Guild Wars 2

I personally struggle since the game is out to play or not to play Necromancer.

Anytime i start playing “my most beloved class” i get disgusted by the way Anet portreyed a Nekromancer.
It is more of some Diablo-s third rate cultist then a real Dark Wizard. But still, i keep getting back and playing it, and realize a LOT of stuff that disturbs my gameplay directly.

Like : The lack of burst and non condition damage.
I understand that Nekro is supposed to be a “weaken the enemy” buff ally class, but he is still a “Mage” tipe of hero no matter what!!! Nekro needs normal nukes to and seriously asap.
I found a lot of places where condition build is ok, but there are getting more and more mobs and bosses where condition is just a waste, and they also remove them mostly.

Dagger build is simply not a “mage or wizard”. I hate it seriously. And its not even really an option when you get aoe ed away in 1 sec when going near any mob in dungeon.
Axe….no way. Noone is using it as faar as i seen players ( that still decide to play nekro..getting less and less), becouse of the stupid illusion shattering concept.
Staff? Putting aside the fact that you agro half the insta with a stupid looking hand (skill 1) i feel like some idiotic Rune Priest from Warhammer planting “glyph” mines. Instead of a staff wielding dark caster. And most of the dmg is still condition and insane cooldowns. You cant even make a decent staff build.

Scepter? Ok so this is my only option? Seriously whe whole class is based on 1 decently developed weapon? I actually dont even like it, since it looks more like "swing araund the wand’ then focusing spells trough it (like Mesmer does that looks cool)

So yes. AS more i pve and pvp i start feeling that Nekro cant do a thing if needs a Big nuke to burst. Or has no time to kite araund foes. No sustainable constant dmg without conditions.

My owerall experiance is that Nekro had a half complete design, it feels like he is still missing like 2-3 weapons. Or a non forced play style, that lets players decide how they play it, and are not forced to 2 build and 2 weapons to be atleast moderately powerfull.

(and lets not even start at, on minions topic)
Sorry for my bad english grammar. And misspellings. I dont mean to offend anyone, or to moan, but there are seriously problems with the class….and its a fact

Sadly MH Axe and OH Dagger gives me the most burst. I haven’t decided if I like the Staff all that much yet, but i’m only level 50. Doing quests that require killing of supplies or siege can be boring if you don’t have an Axe or Dagger. Arena Net is aware how players feel about the Necro right now, and I have faith that they’ll spin us in the right direction.

Its good to see that some agree with me. And not only jump on me for my opinion on the class.

I doo hope we atleast get a flash of info to get aur hopes high and give us strenght to continue playing the class.

not entirely a fan of staff in general
the conditiomancer build in general is pretty fun but the class still needs alor of work

Yeah, it is not too much fun to just get XP, Karma and Gold when killing Group Event bosses because we don’t deal enough damage to get the actual drops (unless there is a Chest, of course). And we can’t go with melee-range weapons cuz we’d be blasted with AoE skills (i.e.: Koi).

Ascii.9726:

Just remember ANet have said they know Necromancers are the most underpowered class in terms of damage and builds and they will be working on them a lot in upcoming patches.

That being said i do feel i do a decent amount of burst damage. When compared to other classes yes we are out-damaged but we still pack a mean punch. I’ve been building power, precision, crit DD and i’ve hit the cap (3.7k Power, 64% crit, 113% crit damage) and when i burst down an opponent or 3 (Axe + Warhorn soon to be dagger) i can pump out about 30k damage in the space of 8 seconds.

Unfortunately Necromancers have to work hard to get subpar damage compared to other classes.

Yes, but aren’t we a bit more durable than, say, an Ele who pumps out damage a bit better than ours? Thats something of a class tradeoff, no? I know we’re not even CLOSE to on level with Warriors/Thieves/whatever in terms of survivability and damage of course.

Here’s my experience with the class and this is coming from playing an Elementalist. I really enjoy the Necromancer in GW2. Its different. Its not about bursting someone down in 2 seconds, its about controlling the battlefield. Your teamates stacked a huge amount of boons on you, well now they are suddenly conditions. You put a bunch of conditions on me? I’m laughing as I turn them all into boons. I can fear…I have essentially 2 health pools….one of which has a moderate cooldown aoe life drain. I can fear, I can stack conditions on you and spread them to your entire team. These are obviously “conditional” (see what I did thar?) as you can’t have all those options at one time but you can tailor it to the situation. I LOVE this class. I was able to keep the Champion Giant busy with my bleeds to keep him from resetting while the rest of the group ran back from the waypoint. I get that bleeds can get overwritten by other people but as long as the stack stays up there I feel as though I’m contributing. I usually run Scepter/Dagger and Staff offhand. Love that combo. Anyways, just my thoughts.

