Guild Wars 2

A class that’s built around condition damage and applying them suck at it. kitten p/d thief can do this more effectively and kill people more effectively, because of the “balance” thief can pop in and out of hide and unload their sneak attack because of game ’balance" and stack 10+ bleed in seconds and without getting hit. So there you go, want to play a condition class? play a P/D thief or D/D and spam death blossom cause condition necro is useless in WvW.

I have to say that of all of my characters, necromancers are quite clearly the most useless of all the classes in this game for WvW. My thief most definitely fits your description; he is able to go in and out of battle on a whim because of his shadowstep teleport, his heartseeker dashes away, his many stealths… I can leave battle and come right back to a battle with full health and do so over and over while my enemy is still stuck in battle with someone else and unable to heal.

The thief is truly the attrition class of this game that fits the vision the developers wanted for necromancers; a class that will win prolonged battles – but that is really a thief. Wells on necros do not help whatsoever with attrition in WvW; they have horrendously long cooldowns and people can just walk out of them with ease. In fact, I can do attrition fights with my mesmer almost as easily as I can with my thief (using a portal to go back and heal from out of battle, then go back into the fight before the portal closes)… Necromancers are the furthest from an ‘attrition’ class that you can get…

Elixir gun engineers put necros to shame, as they spam their bleed attacks that are better than scepter #1 in almost every way, and do it from 1200 range.

…all while dancing in a nearly permanent healing/condition removing light field.

…and people say engineers suck.

Then there is the rifle warrior’s Rifle Shot, that has a massive damage, 6 second bleed, that comes on the same weapon that is capable of landing insane damage crits on multiple enemies…

Then there is the mesmer that will keep you busy fighting 20 clones as he attacks you with just about every condition in the game.

and yeah.. the thief…

..and the water mage that just won’t die.

…and the flame spec’d guardian

Necros are nothing special when it comes to conditions.

Looking at the wiki, it doesn’t indicate a cooldown for Death Blossom, but it says you need 5 initiative. The entry for initiative says “Initiative will replenish naturally at one point every 1.33 seconds.”

So, then the thief can deal 1275 damage bleeds over 10s, and do it every 7 sec or so, whereas the necro BiP can deal 2550 damage but over 30s, only be able to do it every 30s and also suffers a self-bleed?

The word “balance” doesn’t come to mind here.

Uh… What?

The staff has 1200 range, and with the 20% recharge trait and Greater Marks, I can effectively control an area with conditions and other CC. Move 300 units closer, and you’re in Epidemic range. It only takes one person who blows their condition removal too early for me to wipe a group of players.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Looking at the wiki, it doesn’t indicate a cooldown for Death Blossom, but it says you need 5 initiative. The entry for initiative says “Initiative will replenish naturally at one point every 1.33 seconds.”

So, then the thief can deal 1275 damage bleeds over 10s, and do it every 7 sec or so, whereas the necro BiP can deal 2550 damage but over 30s, only be able to do it every 30s and also suffers a self-bleed?

The word “balance” doesn’t come to mind here.

Necromancers are one of the few classes in the game that can benefit from conditions on us. If the self-bleed bothers you, I strongly urge you to look deeper into the skills at your disposal and see just how many ways you can turn it to your advantage.

JohnnyBoy.5471:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Looking at the wiki, it doesn’t indicate a cooldown for Death Blossom, but it says you need 5 initiative. The entry for initiative says “Initiative will replenish naturally at one point every 1.33 seconds.”

So, then the thief can deal 1275 damage bleeds over 10s, and do it every 7 sec or so, whereas the necro BiP can deal 2550 damage but over 30s, only be able to do it every 30s and also suffers a self-bleed?

The word “balance” doesn’t come to mind here.

Necromancers are one of the few classes in the game that can benefit from conditions on us. If the self-bleed bothers you, I strongly urge you to look deeper into the skills at your disposal and see just how many ways you can turn it to your advantage.

