Guild Wars 2

Newer to necro than some, but every match I play necro I get brunt of enemy focus. I run version of corruptionmancer. Staff and s/wh.

Usually go mid because I’m not good in 1v1 on necro. Stay in staff and hang way back or use terrain to try and range. Doesn’t matter. Enemies run past my 3 other players and focus me 80% of time. I can usually survive long enough to build up some life force. Can transfer condis and clear some. When health down low, I swap to shroud. But then either I get hit by numerous conditions including cripple and immobilize, get moa’d, or just get straight up burned down.

Other than dodges, I haven’t found any way to mitigate damage. Heals seem weak. Any tips on playing this more effectively? I guess plague trait can cleanse condis while in shroud but doesn’t do much for me.

Well good postioning is your best bet e.g. stand at places that wont allow ports. See for that good kiting guides for spvp.

You can also run fleshworm and place it smartly beforehand. The teleport will teleport you 1200 in the direction of you worm if it is further away then 1200 (it can bug out at some places).

Flesh Wurm everyday of the week

LoS and kite for your life, drop marks at your feet, pop spectral armor to gain lf while being hit & receive 33% damage mitigation, warhorn swarm to give more lifeforce & swiftness, etc. If you have a decent team, people will try to peel for you or a scrapper will stealth gyro for you. But in soloq you’re likely on your own. I’ve found that a signet build helps because you have additional heals in locust signet, 25% base run speed, and aoe boon corrupt.

Some necros don’t understand but you don’t need to be visible so early at mid. Yes you should join the mid fight, but you don’t have to show up at exactly the same time & same location as your team. It helps sometimes to delay your appearance so they focus burst on someone else first.

Some have taken up plague to give themselves an extra few seconds. Wurm teleport works, but note quite a few classes could follow your port. Revs, DHs, thieves, mesmers, etc.. could all follow your wurm teleport and still finish you off while you are away from your team, giving you zero chance of being revived. So wurm teleport isn’t always the best slot to take against decent players. A good druid would keep the pet on you for constant damage that you pretty much can’t avoid.

We could give you all the advice but truth to the matter is, there’s a very good chance you’ll go downstate against decent players. Your best hope is that your team is better than theirs, and that you have players that know how to play with necros. On my rev I can almost guaranteed to take a necro down at beginning of a match unless opposing team completely dominates the brawl fight. On my DH, it’s hilariously easy to pull, push, tug, and burst a necro to death. Both of these classes can teleport with the necro so wurm isn’t going to save you.

Solid advice from gavyn. Sad reality is that focus necro first has been standard operating procedure of team fights since release.

For some inexplicable reason, Anet refuses to acknowledge or address that our “2 health bars” are inferior in virtually every way to the healing and active defenses of the other classes. I can sustain for ages with a 15k hp dh roaming in wvw, same fight as a necro I’d be dead in 20 seconds. That’s our illustrious “theme” I guess.

There’s some good advice here… for example:
-At start of the match, if you go mid with your team, I suggest that you never step into the circle of the point because you will have 0 life force and will have a target on you. The best thing you can do is stay behind your team. Even if they fight starts and goes on for a few secs and you don’t immediately join, that’s fine. Then when you join the fight and drop a few marks you’ll have some life force. You can also join the fight right away but keep an eye on their thieves or revs or DHs (things with teleports). They will almost always go for you. When I see enemies have Revs, I have them targeted and drop a few marks on my feet (especially Reaper’s Mark) because when they teleport you can counter attack them.
-Chilling enemies then using Locust Swarm will give you really nice lifeforce because Locust Swarm generates lifeforce, and Chilling Victory (if you’re a Reaper) gives you more lifeforce when you hit chilled enemies. Locust Swarm generates lifeforce even while you’re in Deathshroud so if you use get focused and use Locust Swarm —> Deathshroud, it will make you able to tank somewhat.
-Spectral skills (spectral armour and walk, and even wall) don’t disappear when you go into deathshroud despite the wrong description in the skill. If you use Spectral Armour, Walk or Wall, they will ALL generate lifeforce even when you’re in shroud. So if you get focused and use Spectral Armour and go into deathshroud, you will be able to tank for a lil bit. Even better, Locust Swarm + Spectral armour together will also enable you to tank really well.
-Make use of spots in maps that are hard to get to, or which enemies can’t teleport to. If a rev, thief or DH can’t teleport to you, they can’t surprise-burst you and you can DPS them while they walk over to you.