Necro’s toss kittens at the moment, and hopefully ANet fixes that soon. The class dynamics are amazing and sound fun, but the numbers just aren’t there right now, and the small amount of people still playing Necro’s can attest to this.

Necro’s burst is going to come from Wells, and Lich Form.

Double well + immobilize + dagger autos = extreme dmg

I’ve done a power Staff/well glass cannon build that just does ridiculous aoe dmg.

There’s the bone minions you can detonate for a bit more burst.

Other than that it’s just, Axe/Focus vuln stacking and jumping in and out of Death Shroud Life Blasting and weaving your hard hitting attacks (spectral claws/life blasts) for decent DPS.

At times it does feel like Necro’s are lacking a weapon. Another 2 handed weapon that could either be a Minion based weapon, or just a straight up Direct Dmg nuker weapon.

Being able to dump life force for a massive burst of dmg (that looks impressive to boot) would be cool, or maybe Axe turned into more of a bursty weapon than a sustained DPS weapon. The spectral claws skill could combine with Unholy Feast (the aoe will put a spectral claws Dot on everyone) and the #2 skill could be some spike skill.

I expect that when they add more weapons to the game, it will be the Necro that gets the 2h axe.

Yes you can quote me on that.

I agree, in my view the way they portrayed the Necro is lols. I wanted to get a traditional dark wizard and got a vampire blood-loving sadistic shaman creating zombie gremlins and having a skull in every skill’s icon.

GG

To solve the issue with the burst damage and the lack of direct damage that is not auto-attack I would just give one of the off-hands a big hitting nuke.

We have 3 off-hands and all just give some kind of utility. Either give us a 4th or rework one of them to be the “direct dmg” offhand. Like removing spinal shivers boon removal and replace it with a hard hitting chill.

I totally agree with leman…spoke my mind.

And i also understand why Dorn says this, but “controlling” is not always happening, when a warr jumps on you and get 2-3 hitted by hundred blades spam.

And lets leave pvp, i am more like talking abaut pve, or general gameplay. I dont mind having melee skills, it adds a bit realism to the game. Since Any mage or wizard can fight, but the lach of proper “caster” nukes i feel Nekro totaly not Nekro.

We need a bigger DD ability for DE’s essentially. If everything I’ve been reading is true that once you hit 80, its overly difficult to score gold because EVERY other class has much higher DD than us, it should be fixed asap. What good is a 20 sec bleed if it only ticks once or twice and the mob dies or our bleeds don’t even register because everyone else stacks bleeds AND better DD, filling up the cap? Its a massive oversight that should’ve been handled in early beta, not ignored for what could be, months, far longer than most normal players will even stick with this class.

Or just change the code on DEs to just read “hits” not damage. Then all our bleeds and conditions will register as high as anyone else. Basically, if you’re there for over the 1/2 the fight, you’ll get gold, as it should be.

I’ve recently switched from scepter,dagger/staff condition to axe,focus/dagger,warhorn power and I’m absolutely loving it. It’s amazing how fast we can stack vulnerability. I’m assuming that our DD output was reduced too much in an attempt to account for the fast vuln stacks. This is great for groups, as bleed stacks max out awfully fast, but I had rarely seen full vuln stacks before switch. Condition builds kind of kill effective use of DS ( it just becomes a defensive cooldown ) where power builds get a lot more out of it. Between DS, Lich, and all of the movement speed buffs, I have insane survivability albeit relatively subpar damage.

andybmcc.8751:

I’ve recently switched from scepter,dagger/staff condition to axe,focus/dagger,warhorn power and I’m absolutely loving it. It’s amazing how fast we can stack vulnerability. I’m assuming that our DD output was reduced too much in an attempt to account for the fast vuln stacks. This is great for groups, as bleed stacks max out awfully fast, but I had rarely seen full vuln stacks before switch. Condition builds kind of kill effective use of DS ( it just becomes a defensive cooldown ) where power builds get a lot more out of it. Between DS, Lich, and all of the movement speed buffs, I have insane survivability albeit relatively subpar damage.

But I believe you have to also be in closer range making you vulnerable to AoE damage from bosses like Koi who stomps the ground and does insane damage to caster classes.

Knote.2904:

Necro’s burst is going to come from Wells, and Lich Form.

Double well + immobilize + dagger autos = extreme dmg

I’ve done a power Staff/well glass cannon build that just does ridiculous aoe dmg.

There’s the bone minions you can detonate for a bit more burst.

Other than that it’s just, Axe/Focus vuln stacking and jumping in and out of Death Shroud Life Blasting and weaving your hard hitting attacks (spectral claws/life blasts) for decent DPS.

At times it does feel like Necro’s are lacking a weapon. Another 2 handed weapon that could either be a Minion based weapon, or just a straight up Direct Dmg nuker weapon.