I’m quite familiar with dealing with self-bleeds. The point is that the single target damage of bleeds from DB are 50% higher DPS and can be applied 3-4x more often than the necros’ BiP (untraited). From a utility comparison viewpoint, this is quite unbalanced.

Sure, we have Epidemic, which allows us to multiply BiP DPS by 5 if the stars line up right and the targets all allow their bleeds to run the full 30s.

[/quote]

I’m quite familiar with dealing with self-bleeds. The point is that the single target damage of bleeds from DB are 50% higher DPS and can be applied 3-4x more often than the necros’ BiP (untraited). From a utility comparison viewpoint, this is quite unbalanced.

Sure, we have Epidemic, which allows us to multiply BiP DPS by 5 if the stars line up right and the targets all allow their bleeds to run the full 30s.

[/quote]

This is true, if BiP is your only bleed. Thieves only have DB to apply their bleeds (in melee, let’s talk about pistols later). We have the first two attacks of our auto attack, Grasping Dead, and Enfeebling Blood to apply our bleeds, and the latter two skills also apply their conditions in an AoE (Epidemic also becomes incredibly more powerful when used with AoE conditions, but let’s set that aside for now). For a Thief to apply the same amount of bleeds, they’d have to use all of their initiative and remain in melee, where as Necromancers can do the same from 900 units out.

Also the reason I threw EB in with the other bleeds is because any Conditionmancer worth his salt will be using a Scepter/Dagger setup.

Caveth.3268:

I have to say that of all of my characters, necromancers are quite clearly the most useless of all the classes in this game for WvW. .

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plague
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plague_of_Darkness
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_Transfer

And btw necros kill thieves and mesmers.

This thread is flat-out wrong. Epidemic is probably the most amazing AOE tool in the game.

Also, thieves die a lot more easily than necromancers, although necromancers do take more skill to stay alive.

JohnnyBoy.5471:

I’m quite familiar with dealing with self-bleeds. The point is that the single target damage of bleeds from DB are 50% higher DPS and can be applied 3-4x more often than the necros’ BiP (untraited). From a utility comparison viewpoint, this is quite unbalanced.

Sure, we have Epidemic, which allows us to multiply BiP DPS by 5 if the stars line up right and the targets all allow their bleeds to run the full 30s.

[/quote]

This is true, if BiP is your only bleed. Thieves only have DB to apply their bleeds (in melee, let’s talk about pistols later). We have the first two attacks of our auto attack, Grasping Dead, and Enfeebling Blood to apply our bleeds, and the latter two skills also apply their conditions in an AoE (Epidemic also becomes incredibly more powerful when used with AoE conditions, but let’s set that aside for now). For a Thief to apply the same amount of bleeds, they’d have to use all of their initiative and remain in melee, where as Necromancers can do the same from 900 units out.

Also the reason I threw EB in with the other bleeds is because any Conditionmancer worth his salt will be using a Scepter/Dagger setup.
[/quote]

Ah, if as you say, thieves only have DB for melee bleeds, then that makes more sense, because of all the ways we have to apply bleeds that you mention, along with the Barbed Precision trait. That probably evens out the overall single target bleed damage considerably.

It’s actually not a question; it’s a mathematical fact. Necromancers do more condition DPS than any other class. The only class that comes close is ranger.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Looking at the wiki, it doesn’t indicate a cooldown for Death Blossom, but it says you need 5 initiative. The entry for initiative says “Initiative will replenish naturally at one point every 1.33 seconds.”

So, then the thief can deal 1275 damage bleeds over 10s, and do it every 7 sec or so, whereas the necro BiP can deal 2550 damage but over 30s, only be able to do it every 30s and also suffers a self-bleed?

The word “balance” doesn’t come to mind here.

This ignores a lot of differences between classes and skills, (Initiative costs are kind of strange compared to typical recharges since they have ‘small’ costs but all of them take from the same small pool) but let’s go with some of the more egregious ones.

