Guild Wars 2

to play well compared to the Engineer?

Thanks for the feedback!

So after leveling an engineer to 80 and 90% world completion I have come to believe the only effiecient way to pve is with bombs/grenades.

I am looking for some variety at this point in my builds and some fun in WvWvW. I dont think I could play something so straight forward as a warrior but having to rely on kits is a downer.

I started this class because of pistols, elixers, and turrets.. none of which are reliable with RNG, and DMG.

Also interested in Mesmers, Guardians.

I have numerous 80s and honestly I think the Engineer was the hardest to level and play at 80 compared to every other class. Necromancer I would consider to be the 3rd easiest class to level out of them all with Guardian and Warrior being on top.

There’s basically two main builds for the Necromancer. The standard is the S/D + Staff condition build (0/30/0/0/0 base with the other 40 where ever) and the D/H + <choice> power well build (dunno off top of my head) mostly revolving around meleeing and doing wells.

The condition build is stupid easy to play. You basically auto attack to build up bleeds and then use abilities. The most complex part you could do is to clip your auto attack chain. So you’d do 1, 1, then cast 2 to 1, 1 then cast 5 then 1, 1 then cast Blood is power…etc so you’re not wasting time with poison and stacking the more powerful bleeds. Then when you stack enough dots on a target you hit epidemic and spread them around to all nearby targets and now everything in a 20 mile radius is bleeding with 10-15 stacks of bleed and dies shortly there after. Super simple, super easy. You also get perma speed if you throw on Signet of the Locust which makes kiting with your near perma crippling AOE even easier.

On the WvW front I was not entirely impressed but WvW means different things to different people. From a massive battle standpoint they can be somewhat lack luster at times. It’s fun to land a good Epidemic in a large crowd but you aren’t going to be clearing anyone off the walls with some light hitting Marks from staff. He really has no ranged burst moves which means getting kills at long distance engagements (1200) is pretty sub-par. That said I didn’t think it was entirely worthless and used to have fun doing Plague on doors yanking people off walls with Spectral Grasp. Finding a Guardian (who almost always have Save Yourselves) and then doing Corrupt Boon and then Epidemic always makes me laugh too. From a solo or small WvW scale there’s plenty of videos of the power well build out there dominating.

Where the necro somewhat suffers is they lack a large number of active defenses built into the classes like the Mesmer. This can lead to them suffering in scenarios like SPvP because they can’t always handle the burst some classes can put out on them. That doesn’t mean they’re worthless, just can be sub-optimal at times.

Nitpick, but I clear folks off of walls with marks all the time in WvW. It’s actually really easy to do because people don’t pay as much attention to it as other attacks on the wall. Plus, when you drop the marks on them, they never see the circle.

Mark chain+ Epidemic has gotten me numerous kills on defenders atop walls.

my main is a necro and i have an engineer at lvl 52
yes necro was a lot easier to lvl than an engineer, only minions have kinda glitchy AI
like the engineer turrets. minions are useful early on, but from lvl 50 onwards near useless from what i have experienced.

You were also interested in necro vs guardian I think too.

My main is a guardian lvl 80 with 100% world completion complete personal story and a full set of exotic armour and weapons, some serious pvp levels and lots of wvw experience. I am now working on a 2nd character a necro currently level 50ish.

In my view guardian is a more intuitive character with skills that work together far better than necro.
Take the guardian greatsword, skill 5 to bind a mob then pull it, 4 to build vulnerability, some damage and set up a combo field then 2 to do insane damage and form the combo finisher, then 1 1 1 while in cooldown including a 2nd combo finisher and repeat with 3 as an alternative to 5 to jump to the mob rather than pulling it.

Necro on the other hand with dagger dagger has 5 good / useful skills that just don’t work together in that way and leave you often waiting for cooldown until your next damage burst.

Necro (oddly imo) has far more hp than guardian but survives far less well in light armour as oppose to the guardians heavy and better heals.

To answer you then I would say that for a casual player guardian is easier to play well than a necro, but once the concepts of each have been learnt the move from playing well to being very good / exceptional is going to be more about the player than the class and therefore both equally easy / hard.

Necro was a cakewalk compared to the Enigneer. Mostly because of the Necro’s aoes and my decision to level the engie up using a rifle / static build.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Nitpick, but I clear folks off of walls with marks all the time in WvW. It’s actually really easy to do because people don’t pay as much attention to it as other attacks on the wall. Plus, when you drop the marks on them, they never see the circle.

Mark chain+ Epidemic has gotten me numerous kills on defenders atop walls.

Kills? Or downs?

I get downs all the time doing that, but no one dies, because you can’t do anything to them once they go down behind the wall. I guess if you have ranger or an ele or an arrowcart pelting the body… Or if someone was bad enough to let you stack on them while they were standing in range of a downed ally not helping him long enough for your epi to recharge.

I find necros fine for active keep assualt, but they can’t do anything to siege, or downed players.

