I’ve defended the Necromancer a lot until the past two weeks or so(when I started understanding Mesmers more). My first character since BWE #1 was the Necromancer and played it every beta when not testing other professions. It was my first character since headstart and still my only fully exotic geared character. The grass doesn’t just look greener, we have no grass while they have the garden of Eden.
I’ve tested pretty much all the utilities, weapons, traits the Necromancer has to offer. Some do work, others are terrible but one remains constant. Whatever that you end up coming up with that does work, it will be outperformed or will be easier to execute if you took the same idea and put it on another class (MESMERS).
Some of the issues are a bit fundamental. The Necromancer focuses a bit too much on the negative side of effects with possibly the most limited access to boons unless you specifically go out of your way to grab them. We’re supposed to use Weakness instead of Protection, Blind instead of Aegis yes, but guess what, Guardians can use both. Instead of merely decreasing damage output on one side of the spectrum, they can do it from both angles easily.
I’m not a Minion type person I’ll admit, but free meat shields sounds good while leveling yes? Horrid AI is common knowledge now, and well..Jagged Horrors? It doesn’t even trigger Death Nova when it cease to exist, we don’t even have a way to manually trigger these explosions and the cool downs are just terrible. The last slap in the face is that they take up an utility slot compared to Mesmer illusions.
If you want to play a Minion Master type, stack power and go to town with Mesmer phantasms. They actually reliably hit targets(Gasp), have relatively low cool downs, are on your weapon sets and you can manually detonate them(Shatter is clunky at times but it works well enough and the effects are really strong). Yes they can only target one thing at a time, but nothing is stopping you from spreading them out between targets. They got their own take on Death Nova too, Debilitating Dissipation and Crippling Dissipation.
Condition Necromancers, its manipulation skills are touted as the one of its strongest points right now is also completely outclassed by Mesmers. For one, they can easily strip boons/condition better with just Null Field alone(it basically kitten Wells), Arcane Thievery gives them both a transfer and a boon steal. Additionally, Barbed Precision is severely kittened when you look at Sharper Images. This means a Mesmer (counting himself) can have 4 sources to stack bleeds from at any given moment.
They get Might/Fury just by auto-attacking while proccing burns at a higher rate than Guardians or Engineers on top of the bleeds. Do you have smooth transitions down between staff, scepter and shroud to maximize your bleed output? That’s very nice, did you know all they have to do is spam Staff auto-attack and focus on popping utilities to react to the fight?
With Death Shroud, we’re paying the price by not having access to a stun-break that is under a minute cool down, we also have no mobility that is worthy to speak of, disengaging or roaming potential is completely zilch. We also lack options for control effects relative to every other class and our defensive cool downs are so watered down.
TLDR: Reroll Mesmer if you’re looking for a better Necromancer. They have the best iterations of your utilities and MORE on lower cool downs while being a complete frustration for foes to even touch. Guardians are your best bet if you’re going for a more defensive approach.
I’ve shelved my Necromancer for a Mesmer in tPvP now while I kill time with a Guard/Eng in PvE. And yea, I am pretty upset, a class I’ve spent a huge number of hours experimenting, researching from even before the game released is complete garbage once you branch out and understand how other classes can do the play-style you want to play.
(edited by Lumines.3916)