Firstly, death blossom requires D/D specifically: no other weapon combination will allow you to use it. Blood is power, being a utility skill, can be added to any weapon set.

Secondly, death blossom is near-melee range, and makes you jump over your target. Blood is power is 1200 range, and allows free movement.

Thirdly, death blossom dodges during the animation and is a (small) AoE. Blood is Power is single target, but also applies ten stacks of might for 12 seconds.

So comparing just the raw damage numbers and recharges (however much they apply to thief weapon skills) seems like a small piece of the picture, even before you take into account how different the two classes are.

I suppose this is sort of off-topic, but I feel like you need to compare all aspects of the skills in question, at the very least. And ignoring the 10 stacks of might on blood is power is ignoring well over half the skill.

Thieves aren’t attrition classes. Saying they are is absolutely ridiculous; yes you can force them to somewhat fit that role, but they will never fit it like classes that are built specifically for it.

Bhawb.7408:

Thieves aren’t attrition classes. Saying they are is absolutely ridiculous; yes you can force them to somewhat fit that role, but they will never fit it like classes that are built specifically for it.

But a well played P/D is pure attrition play, as the OP states it is the best attrition PvP build/profession available in the game.
He outlasts you while whittling away your HP with condition damage.

Unlike certain professions, a thief can change his play style for very different approaches, mostly with the same goal of killing you.

I’m sorry but Necro is not built for attrition either, or if it was supposed to be someone really screwed up.
And yes, I’ve read ANets manifestos and class philosophies, I found them incredibly amusing.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Caveth.3268:

I have to say that of all of my characters, necromancers are quite clearly the most useless of all the classes in this game for WvW. .

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plague
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plague_of_Darkness
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_Transfer

And btw necros kill thieves and mesmers.

Are you trying to claim that Plague is useful in wvw?

And are you trying to claim that Life Transfer won’t get interrupted in a zerg fight?

Plague is fine in WvW if you have the ability to sit in the damage. Otherwise you shouldn’t be close enough to use it anyway. Life transfer is amazing, if you want to pretend that every zerg is a perfectly coordinated mass of people that notice every ability worth dodging or interrupting you are obviously facing different zergs than I do.

As for P/D being attrition, of course it is. However you cannot take a single build and then extrapolate that to the rest of the class. A power build with Well of Suffering has incredible burst damage, but that doesn’t make us a burst class. Warriors have great support with banner support builds, but they aren’t a support based class.

A good necromancer should win any fight that isn’t already lost in the first burst or soon thereafter. We are only weak to that initial burst (as you won’t usually have LF to face tank it like you will later in the fight), after that we have insane DPS.

CHIPS.6018:

Are you trying to claim that Plague is useful in wvw?

And are you trying to claim that Life Transfer won’t get interrupted in a zerg fight?

1) Yes. Ever use it with food life steal buffs in a zerg fight aka zerg vs zerg b4 with blindness? And it is useful in PVE as well. In fact, I would say that I “led” zergs to victory quite a few times especially while defending and capturing Stonemist/forts/towers. In fact I switched from Engi to Necro once specifically to break a group defending at its tower lord after 20 min to 30 min of fruitless assaults.

2) No but u can stay of out of range for most melee interrupts etc. In my experience no one targets the Necro in Life Transfer until they realize they are getting hit for lots of damage + Sigil of Air / Fire proc on crit. Even then they may not know the source of the damage in a zerg. If u are running with a guardian in a zerg, Stability will work wonders too or if you really want to do hardcore wvw, run runes of lyssa, pop ur elite (perhaps flesh golem) and then go do a life transfer. More importantly, if it isn’t on CD, good luck to thieves running away after stealth

The issue is ; Facetanking damage isnt viable. Thusly Necro isnt an attrition class.

Any class that can avoid damage is going for far more attrition based than a class that has to soak it, without the soaking class having access to far above average regeneration.

