + takes way longer to kick in
-minions die to aoe fast/instant
-CAST TIMES , LONG CD…………..been sad many times. me personal: why focus #4 when it bounces more if it close. close combat should be fast. and locust. its not worth it for the CD and also long cast considering its a desperate heal. any1 though about the fact that if u leech from 5ppl, u also are getting hit 5x more and 5k is gone in 1 sec??!!!! we lose so much to casting, that our best dps is the autoatack.

-no stability/block/invul/stealth/ any damage avoid besides blind well. 60s CD = thief pistol 6 INI skill ….wait we do have death shroud and it is soooo strong that all other stuff must be subpar.

Its weird that conditionmancer, which rellys the least on DS is the strongest type(((
Not hating, i love DS, but we need overall improvements arround +10% (not conditions or water combat)

Greatest strength has got to be all the condition transfers and wipes. Greatest weakness I’ve encountered so far on my new necro is that I seem unable to avoid damage. No interrupts, low endurance regen, no knockdowns or knockbacks, all I have are a few unreliable blinds.

If I had to mention one skill I’d say Epidemic, which is just the most awesome skill on any of my characters. But consume conditions is also incredible, as are staff 4 and dagger 4 for the condition transfer. Well of blood, mentioned by the OP, ain’t that great IMO. My ranger’s healing spring is far superior as an aoe heal that ticks condition wipe, and splashes regen all over the place as a water field. On the minus side I’d mention all the DS skills except leech, both terrestrial and acquatic. DS is in dire need of a reliable form of AoE damage, like downed state 2 or exploding death bolts.

Greatest Strength: Condition manipulation

Greatest Weakness: Potential to be the most powerful class if ANet isn’t careful. It’s the only reason necro isn’t as good as it should be. An additional health bar is by far the most powerful mechanic an attrition class can have. However, I think ANet realizes this and is playing safe in regards to balancing the profession.

As much as I love power spec, I have to say our best class ability is between Condition Manipulation and Deathshroud. The greatest weakness as many others have posted is lack of endurence regen. You really dont notice it till Lupi in Arah. Other then what others posted the knockdown from Flesh Golem is really great it has changed the coarse of alot of my 1v1 fights when I have had it on my bar. And I love the fact that even in full power necro mode I can still maniuplate conditions just as well as a Conditionmancer. Since in my opinion Weakes/Vuln/Blind are really the greatest of all the condtions which we can apply with ease. Hopefully one day they will fix the 25 stack problem of bleeding but until then I will roll the way I roll =)

Strengths: mid/late in a battle the necro will have the ability to severly hinder the opponents capabilities with debuffs biggest ones are chill vulneralbility and fear. Even when your not running a condi build. When running a condi build you can be devastating in team fights when you keep your distance and have a tank. Tanky builds with proper application of condition removal and the greatsword can keep your teamates from taking some devastating debuffs thenbeing able to throw the debuffs back to a enemy minions can be used with every build and still be effective. Power builds are decent because of the great sword. The edition of the reaper elite spec removes many of the necros weaknesses. Also the elite abilities are devestating my favorite being the plague. Passive bonuses from signets are very useful and can save you alot. Death shroud and reaper shroud bring heavy dps for a sbort amount of time. Late battle your sustain is so high people have trouble doing anything to you. Also yes the cooldowns are high but the autoattacks themselves provide very high dpm just pressing the 1 key with the right build.

Weaknesses is very squishy and requires a team to support the necro to survive yes he can tank but it requires a decent team supporting. Early fights the necro is weak both tankieness and dpm suck early game. The wells other than the well that heals allies are not decent as enemies just move out of them. The flesh wurm is a a very weak skill with reletively no use. The corruption skills can easily allow you to kill yourself if your not watching your debuffs in the right hands those skills are devastating. Has problems doing anything that isnt regular world roaming without some person or team supporting you. Very low sustain early battle.

From PVE standpoint:
Strength – absolutely crazy survivability. Between high HP, shroud, pentyful condition removals and wide access to syphons, it’s really hard to die as necro.
Weakness – crappy access to boons. We have might, and that’s about all we can reliably pump out, and only for ourselves.

Greatest strength: condition management
There are many ways to inflict or transfer conditions.

Greatest weakness: disengagement skills
There are almost no ways to disengage and reset a fight. Only Wurm works and it does so part way, part of the time. It has a long setup cast and is broken by terrain so it requires planning before using.

Second worst weakness is a lack of ranged power.

How long before people realise sluringshh used our oldest trick in the book

Zetsumei.4975:

How long before people realise sluringshh used our oldest trick in the book

Its weird but after rereading it i remebered my old post

Flumek.9043:

Zetsumei.4975:

How long before people realise sluringshh used our oldest trick in the book

Its weird but after rereading it i remebered my old post

I noticed right away, BUT (!!!), how long before other people realize that 3 year old posts are (STILL) pretty much an accurate description of where we’re at up to this very day….even to the point that it’s so easily confused as a modern thread. /sigh

wow lol necroing 3 yr old thread is so necro

Reh.5986:

wow lol necroing 3 yr old thread is so necro

Should turn this into our own little sport. Who can necro the oldest but still relevant thread.

Zetsumei.4975:

Reh.5986:

wow lol necroing 3 yr old thread is so necro

Should turn this into our own little sport. Who can necro the oldest but still relevant thread.

I don’t want to necro it, but this is currently on the very last necro forum page
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Only-1-Underwater-Elite-Skill

flow.6043:

Zetsumei.4975:

Reh.5986:

wow lol necroing 3 yr old thread is so necro

Should turn this into our own little sport. Who can necro the oldest but still relevant thread.

I don’t want to necro it, but this is currently on the very last necro forum page
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Only-1-Underwater-Elite-Skill

xD Dam, got exams this week so can’t log in to check if chilled to the bone works underwater. I’ll get too tempted to test some build ideas.

It does, but Lich and FG still warrant that particular Necro :P