Guild Wars 2

I’ve got a heavy and a medium armor class already so I decided it’s time to make a light armor class, take advantage of those sexy light armor clothing wnkwink, there is a couple of mesmers in the group of people i play with already so i dont really want to make one of them. So that leaves me with necro or ele and i’d like to see what each forum has to say about their class.
I’m thinking more of a PVE focus so how are necros in dungeons and fractals, maybe for champion farming. what are their strengths and weakness in your guys’ opinions?

How Srsbusiness do you take your dungeon running / fractals? If your group is running full berserker successfully in speed runs, a necromancer will lag behind because they don’t have the sheer DPS to be taken for that alone, or the ability to boost their party’s damage in any particularly strong / unique way. If you tend to take your dungeon runs a bit slower anyways and battles will take a few minutes, necromancer is a pretty solid choice.

One of the strengths of a necromancer is that they can easily apply debilitating conditions (chill, weakness) to entire crowds of enemies which can make fights a lot safer. Death Shroud can also which currently can let you soak a lot of damage throughout a fight if you can keep generating life force: the higher effective health and the bonus pseudo-healing has frequently kept me as a safe point to revive allies who were a bit more vulnerable.

If you’re set on playing Ele or Necro, go Necro unless you enjoy Ele’s playstyle more. Necromancers have it far better in PvE (to my knowledge), and you can pretty easily go from farming mass groups of mobs in open world to doing high damage in dungeons (it is still slightly lower in dungeons, but I believe Nemesis showed thakittens actually not that bad, and you can bring unique support abilities if needed). Eles are just… meh imo in PvE. A lot of what they do is done by Guardians (who are better in PvE).

I would say necro. necro has more AOE than an ele aswell as pretty usefull in dungeons, even though most people don’t think so. As long as you DONT use a condi build its great. Can add 25 invulnerability stacks fast aswell as bleed and other condies thats great for your teammates

Nanashi.5704:

I’ve got a heavy and a medium armor class already so I decided it’s time to make a light armor class, take advantage of those sexy light armor clothing wnkwink, there is a couple of mesmers in the group of people i play with already so i dont really want to make one of them. So that leaves me with necro or ele and i’d like to see what each forum has to say about their class.
I’m thinking more of a PVE focus so how are necros in dungeons and fractals, maybe for champion farming. what are their strengths and weakness in your guys’ opinions?

I’ve played all the light armor classes except for an engineer at this point. If choosing between a necro, an elementalist, or a mesmer…I’d take the necro for fractals and dungeons 0% of the time. The reasons are as follows:

1. party support – mesmer and ele both have excellent party support and the necro does not. Mesmer’s and ele both bring a significant presence of party boons and a necro only brings conditions to enemies. Conditions are less effective than boons. There is also the difference in utility skills like projectile reflection (traited mesmer focus) and quickness (time warp). Elementalists have strong healing and condition removal in water attunement. Elementalists have protection (traited) on auras. Necromancers don’t have anything that matches any of this functionality.

2. Survival – mesmer and ele both win again. Both have blocks, protection, and evades. All a necro has is limited protection options and our freshly kitten DS. There’s also the stability issue..something necro’s still lack in sufficient degree. There is also our self healing issue…no other class is locked out of self healing by the primary class mechanic. This is compounded by the new “kill you through your DS” improvement…since you can’t gain any health while you are in DS by any means.

3. Control – Necro’s really don’t have any better control options than mesmer’s or elementalists. Necro’s only unique control option is fear, and It is usually either detrimental to party effectiveness (spreading mobs out instead of grouping them for fast killing) or it has no effect. I used to dislike the mesmer control move (temporal curtain->into the void), but I came to love it for positioning mobs.

The necro is not completely void of group support as you make it sound. We can remove conditions from allies and easily spread them to the enemies. We can also provide poison/dark combo fields in spades. As well as permablinding mobs which voids any damage from the effected mob(s). With the recent change to Weakness that condition alone is more powerful than ever.