Lopez.7369:

It’s actually not a question; it’s a mathematical fact. Necromancers do more condition DPS than any other class. The only class that comes close is ranger.

Really? I’d be surprised if that “fact” were true. Last time I looked, they couldn’t even reliably maintain 25 stacks of bleed by themselves, assuming they do not have a convenient secondary target that would humbly stay in range for all the necro’s aoe and kindly waited out their epidemic…

No single class can reliably maintain 25 stacks of bleeds.

Attrition does not mean face tanking. What makes necromancer the attrition class is all the tools the class has to prolong fights while wearing someone down with bleeds, such as Death Shroud, fears, poison, weakness, chill, blind, and condition transfers.

If you were ever expecting face tanking to be a part of Guild Wars 2, you simply don’t understand the fundamentals of the game’s combat.

wintermute.4096:

Lopez.7369:

It’s actually not a question; it’s a mathematical fact. Necromancers do more condition DPS than any other class. The only class that comes close is ranger.

Really? I’d be surprised if that “fact” were true. Last time I looked, they couldn’t even reliably maintain 25 stacks of bleed by themselves, assuming they do not have a convenient secondary target that would humbly stay in range for all the necro’s aoe and kindly waited out their epidemic…

I don’t believe there’s any class that can reliably maintain 25 stacks of bleeding by themselves. However if there is, it would be the Necromancer. Lopez hit it right on the head, no class can compete with the condition damage we put out.

Also finding volunteers to share the AoE with your main target s surprisingly easy, but that’s a whole different argument in itself.

warriors can inflict permanent 25 stacks of bleed btw, just saying.
single target, but hey its still 25.

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

warriors can inflict permanent 25 stacks of bleed btw, just saying.
single target, but hey its still 25.

i’ve never seen a warrior do this.

do you have a link?

fivekiller.1432:

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

warriors can inflict permanent 25 stacks of bleed btw, just saying.
single target, but hey its still 25.

i’ve never seen a warrior do this.

do you have a link?

I don’t have a link but I do have experience to confirm it.
20 points into the first two tree traits and dual sword kept my enemy(PvE) at 25 bleed stacks constantly, that 50% bleed duration+ trait is insane and with food I have very little doubt that I would’ve been able to make it last forever, as runes don’t matter. although the bleed duration sigil is pretty important.

Main reason why you don’t see warriors use 25 bleed stack builds is because the GS and Axe are wayyyy better.

No, they can’t.

I ran Fractals with a hybrid warrior once. She also claimed that 25 stacks on a target was easy, but I only saw 22 at the highest, and only on one target. This is what makes necromancer a such a powerful condition class. My necro can easily stack 18-20 stacks in a short amount of time, then all you gotta do is wait for others to stack the remaining five, then Epidemic and become a god. Bleeding was hitting 146 a tick, 25 times a second, on 6 targets. Do the math. All this and only with one stat dedicated to damage, so the remaining stats could be set in toughness and vit.
IMO, anyone says that the necro is useless in any situation doesn’t know how to play it. Blind, Well builds in WvW are terrifying, Conditionmancers in PVE devistate, and Dagger DPS builds can destroy in quick dungeon runs. Just cause we have the highest learning curve of any class, doesn’t mean we’re the worst.

Lucas.9162:

Conditionmancers in PVE devistate, and Dagger DPS builds can destroy in quick dungeon runs. Just cause we have the highest learning curve of any class, doesn’t mean we’re the worst.

I have to disagree:
1) Conditionmancer in PVE: Re: 25 stacks shared by others. And there can only be One … condition build in one party. If you need to destroy structures, you are out of luck. Also trash mobs are usually quickly killed, so u have to get ur bleed stacks started all over again on a single target that doesnt die.
2) Dagger DPS: May as well run Axe which is ranged. I dont know about dagger DPS builds to compare, but I will say that before bleed is power, I do 5k on Axe skill 2 on a COF p1 mob. After bleed is power 6k. I run hybrid knight and berzerker armor with ruby orbs + all berzerker accessories + cavalier backpiece. Not counting a bit of bleed damage and the high chance of sigil of air processing.
3) Highest learning curve: I leave that distinction to Engis and Elementalists.