The Necro is very forgiving in terms of survivability but is considerably less forgiving when trying to kill things. I play a Wellomancer sacrificing some stats to stack Healing Power and Ranged Wells currently but even when I was running full condition in WvW, even if you do momentarily stack 10-15 bleed, chill, poison and cripple on somebody and land a good epidemic I found that outright kills are actually quite rare (since GW2 goes by Allied rules of kill claiming though, you will still get a kill in your stats). What is much more common is that everyone you just give a crapton of conditions to will have to (or be persuaded to) dodgeroll back and get to safety for a few seconds while they get a hold of themselves and that allows your zerg to move forward or stops them from bombing everyone else from the wall. The principle is the same for marks and wells – they’re easy to avoid or get out of but the key is that’s exactly what they do and so the other team loses position or morale. There’s also Well of Blood which is an absolutely epic heal since mine can be cast from range, ticks 11 times for 700+ and applies protection. That thing alone will keep the boys banging on the door even when everything else is telling them to bolt back and heal. It’s a very abstract and unfortunately thankless way of contributing.

Overall though, MUCH easier time than an Engineer in anything but sPvP

I played an Engi back before I got really into my Necro. After a long Necro stint I dusted off the Engi again and I have to say… Engi is hard, yo!

As far as PvP goes though, I’d put both towards the bottom of the “easiest class to play” list.

Rennoko.5731:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Nitpick, but I clear folks off of walls with marks all the time in WvW. It’s actually really easy to do because people don’t pay as much attention to it as other attacks on the wall. Plus, when you drop the marks on them, they never see the circle.

Mark chain+ Epidemic has gotten me numerous kills on defenders atop walls.

Kills? Or downs?

I get downs all the time doing that, but no one dies, because you can’t do anything to them once they go down behind the wall. I guess if you have ranger or an ele or an arrowcart pelting the body… Or if someone was bad enough to let you stack on them while they were standing in range of a downed ally not helping him long enough for your epi to recharge.

I find necros fine for active keep assualt, but they can’t do anything to siege, or downed players.

Kills. Greater Marks means I can keep dropping them on the downed opponent who suffers the effects when one of his allies (even if it’s an NPC) invariably triggers them. If I don’t see enemies up on the wall, then my Flesh Wurm finishes him off.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Kills. Greater Marks means I can keep dropping them on the downed opponent who suffers the effects when one of his allies (even if it’s an NPC) invariably triggers them. If I don’t see enemies up on the wall, then my Flesh Wurm finishes him off.

Your marks must do a considerable amount more damage than mine do. Even with an NPC ressing someone on a wall, with no one else around, my marks dropped on that NPC and downed player will not kill anyone faster than the res speed of the NPC. The staff skill cooldowns are too long. (Again talking about if you are alone without eles bombing the wall).

And honestly what kind of people are you fighting that stand on the edge of the wall, or just slightly back when they are taking dot damage or direct damage that is about to down them?

You have to admit the “norm” for wall defense is that people move back from the wall when they are going down so they can res in safety?

Pushing people back into the keep off the walls we excell at, but I would love to know what build you run that is killing them outright, unless it is a ranged well bomb build.

I don’t think much about worm, but casting him up there is a great idea to prevent them from healing, if there are no NPC’s around. That is an idea I will have to use more often.

Again, Greater Marks means they don’t need to be close to the edge to be hit (placed correctly, they basically have to be entirely off the wall to avoid being hit). They don’t notice it hitting them due to the mark triggering as soon as you place it and it gives a very subtle indicator that it went off. Bleed damage is less noticeable anyway than direct, so people often don’t retreat until it is too late. Mark of Blood is fairly spammable and does great damage so long as you went condition damage (my condition damage is 1580+ pre buffs. Post buffs I easily hit 1900).

And while you are attacking a tower/keep, those NPC’s atop the walls aren’t ressing anyone. They’re too busy firing ineffective arrows out at the attackers.

As for the flesh wurm, I love using him when I attack towers/keeps. He is either free damage to defenders or he distracts them for a bit and gives a bit of relief to my allies. Either way, I come out on top from that move.

I just noticed you were a Dragonbrand Char Necro…. I will have to hunt you down this evening so I can wave at you. I almost never see necros about, let alone char ones. I rolled the statistically overplayed human female necro because I wanted to be relatively small, not alien/plant-like, and inconspicous. On Maguuma.

Rennoko.5731:

I just noticed you were a Dragonbrand Char Necro…. I will have to hunt you down this evening so I can wave at you. I almost never see necros about, let alone char ones. I rolled the statistically overplayed human female necro because I wanted to be relatively small, not alien/plant-like, and inconspicous. On Maguuma.

I may or may not be in WvW tonight. Sometime this week, though, I’m all for it.

I agree, though. Charr necros are rather rare in WvW (and in PvE). Necros in general are underrepresented there for no apparent reason.