Being able to dump life force for a massive burst of dmg (that looks impressive to boot) would be cool, or maybe Axe turned into more of a bursty weapon than a sustained DPS weapon. The spectral claws skill could combine with Unholy Feast (the aoe will put a spectral claws Dot on everyone) and the #2 skill could be some spike skill.

I like your suggestions. Necro has too many weapon abilities that do anything but damage. Dagger auto attack is nice but why can’t we get poisons or bleeds like Thief auto attack? Theirs is much more potent. Scepter Feast of Corruption should do about 5x the damage it currently does. Stack conditions and using Feast as a burst ability would be perfect, except hit hits like a sock. Off hand weapons are also lacking in damage, except Enfeebling Blood. Or main hand weapons low damage makes it feel that way.

Devilsmack.5736:

But I believe you have to also be in closer range making you vulnerable to AoE damage from bosses like Koi who stomps the ground and does insane damage to caster classes.

For PvE, I’d swap out second set for staff. For PvP, I rarely melee even with dagger main. I use the drain, immobilize, and warhorn utilities. Sometimes I’ll warhorn daze something up in my grill, get a few smacks in with the dagger for life force, immobilize and drain, then warhorn sprint away and kite in DS until swap is up again.

Copenhagen.7015:

I like your suggestions. Necro has too many weapon abilities that do anything but damage. Dagger auto attack is nice but why can’t we get poisons or bleeds like Thief auto attack? Theirs is much more potent. Scepter Feast of Corruption should do about 5x the damage it currently does. Stack conditions and using Feast as a burst ability would be perfect, except hit hits like a sock. Off hand weapons are also lacking in damage, except Enfeebling Blood. Or main hand weapons low damage makes it feel that way.

You can spec for 66% chance on crit to bleed. With the attack speed of the dagger, you can actually get a few bleed stacks rolling. Sigil of Superior Earth will also let you stack bleeds on crit.

Or you could just use Sceptre with Sigil of Earth and that crappy crit bleed trait instead. =p

Tbh i feel very very limited to pve and pvp with what i can realy do with a necromancer
with dynamic events killing champions if your a conditionmancer your not gunna give much help at all if there are a mass of other players as 99% of your dmg coming from your bleeds with the stack cap is just a joke your gunna be doing next to nothing.
, i loved the idea of the class and love playing my necro but would never ever recommend anyone to make one. If i could reroll would be straight to a mesmer as ive been reading and looking about seems like a mesmer is a necro but just uberly better

Haha, got my threads mixed up. I was in one where a guy was dead set on whacking things with a dagger. kitten you tabbed browsing.

Im no necro expert, im still trying to feel myself around, but so far i think i found my comfort zone when it comes to weaponry and rotation. Im still playing around with traits however.

I use double dagger/staff . Level 48 so far, 20 curse and 18 blood magic. Primarily precision and power gear, with enchants (i guess) 2/4 dwayna and 4/4 affliction for increased bleed duration, my acc is a mix of healing, precision and condition.

Usually lay down some marks and then finish them off with AA and aoe bleed. I can usually stack my bleeds to at least 5 and sometimes on lucky string of crits full 10, which is probably why i didnt choose scepter and kept with the double dagger since its an overall damage increase while still taking advantage of bleeding traits.

I kinda depended on the siphon abilities but it seems to be wearing off so i may just stay at 15 blood and head into soul reaping for the crit damage, but i really want vamipiric wells (since i use full wells as my off skills with plague as my final skill which i may trade for lich form when i get it) .

I do have a series of burst, but, unfortunately, its when i drop EVERYTHING do things melt (eventually, id probably make abigger impact if i use condition gear over power, but its not all the time where i would need to drop everything). That means, all marks, all wells, and aoe bleed. Most wont live through that, but after that, double dagger, by comparison, does not bring the consistent damage that i see others bring and i dont think its particularly fair that necro should have to pop all CDs just to be a threat.

Scepter being only bleed makes it awful imo, especially when i can get 10 bleeds with enough precision.

Axe is just, i dunno, only the siphon really hits hard but dagger siphon seemingly hits harder. The AA is meh. Vulnerability seems to need to be already high to actually make a difference. If well of suffering didnt already do large amounts of damage (considering) id probably switch to epidemic when aoeing and grouping.

I do agree that daggers should have an inherent bleed component (over scepter anyway) or at least the bite poison the foe or something. I mean, we already have plethora of ways to get life force, having daggers only dedicated to that seems pretty redundant. Id probably make necrotic stab cause 2x bleed and necrotic bite cause 2x poison, maybe on crit. (maybe slash siphon but that could be asking too much)

With that, at least, necro would have a very good way to deal decent ST when speccing into it (curse, soul, spite).