Khal Drogo.9631:

I have to disagree:
1) Conditionmancer in PVE: Re: 25 stacks shared by others. And there can only be One … condition build in one party. If you need to destroy structures, you are out of luck. Also trash mobs are usually quickly killed, so u have to get ur bleed stacks started all over again on a single target that doesnt die.
2) Dagger DPS: May as well run Axe which is ranged. I dont know about dagger DPS builds to compare, but I will say that before bleed is power, I do 5k on Axe skill 2 on a COF p1 mob. After bleed is power 6k. I run hybrid knight and berzerker armor with ruby orbs + all berzerker accessories + cavalier backpiece. Not counting a bit of bleed damage and the high chance of sigil of air processing.
3) Highest learning curve: I leave that distinction to Engis and Elementalists.

1) Gear for condition damage, and you can just use a staff build to support your team, and epidemic whoever the condition damage guy is focusing. You won’t be pushing much bleeds off of their target, and every 15 seconds you can spread 25 bleeds to 5 enemies. You don’t even need to fight over bleeds, you can use someone else’s hard work to stack bleeds and just press 1 skill and be doing 5 times the damage.

Also, unlike most other condition professions, restacking bleeds is nothing to a necro. Most of our bleed stacking is based on auto attacking with scepter and a few very low CD abilities. Its as easy to start over again as double clicking the next mob.

Also, unlike most other condition professions, restacking bleeds is nothing to a necro. Most of our bleed stacking is based on auto attacking with scepter and a few very low CD abilities. Its as easy to start over again as double clicking the next mob.

Are you serious? This is just wrong. Elementalists, thieves, warriors, engineers, and rangers all have a weapon with bleed damage on auto attack. Its just as easy for them to stack bleeds as necromancers.

Theres a lot of back and forth in this thread. I’d just like to point out one thing though. There is a reason that necromancers are one of the least played classes in this game. There is a reason that necromancers are not included in any of the end game metas (speed farm groups, higher level factals, etc). Its not a “learn to play” issue as many people claim, because if it was just that simple, eventually people would have learned to play. Sad fact is, this class, along with engineers, is just not up to par with the other classes.

I have a necromancer with over 1000 hours played on it. I have 6 different exotic sets for that character. I’ve tried countless builds attempting to find something that works beyond niche builds. In PVE, other than epidemic which is this classes one trick pony, necromancers offer nothing unique. Using epidemic as an argument for why necromancers don’t suck is also an extremely poor argument. Basing a class around a single ability is bad design and poor balance. Take epidemic away or nerf it in any way and this class falls flat on its face. In PVP, I don’t even wanna talk about it. Just… no. Other classes just do everything else better.

With that said, there is always going to be a small group of people that cling to this class telling everyone else to L2P. The numbers speak for themselves though. If this class was worthy of being played, a lot more people would be playing it.

The highest end PvE is down to very specific things, usually a time warp mesmer and huge damage sources like warriors. That said, I don’t care much for high end PvE, and I doubt ANet is too preoccupied with making everything balanced at that level of the game. Right now, PvE has nothing to do with the challenge. Any dungeon is incredibly easy if you have teamwork and know what to do.

The reality is that people don’t like challenges. Its a fact of life that the vast majority of people are too lazy to do the difficult thing unless they are absolutely forced into it, regardless of what the outcome of that hard work might be. That is a huge portion of why the necro isn’t played often, people just plain hate difficulty. Paired with things like misconceptions and lack of burst damage, necromancers are also not as fun as other difficult classes like elementalists, and so are played less often. It has absolutely nothing to do with how competitive we are.

