Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone.

I live to PvP, mainly WvW in this game.
My main was Thief and i had an awesome time on him, but im not gonna go OTT here and get all the other thieves on my back so ill just say it was hardly a challenge spamming the same 2 buttons. So i moved on and now have a lvl80 warrior i use as my AoE cash cow and a lvl80 Mesmer who is my new PvP main.

Im loving the Mesmer, you realy have to think to be effective (i play as a roamer in WvW).
Anyway, back on topic. I started a Necro to use as a crafter, i have never ever crafted before but have decided to give it a go. While i was out messing around and farming mats (lvl10 atm) i realised im actualy becoming quite fond of the class.

My question is this, i like to play as a roamer. I know on my Mesmer i have never faced a Necro i couldn’t beat and the only other classes that realy roam are thieves. So…. im looking at equaly skilled players here, can a Necro beat a Thief? I know i could beat less skilled Mesmers, but could i beat a same skilled thief?

Im asking this because i don’t want to fall in love with the class and then find that i have to adopt an alien playstyle in WvW. I like to run solo or in small groups and take supply depots and kill whoever crosses my path.
Is the Necro viable for this?

Don’t come to this forum to ask! The downers (i.e. basically everyone) will tell you no, the class is broken, don’t bother, uninstall necro, etc. JK. No but seriously people will complain.

I do alright against thieves in WvW, I can win probably 50/50 but I’m still learning how to have good control (not spam keys frantically). I would recommend you level a necro, find a build you like, and test it out against thieves yourself. That way you will have strong anecdotal evidence one way or the other.

There is a huge balance update coming and likely a ton of our problems will be fixed, so by the time you are ready to WvW the necro will be in a much better position than it is now.

EDIT: here is an awesome build that can be used for roaming and murdering people in WvW: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Those-having-trouble-with-Necro/first

Sound advice Lettuce
There are (believe it or not) also doubters on the Mesmer side who run a mile when they see a thief, i was one of them untill i grew into the class and found that i could win 90% of the fights that didn’t end in the thief running away, by having the right build and going toughness heavy.

The thing is that i always kind of knew that the Mesmer was a realy good 1v1v2v3 class, its one of the reasons i picked it, because that is my playstyle.
So with Necro, im just asking if they can solo / small group roam effectively, or am i going to regret the wasted time next week lol?

No, the class is broken, don’t bother, uninstall Necro. He was meant to be a mini anyway.

Well for sure you will have a harder time then your Thief or your mesmer.

Necro lack an easy escape mecanism to escape zerg when you are roaming.

Myself, I’m roaming with a mesmer friend in WvW all night long. he does most of the work, but I’m still here to tank the damage, since people tend to not target a Mesmer because they are so hard to kill. They go straight for the necro that can’t escape.

That’s why I started using Flesh worm, to at least have an escape mecanism. Still doesn’t work much of the time, but hey better than nothing.

The issue when fighting thief is, even if you can vanquish them, most of the time you won’t kill them. Nearly 90% of the time in WvW, when I get a thief below 50%, he just pop invis and run away, porting with short bow.

Maybe a Frostmancer could be good vs Thief, never tried one.

Necros are done

Humanogrowth.8059:

Necros are done

And violets are blue.

Ill own your face

On any class i choose

Kardiamond.6952:

Maybe a Frostmancer could be good vs Thief, never tried one.

Not sure, as they can trait to remove conditions while stealthed stealth.

if you had the choice between Necro and Ele, which way would you go for WvW, im being serious… a seriouse question, what would you do knowing all you know now.

I seriously want a second toon in WvW to complement my mesmer, and im tired of thief.

Ele is definately a better roamer with the mobility.

Knote.2904:

Ele is definately a better roamer with the mobility.

So if you could swap your Necro for an Ele… same lvl and same gear right now!! You would?

ArcticRed.3068:

Knote.2904:

Ele is definately a better roamer with the mobility.

So if you could swap your Necro for an Ele… same lvl and same gear right now!! You would?

I would onestly…

ArcticRed.3068:

Knote.2904:

Ele is definately a better roamer with the mobility.