We also have some of the best vuln stacking abilities of any class. As well as boon stripping which is particularly useful vs dredge.

Yes, conditions suck unless you build for them. Because of their limited stacking ability I find it far more effective to build for condition damage vs condition duration.

We can fill up death shroud in <2 seconds from 0-full with spectral skills. With 30k hp and shroud we can have the highest effective hp of any class in the game by over double.

In terms of which Light armor class is “best.” There is no answer. They all have vastly different playstyles from each other. It’s definitely worth having one (or more) of each

Personally, my necro is the only thing I run fractals with. It’s set up with a condition duration build focused on bleeding. 90% Bleed duration with 60% every other condition duration.

My bleeds also hit hard, getting anywhere from 150-170 a tick per stack. Last I checked, the maximum amount of bleed I provide like this is on par, if not just behind, with the dps of a berserker ele, and I’m using rabid gear, and thats just the bleeding.

Personally, the necromancer is my favorite class. I love it when I join groups and show people just how great they can be, and I spread conditions like its nobodies business.

If you want a condition master, Necro is the way to go. Some may argue other classes are better than necromancer in almost every way possible, but I know that other than confusion, we have all the conditions under the belt. If you want a heavy hitter, well I’ve seen some heavy hitting necro’s before, but I’m not entirely sure if they can equal the ele(my friend has an ele which really REALLY high crit chance/damage, and I think she told me it can crit-hit up to 14k).

It should be noted that while ele’s can be strong, heavy hitters, they are limited to one weapon set. Even though you have 4 attunements, in some cases my ele still feels limited. Maybe I just need a new build for her.. Idk.. and sometimes I just can’t settle on a weapon set for her, unlike my necro where I can get almost anything done with three weapons(I carry more just incase, but I usually tend to not need them).

As for a weakness, besides not having absolutely every condition, certain elements of the necro still don’t function properly. For example: some minion AI is still buggy. Lich form’s jagged horror’s AI half the time makes them stand around the necromancer. I still prefer it for the burst damage it can output, and that provides extra bleeds every so often.

Also, they nerfed/fixed death shroud, making it impossible for us to fall from outstanding heights and survive.. That was one thing I loved doing. Yeah it was a bug but it made things possible. Like breaking the map, or escaping a ton of enemies(not only in WvW). It still sorta functions like it used to. If you don’t want to take health damage, you can pop DS and fall a short bit forcing AI of the enemies to take a different route, potentially allowing your heal to finish cooling down and heal up if you are in a bind.

Also, necro’s that spec into death magic have some issues with minions being summoned when they are not wanted. That first minor trait, in my personal opinion, would be better suited elsewhere. If you want to have a bit of a tanky necro, you have to deal with the random uncontrollable minion showing up with horrible AI. Which, in fractals, can be annoying when fighting the maw.

Anyways, hope this helps you decide!

Necro is the most fun I’ve had in this game since launch. I have two of them, really only play one. If you want AoE nukes that can survive through kitten near anything, I’d go condition Necro. It’s a solid build and it’s a lot of fun.

Another great thing about the Necromancer is its community. The players here have been through a lot and the changes that hit the Necro frequently have forged a community that is ready to adapt to change and prevail through the challenge of running a mediocre class. You will find a lot of great info in this forum.

Disclaimer
My comments are strictly entertaining PvE content

Gnat.9405:

Necro is the most fun I’ve had in this game since launch. I have two of them, really only play one. If you want AoE nukes that can survive through kitten near anything, I’d go condition Necro. It’s a solid build and it’s a lot of fun.

Another great thing about the Necromancer is its community. The players here have been through a lot and the changes that hit the Necro frequently have forged a community that is ready to adapt to change and prevail through the challenge of running a mediocre class. You will find a lot of great info in this forum.

Disclaimer
My comments are strictly entertaining PvE content

Although I agree with most of what my fellow Necromancer says, there is one thing I must disagree with.

A necromancer is never Mediocre!

Touche