Bhawb.7408:

The highest end PvE is down to very specific things, usually a time warp mesmer and huge damage sources like warriors. That said, I don’t care much for high end PvE, and I doubt ANet is too preoccupied with making everything balanced at that level of the game. Right now, PvE has nothing to do with the challenge. Any dungeon is incredibly easy if you have teamwork and know what to do.

The reality is that people don’t like challenges. Its a fact of life that the vast majority of people are too lazy to do the difficult thing unless they are absolutely forced into it, regardless of what the outcome of that hard work might be. That is a huge portion of why the necro isn’t played often, people just plain hate difficulty. Paired with things like misconceptions and lack of burst damage, necromancers are also not as fun as other difficult classes like elementalists, and so are played less often. It has absolutely nothing to do with how competitive we are.

Necromancers aren’t difficult. The problems are much worse than that. If it was just difficulty you’d see at least some people rising to the level of other classes, but they just can’t do it due to the class mechanics.

So much crying, huh… Well, maybe it’s better that way. It’d be kinda scary to suddenly have a bunch of good necros in wvw. So, please, by all means, make yourself thieves since they’re really useful in large scale fights.

Halo.8976:

So much crying, huh… Well, maybe it’s better that way. It’d be kinda scary to suddenly have a bunch of good necros in wvw. So, please, by all means, make yourself thieves since they’re really useful in large scale fights.

Seeing as how the really good ones can solo groups of 3-4 people, I wouldn’t go around telling people that.

I would agree that due to class mechanics we will never see the highest end of PvE (which is based around speed, not something we do well). However in WvW and sPvP especially I think it is more an issue of people not seeing necro’s uses.

WvW necromancers are incredibly strong in big attack/defense situations. You need to be more careful because we don’t have the escapes that others do, but if you are actually paying attention you shouldn’t get caught out. We have our niche there just like mesmers do due to portals/time warp, and thieves for roaming/scouting.

PvP is definitely just an issue of perception in the community. Every tournament team I have played with have been completely fine with necromancers. The reason being that we have the most survivability with the least amount of investment. We also have builds that completely and utterly counter two of the most popular classes: guardians and elementalists (seriously, we crap all over them day and night). We are perfectly fine in PvP, and just as competitive as others.

Kravick.4906:

Seeing as how the really good ones can solo groups of 3-4 people, I wouldn’t go around telling people that.

Err not if the group includes just one necromancer who didnt blow his Life Transfer.

Halo.8976:

So, please, by all means, make yourself thieves since they’re really useful in large scale fights.

Actually they are useful with Shadow Refuge and their shortbow, but just not as useful as a necro in a large scale fight.

JohnnyBoy.5471:

It only takes one person who blows their condition removal too early for me to wipe a group of players.

Epidemic is good, but a whole group of players only have one condition clear among all of them? They must be bad then.

Bhawb.7408:

PvP is definitely just an issue of perception in the community. Every tournament team I have played with have been completely fine with necromancers. The reason being that we have the most survivability with the least amount of investment. We also have builds that completely and utterly counter two of the most popular classes: guardians and elementalists (seriously, we crap all over them day and night). We are perfectly fine in PvP, and just as competitive as others.

That’s just wording our terrible survivability with investment (vs other survival builds) to sound positive. Your last point does a better job at making necromancer sound situational than a competitive class.

The thread is about WvW and someone answered about Necro competitiveness in sPVP, its not the same thing. Necro’s ability to survive based on squating on a contest ring is much more synergistic than it is in the more open ranging combats of WvW. Especially something like wells are far less useful in WvW. In sPVP, mobility isn’t as good because if you get an opponent to run away, you are winning the spot.

In WvW, other professions with great mobility, exactly like the attrition builds talked about to start, can run away freely (unless on a keep ring) and just come back and re-engage you over and over till things go their way. In that sense they do out attrition us fairly well. Anet claimed one of the Necro strengths is locking someone down, but against competent opponents we really don’t have enough tools to do this as advertised.