So if you could swap your Necro for an Ele… same lvl and same gear right now!! You would?

Considering Ele was my 2nd choice profession I wouldn’t be against it. They’re both kind of lacking overall though. Necro is a little more of my playstyle.

Doesn’t change the fact that Ele is a better roamer in WvW lol, that’s all I said.

I used to main an Ele but I got tired of the lack of build options and the limitation of not having weapon swapping – not that 20 skills wasn’t enough but because you’re forced to work within a single range i.e. melee (MH Dagger), medium range casting (MH Scepter), or long range (staff). With Necro I might not have RTL but I do have swiftness up 90% of the time, and I can work from both max range with staff and melee with dagger. I also have an Oh kitten bubble with DS when someone gets the jump on me. Awesome condition control and boon removal, solid dmg through power specs, and 2x HP pools. And not mention we’re only going to get better as we get our bugs fixed. How could there NOT be a future for us?

Knote.2904:

ArcticRed.3068:

Knote.2904:

Ele is definately a better roamer with the mobility.

So if you could swap your Necro for an Ele… same lvl and same gear right now!! You would?

Considering Ele was my 2nd choice profession I wouldn’t be against it. They’re both kind of lacking overall though. Necro is a little more of my playstyle.

Doesn’t change the fact that Ele is a better roamer in WvW lol, that’s all I said.

Hey im not having a go, i respect that. Thanks for the info.

I don’t wanna go to lvl80 and ditch another toon. I want something i can enjoy alongside my Mesmer.
TY.

Edit: I think ill try Ele then…. not happy though, i kind of enjoyed Necro.

Necro’s are fantastic in WvW, but ‘roaming’ is not at all their strong suit. They do much better in large/siege fights.

1v1 isn’t that bad… you can still get popped like a paper balloon but lets say you are running wos+woc+i dono.. bone minions + golem/lich+spectral walk. Technically you could blow up any thief assuming you don’t miss immobilize/charge. 2 wells + minion explosion+charge and if its still not dead you can use lt. But its a 1 trick pony… same as thief and same as warrior. You get bored fast. And unlike thief you are sitting on 40+ seconds cds across the board. On top of that minion explosion is utterly unreliable, it does decen’t damage but they could ignore everything and stop so it becomes a matter of getting thief to come to your minions rather then anything else. Same with charge.
And that’s the only spec that is 1v1 friendly. Conditions are worthless if the other person is competent or unless its a zerg fest where its hard to keep track of whats landing on you.
Forgot to mention… if thief does dodge immobilize… and has half a clue your entire combo is pretty much a waste of time until you root skill is off cd. Wells are easy to dodge if you can’t dodge its a different story.
But yeah… if you haven’t started necro my best advise is to not bother… class is garbage and boring in the end most of things don’t work. Minions which should be staple of the class are utter disgrace. Water is a minion bane, one minion that can take a few hits and doesnt start fight with 1-10% hp every second fight is not usable in water. Also you dont have even 1… ONE… way to heal minions in water. Even if you went out of your way to spec for it.
All the minion heals are mark of blood… focus #4 which wont even heal all minions. If you waste greater trait on it with life transfer. And if you are willing to drop even more damage which you will severely lack as it is blood well. Which is frankly horrible because your minions will most likely each chase a different thing.

SPvP is a little different, but in WvW, I almost always can kill a thief 1v1, as my damage is high enough to kill them before they can do the same to me, and when they stealth up for a backstab, wells will rip through them pretty well.

The only real trouble I have they don’t render for a while after decloaking, giving them the ability to hit me a few times before I can see them – if they’re melee it’s not as big of an issue, as often I can kill them with wells and other aoe without having to see them, But if they keep range (pistol builds mainly) on top of taking advantage of culling, then I often struggle.

Mesmer is the only class that I universally struggle against with my setup, since I rely on doing a lot of attacks very quickly, confusion really hurts, also they have far to many stun breaks (blink, the stealth one, and the double illusion one are the first to come to mind).