Other than that, it will just take practice because imo Necro is not the easiest profession to get into when you’re new to it because it’s really different from other professions. I would suggest using wurm as well (I can’t play without it) but you have to be smart in how you use it. As people already said, it will port you even if you put it reallllllly far away. It just ports you 1200 distance towards the wurm no matter where the wurm is…. but it can be buggy so you’d have to use it for a while to figure out which spots don’t work. I don’t play Necro without wurm personally, but a lot of necros can (somehow O.o ).

Using Plague is also good. Until recently people were like “LOL Plague? Is it 2012?” but the skill really has its uses. If you use the #2 skill, you’ll blind everyone around you and + the skill gives you a ton of health and toughness so you become really tanky. You can also stomp or res people in teamfights with Plague (start stomp or res, then press the plague button).

Imo, in team fights, if you kite 2-3 people in a fight that are focusing you, and you survive for 10-15 secs until you have to REALLY escape, that’s a job well done and your team SHOULD pick up their slack and score a kill.

My thoughts are that I can’t wait for nextgametm.
This one has abysmal combat that will never get improved because expac expac expac.

try to learn what threats each class has and will attempt to use against you
dragonhunter have the pull
theives have a trait immob
mesmer have moa, long cc
all the classes can have very high damage and much more mobility than you
this is including rev i just dont know what unique things i’d watch out for.
Then determine the best way to avoid them.
sticking close to your teammate is very solid advice but needs to come with a warning that you don’t want to get aoed down as a team. Think of 300 range of your teammate is the sweetspot. they won’t aoe your team down but your team is close enough to help if things get bad.

zedapoc.1493:

Solid advice from gavyn. Sad reality is that focus necro first has been standard operating procedure of team fights since release.

For some inexplicable reason, Anet refuses to acknowledge or address that our “2 health bars” are inferior in virtually every way to the healing and active defenses of the other classes. I can sustain for ages with a 15k hp dh roaming in wvw, same fight as a necro I’d be dead in 20 seconds. That’s our illustrious “theme” I guess.

That’s a great point. IMO damage mitigation skills are far better than extra health. I’ve played other classes where I can survive being focused because I can avoid the damage. With the current metas, extra health just seems to get burned

Thanks for all the advice. Very helpful.

If they run through my teammates to get to me, I’ll usually spam chills, drop target, and do a stability Reaper 2 through them to get back to behind my teammates.

Me =( (My Teammates) Them >=)
Them >>=\ (My Teammates) Me =)

Hopefully having to run through them twice gives my team enough opportunities to punish them accordingly. Especially if we have an obligatory trap guardian or 2.

If it wasn’t already suggested, using traited wells (well of corruption / well of power and 3rd utility slot could be poison cloud or a spectral skill for another stunbreak) would help a lot with HP regen while dancing in and out of shroud, good thing with wells and poison cloud is that you just have to target your own feet, if enemies are willing to commit to kill you then make them regret their decision. Also wells are really strengthen your claim to cap points. I’ll leave this build below as a blueprint if you plan to venture into wells, hope it helps:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAW7Ynk0A10g90AO3A0biFtBLuCmB7gTBgEQEgKDkC2AA-TZhHABAcBA8uMA4PBAgPIAvv/AA

PS: I love using Sigil of Agility for a quickcast on heal or elite. You can also pull a nice combo by using poison cloud, enter Shroud which will proc quickness and instantly tap shroud #3 and #4 for a quick poison aoe spread with pulsing stability, you can easily place +20 stacks of poison thanks to Rune of Thorns.