Usually if thief, ele or mesmer can’t escape a Necro, its more their lack of skill than the Necro trapping them. Often the only way to kill these professions is trick the other player into thinking they are going to win so that they keep engaged at low enough health to where you can overcome them at the end. But considering our lack of burst and what a thin line this runs, its extremely risky.

Monoman.2068:

Bhawb.7408:

PvP is definitely just an issue of perception in the community. Every tournament team I have played with have been completely fine with necromancers. The reason being that we have the most survivability with the least amount of investment. We also have builds that completely and utterly counter two of the most popular classes: guardians and elementalists (seriously, we crap all over them day and night). We are perfectly fine in PvP, and just as competitive as others.

That’s just wording our terrible survivability with investment (vs other survival builds) to sound positive. Your last point does a better job at making necromancer sound situational than a competitive class.

No he is absolutely correct. We hard counter the two most popular classes in the game. I actually get requests to bring my Necro over any other class I play simply because we can take down Elementalists, mesmers, and Guardians faster and better than anyone.

We also have a better lifespan if played correctly. Using DS correctly combined with siphon life abilities are the simplest survival skills in the game.

Rannulf.9417:

A class that’s built around condition damage and applying them

That’s a common mistake.

Necros are based around using Conditions, but not necessarily Condition Damage!

You can certainly base your build around Condition damage if you want, but Power based Necros are meant to be just as viable.
After all there are 11 conditions out of which only 4 do damage.
And out of those 11 conditions Necromancers have relatively easy access to all except two of the most damaging ones: Confusion and Burning.

Many Necros ignore Power completely and base their entire build around 1 Condition (Bleed).
It’s powerful but not very flexible and certainly not the only thing the Profession is meant to do.

Cripple, Vulnerability, Chill, Weakness and Blind are all very powerful tools.
It’s easy to underestimate them because Necros themselves deal with most Conditions so easily compared to just about everyone else.
Playing a few alts gives you a bigger picture, as does running a Necro build with very little Condition control.
Cripple and Chill mess up many Leap skills and Blind completely ruins some combos.

Anyway I got preachy again. Sorry. :P
It just annoys me because I believed that all non-Condi Damage builds were horribly UP and ran the same Staff+Scepter/Dagger builds for so long until I learned to experiment a bit.

I agree that running away in WvW is way too difficult for Necros.
It’s hard to the point that I made a Thief alt and leveled it to 80.

You can only really run from a Zerg if there’s a cliff and you use Spectral Walk to negate the fall damage or if you are near tower your server owns and you use Death Shroud and/or Plague to survive long enough to get in.

As for Thieves their role is meant to be “hit and run”.
To hit they Bleed or Stab and to run they usually Stealth, sometimes just retreat really fast.

Their ability to run away at any time is ridiculously good in WvW due to all the open areas and the long distances.

If I was ever concerned about survivability, I would equip Summon Flesh Wurm and Spectral Walk. Some opposing players cannot deal with the idea of necros teleporting. They are also break stuns. As for WvW being open world etc, wouldnt large scale zerg combat, siege assaults and siege defense take up at least 50% of WvW?

I agree that necros lack the mobility to escape in general though. What I do to try to shake free is to Mark the ground behind me and pray that I get to a safe zone or a group of friendlies.

Let me get this straight.People here are complaining that their RANGED 20k+ hp and that other dimension version of a necro can’t do the same in a PvP as the MELEE around 12k hp thief ?Are you people serious ?Talking about balance?How is this balanced if a necro can do the same amount of dmg and condition stacks as the thief,whose strenght should be PvP(only thieves know how much it sucks on farming events in orr,when your computer is not worth 6000 usd).Why should I play then thief if my PvE event/dungeon AoE DPS is limited and a ranged hero can do the same as me in PvP?