Speaking as a power necro, in WvW you can be a surprisingly effective roamer because with Spectral Walk + Locust Swarm (#5 warhorn) you get perma swiftness. That, combined with the ganking power of the golem + dagger root, lets you hit the unsuspecting straggler like a freight train… but good luck escaping from the zerg if it catches you

And yeah, so long as you have life force, necros can survive and beat most thieves 1v1 unless they gib you with a ridiculous backstab crit

I sure as hello kitty island adventure hope they fix that in the upcoming patch, along with the rendering bug

Lets discuss highest backstab crit each one of us saw…
Im so far sitting at 19k… was a while back tho.
Oh did I forget to mention… I was full toughness… >_> with MM toughness. I hate respecing for wvw. And i refuse to play conditions in pve too. Anyway point is. With all my minions and tougness gear and spec and so on… it was 19k hit. Just 1 hit… for 19k…The little guy didn’t even render until he simply mauled me down while I was in downed state which followed shortly after that backstab lol

yes necros can easily solo a thief if you play to their strengths. instead of lobbing a bunch of trait points into power/condition damage like most people in this game sem to think is always nessescary (“theres no healer, so dps wins”) if you trait into survivability and put just enough into condition damage, its not hard to outlive a thief/slowly condition him down. its actually a very effective way to pvp as a necro. this is assuming you aren’t one of those people who just spam their skills all at once and get facerolled. you actually need to use your staff controlling effects/boon conversions and such at appropriate times.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Lets discuss highest backstab crit each one of us saw…
Im so far sitting at 19k… was a while back tho.
Oh did I forget to mention… I was full toughness… >_> with MM toughness. I hate respecing for wvw. And i refuse to play conditions in pve too. Anyway point is. With all my minions and tougness gear and spec and so on… it was 19k hit. Just 1 hit… for 19k…The little guy didn’t even render until he simply mauled me down while I was in downed state which followed shortly after that backstab lol

Pretty sure that this damage is impossible now, even with 25 stacks of Might (which thieves can not reach on their own).

As someone above mentioned, necro is very good in WvW, but I don’t feel roaming is their niche.

I primarily play conditionmancer, and they really are living siege engines. Well placed epidemics clear walls of defenders, decimate ram teams and mark of the reaper allows the crafty necromancer to load a frontliner full of nastiness, send em packing into their friends and detonate them like a delicious bleed-bomb.

Condition necros do… ok at best against thieves, and only if you can see them coming, but their do excel at ruining mesmers and bunker eles.

I’ve done some power necro stuff, but it’s just not my taste in playstyle.

On the other hand, there is a dude on SFR that uses a hybrid-like build, mostly with staff and ranged wells that does some SCARY things to zergs.

In summary, necro good; but probably not the best for roaming.

Problem in WvW is the fact that those walls makes many of our attacks miss outright… Those walls, seriously…. They break LoS alot…
Just an example, the Veteran Archers can plink me but I cant hit em with my scepter because they are obscured… If only Epidemic was instant cast instead of the very long animation I would be alot happier.

Drachshyish.2319:

Problem in WvW is the fact that those walls makes many of our attacks miss outright… Those walls, seriously…. They break LoS alot…
Just an example, the Veteran Archers can plink me but I cant hit em with my scepter because they are obscured… If only Epidemic was instant cast instead of the very long animation I would be alot happier.

Here’s a nice tip for you then. You can hit veteran archers with grasping dead, enfeebling blood

you can then drop mark of blood and chillblains on top of that and fire the epidemic.

Great way to catch people further back off guard, and clear towers.

I would suggest to not play a necro for roaming in WvW. Its not that we can’t, you could pick up the signet for the 25% move speed, and use a power build for some pretty strong 1v1, the problem isn’t that we can’t 1v1, its that we lack the mobility that other strong roamers have. Imo, mobility is more than just movement speed (which we can do fine), its about the blinks/near instant movement that ele/thieves have.

That said, necros are awesome in WvW, but we do better in small groups, where other people can help us hold targets down and escape, and in huge groups, where you can just spam staff marks/scepter attacks, and then press your Epidemic button every time its up and be successful. Besides, who doesn’t like seeing hundreds of numbers flying around on your screen after a good epidemic.