Necromancers are perfect at CONTROLLING conditions …and I just love transferring conditions! Something I believe that no other class can do (Only play Necro so I may be wrong ) Hit me with those 25 stacks of bleed and I’ll pass ’em right back to you. Want to poison/bleed/burn me and my party? Let my staff #4 share the love!

…wasn’t there a trait for minions to transfer conditions as well? I cannot remember now.

Anyways, I believe somebody stated earlier that it takes only one person to mess up with his/her condition removal and you have an Epidemic on hand! Don’t even mention Blood is Power!

Necromancers may not be a “fast-hard-hitting” class but we sure are masters at shifting conditions.

I would like a lot of things to be different, but mostly just in the culling department.
We lack a LOT of things, but I really don’t feel underpowered. I do agree that we are a rarity in warfronts though.

My armor is balanced, and with 24.5k health I can’t complain. With food, I sit around 3400 attack and my bleeds seem to tick from 80 to 120. That said, even though they aren’t spammable, dropping all 4 marks on a single spot (be it wall, small group or individual) is a good deal of damage. Sadly, I have been hit by barrage and firestorm for as much damage as all my marks combined (and I’m not a gc spec), but I am still enjoying playing my necro.

We certainly aren’t the best at anything, but we are a good class.

The only thing that makes me laugh and frustrates me at the same time is fear.
Originally we were the “only” class with access to this “powerful” condition.
Besides warriors who have a better version of it, and thieves, who when they steal it from us, it lasts 3 times as long. Did I mention ranger pets and fear?

At least now they have “fixed” the profession tab on the official site to no longer say any of that.

I do feel UP when compared to Thieves, but that’s mostly down to what I wanted the class to be in the first place. I wanted the class to be the counter to burst classes like the Thief, by forcing fights to take far longer than most burst classes are prepared for and crushing them by putting out more sustained DPS than they can compensate for and soaking bursts with DS.

All that works great, and there are multiple builds that do exactly that. Unfortunately, in WvW two things invariably happen that cause that concept to be worthless. Either someone’s friends show up or they run away. If their friends show up I have almost no way of retreating, and if they run away I have no way to chase them.

Stealth makes this even more frustrating, but the heart of the problem is that our class concept is designed around longer fights and we lack the mobility to ensure that those fights actually last as long as we need them to. The easiest fix to both problems would be changing Dark Path so that if it doesn’t hit anything we at least teleport to to max range (and speed the projectile up a bit).

But, that would give us a viable escape as well as a viable chasing mechanic which may be unbalanced….somehow.

Pendragon.8735:

JohnnyBoy.5471:

It only takes one person who blows their condition removal too early for me to wipe a group of players.

Epidemic is good, but a whole group of players only have one condition clear among all of them? They must be bad then.

Because nobody blows their heal or condition removal prior to seeing Epidemic, right?

If you’re in the middle of a zerg, your health is slowly being whittled away by the mass number of AoE’s. Now imagine at ~60% you just got hit with 20+ stacks of bleeding out of nowhere (a situation that occurs more often than not, in my experience). Even with the proper reactions, those bleeds are going to do a number on you.

And I play on Sanctum of Rall, for what it’s worth. My server is constantly put up against the other top tier servers in WvW, which are lacking an abundance of bad players (not saying they’re not out there, but they’re outnumbered by the amount of people who know what they’re doing).

Not to mention that Epidemic has a 12 or 15 second CD, meaning even if you do have the ability (and few builds do) to cleanse every Epidemic, you are completely open to every other condition in the mean time.

You people need to learn to run necro bombs. 1 necro can be cleansed, a few necros using epidemic will drop zergs in an instant. The amount of conditions that a group of necros paired with 1 or 2 engineers can inflict on people in insane, and no amount of condition removal can keep up (and even then people will have to run EXTRA condition removal to try and keep up and that takes up extra slots).

l2necro.

continued on next page, silly forum bug