Guild Wars 2

• Necro
  • The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

Reading through the various comments on each class, I found myself thinking the necro doesn’t even come close to living up to it’s own descriptor.

…they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights.
Unfortunately necros are the only attrition based class. Such a description has NEVER been used to recount another profession in GW2. I can’t seem to even begin to properly describe the let down that such a dynamic is actually part of our balance, when none of the other professions are attrition based. The only comment that keeps popping into my mind over and over is, “Well, in an attrition necro vs necro fight, we can guarantee that a necro will win.”

The only fights that remotely resemble attrition based gameplay would be going up against a profession running a bunker build. Between the passive and active healing those builds maintain, and their cleansing capacities, our condition based builds fall embarrassingly shy of acceptable.

…and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills.
This is another comment from the quote that really felt far from being unique, and definitely not something that allows the necro as a profession to overtake our opponents. Yes, we can interrupt, and we have few options. The primary downside to this is, all of our interrupts are such a short duration, that we don’t actually have an opportunity to capitalize on these moments. The responsiveness of our interrupts are also extremely clunky.

The most common example would be attempting to interrupt a heal our opponent is about to cast. The average cast time of a heal across most professions is 1s. If the necro is mid cast on another ability and attempts to interrupt, the queue system is such that by the time our interrupts are done casting themselves, they are too late. Staff 5 is 3/4s casting time, Warhorn 4 is 1/2s casting time, Spectral Grasp is 3/4s + projectile travel time, and Flesh Golem Charge is 3/4s cast time + 1-4s before the pet may actually initiate the ability. DS 3 is instant, but switching takes 1/2s, and we have no visibility if the recharge when not in DS form.

…allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.
This comment actually makes me pity anyone that thinks it’s remotely true. Necro is the ONLY profession without a burst speed weapon attack, or utility ability. The only utility that ‘could be’ used as a teleport is Flesh Wurm. But with the 1-1/2s cast time, it cannot even conceivably be used as a gap closer. If you’re chasing after someone and you cast it at max range, by the time it goes off, you’re practically standing on where it spawns. EVERY other profession in the game has a means of disengaging the necro from combat, and once outside cast range, the necro has ZERO CHANCE of catching up to them.

The fact that it has been stated over and over that necros can keep opponents in combat, aside from it being completely untrue, is utterly disheartening. Every comment of this sort should include an asterisk that reads ‘So long as they remain in range, and don’t use their abilities to get out of range.’

Did anyone else read that quote and think to themselves that the current version of the necro in-game doesn’t live up to that class balance description?

Yes
Body length must at least be 15.

Problem is other profs/builds do attrition even better than we do while also
‘boasting escape and damage reduction capabilities’, that we don’t and aren’t intended to have.

Our lack of easy stability, difficulty in safe stomping, and poor downed skills sit on top of the mess of bugs and inability of the profession to fully live up to its written intent.

Read the elementalist ‘philosophy’ for instance and it almost read like an excuse or justification of why they can do everything, but its ok, since ‘exceptionally high skill ceiling’. Reads like a line of bull, as if a necro is cinch to play. You have to work twice as hard to accomplish what more simpler classes with a few basic rotations or button mashes can do. In late beta, the Necro was claimed to be one of the hardest classes to master as per the devs. Not sure what happened to that, or why we no longer have a justification to be exceptional even with exceptional play.

Expected a bit more out of this patch considering all the red text leading up to it. Sure, a philosophy of baby steps is less likely to create sudden balance collapse, but it also means it could be months before a lot of our issues are up to par.

Quillixx.7034:

• Necro
  • The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

Reading through the various comments on each class, I found myself thinking the necro doesn’t even come close to living up to it’s own descriptor.

…they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights.
Unfortunately necros are the only attrition based class. Such a description has NEVER been used to recount another profession in GW2. I can’t seem to even begin to properly describe the let down that such a dynamic is actually part of our balance, when none of the other professions are attrition based. The only comment that keeps popping into my mind over and over is, “Well, in an attrition necro vs necro fight, we can guarantee that a necro will win.”

The only fights that remotely resemble attrition based gameplay would be going up against a profession running a bunker build. Between the passive and active healing those builds maintain, and their cleansing capacities, our condition based builds fall embarrassingly shy of acceptable.

…and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills.
This is another comment from the quote that really felt far from being unique, and definitely not something that allows the necro as a profession to overtake our opponents. Yes, we can interrupt, and we have few options. The primary downside to this is, all of our interrupts are such a short duration, that we don’t actually have an opportunity to capitalize on these moments. The responsiveness of our interrupts are also extremely clunky.

The most common example would be attempting to interrupt a heal our opponent is about to cast. The average cast time of a heal across most professions is 1s. If the necro is mid cast on another ability and attempts to interrupt, the queue system is such that by the time our interrupts are done casting themselves, they are too late. Staff 5 is 3/4s casting time, Warhorn 4 is 1/2s casting time, Spectral Grasp is 3/4s + projectile travel time, and Flesh Golem Charge is 3/4s cast time + 1-4s before the pet may actually initiate the ability. DS 3 is instant, but switching takes 1/2s, and we have no visibility if the recharge when not in DS form.

…allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.
This comment actually makes me pity anyone that thinks it’s remotely true. Necro is the ONLY profession without a burst speed weapon attack, or utility ability. The only utility that ‘could be’ used as a teleport is Flesh Wurm. But with the 1-1/2s cast time, it cannot even conceivably be used as a gap closer. If you’re chasing after someone and you cast it at max range, by the time it goes off, you’re practically standing on where it spawns. EVERY other profession in the game has a means of disengaging the necro from combat, and once outside cast range, the necro has ZERO CHANCE of catching up to them.

The fact that it has been stated over and over that necros can keep opponents in combat, aside from it being completely untrue, is utterly disheartening. Every comment of this sort should include an asterisk that reads ‘So long as they remain in range, and do use their abilities to get out of range.’

Did anyone else read that quote and think to themselves that the current version of the necro in-game doesn’t live up to that class balance description?

I totally agree with you are saying. I actually made a video in which i explain in great detail the necromancer’s greatest flaw in SPvP, and i offer a possible solution.
Everyone agreed with me at that time, and that was it…

Nemesis.8593:

Quillixx.7034:

• Necro
  • The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

Reading through the various comments on each class, I found myself thinking the necro doesn’t even come close to living up to it’s own descriptor.

…they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights.
Unfortunately necros are the only attrition based class. Such a description has NEVER been used to recount another profession in GW2. I can’t seem to even begin to properly describe the let down that such a dynamic is actually part of our balance, when none of the other professions are attrition based. The only comment that keeps popping into my mind over and over is, “Well, in an attrition necro vs necro fight, we can guarantee that a necro will win.”

The only fights that remotely resemble attrition based gameplay would be going up against a profession running a bunker build. Between the passive and active healing those builds maintain, and their cleansing capacities, our condition based builds fall embarrassingly shy of acceptable.

…and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills.
This is another comment from the quote that really felt far from being unique, and definitely not something that allows the necro as a profession to overtake our opponents. Yes, we can interrupt, and we have few options. The primary downside to this is, all of our interrupts are such a short duration, that we don’t actually have an opportunity to capitalize on these moments. The responsiveness of our interrupts are also extremely clunky.

The most common example would be attempting to interrupt a heal our opponent is about to cast. The average cast time of a heal across most professions is 1s. If the necro is mid cast on another ability and attempts to interrupt, the queue system is such that by the time our interrupts are done casting themselves, they are too late. Staff 5 is 3/4s casting time, Warhorn 4 is 1/2s casting time, Spectral Grasp is 3/4s + projectile travel time, and Flesh Golem Charge is 3/4s cast time + 1-4s before the pet may actually initiate the ability. DS 3 is instant, but switching takes 1/2s, and we have no visibility if the recharge when not in DS form.

…allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.
This comment actually makes me pity anyone that thinks it’s remotely true. Necro is the ONLY profession without a burst speed weapon attack, or utility ability. The only utility that ‘could be’ used as a teleport is Flesh Wurm. But with the 1-1/2s cast time, it cannot even conceivably be used as a gap closer. If you’re chasing after someone and you cast it at max range, by the time it goes off, you’re practically standing on where it spawns. EVERY other profession in the game has a means of disengaging the necro from combat, and once outside cast range, the necro has ZERO CHANCE of catching up to them.

The fact that it has been stated over and over that necros can keep opponents in combat, aside from it being completely untrue, is utterly disheartening. Every comment of this sort should include an asterisk that reads ‘So long as they remain in range, and do use their abilities to get out of range.’

Did anyone else read that quote and think to themselves that the current version of the necro in-game doesn’t live up to that class balance description?

I totally agree with you are saying. I actually made a video in which i explain in great detail the necromancer’s greatest flaw in SPvP, and i offer a possible solution.
Everyone agreed with me at that time, and that was it…

I still agree with you, i do like they bumped up the damage terror could do but really, not what we really needed.

Here is the link to the forum topic in which all of this was discussed… maybe it is time to revive this topic.

Honestly it seems as if they think we auto-regenerate LF alongside health between fights.

The only way the attrition thing can be true is if they define attrition as being able to continue fighting after taking the opening alpha burst to the face.

In the end there is imo no true attrition in this game thanks to healing and armor level mattering less than ones ability to circle strafe out of the enemies front arc of attack.

Little bit of a rehash, but worth mentioning here anyway.

While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights
Wurm requires pre casting, so can’t be called an escape except perhaps in some very specific, setup situations. Spectral walk can sort of act as an escape sometimes… and that’s it.
Our only damage mitigation is protection from spectral wall/armor and situationally, our blinds.
This, combined with our fairly low toughness means we’re not actually that impressive in a battle of attrition – we can’t stop the damage, we can only sponge it, and when don’t have fast enough lf regen to seriously rival guardian bunkers, more defensively leaned d/d ele’s. Hell, P/D thieves are realistically far better at attrition then necro’s are.

They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills.
Having poison on two weapons is hardly a feat worth boasting about, and condition damage combined with raw damage is something that every class can do, some better then us. They also abuse the term multiple again – sure, we have more then one, but we still have less, and longer CD interrupts then others, and only doom is reliable for interrupting people, although all necro’s have access to it.

Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.
we have two movement disabling skill, dark pact and spectral grasp (if it hits/isn’t reflected; 5 if you include lich’s knock back and the golem’s charge), so we find ourselves in the same situation; we can, in theory have multiple movement disabling abilities (only one of which works for more then one second or so), but others still have far more, and better then we do. Finally, we are not good at ‘chasing down’ anyone, we are reasonable at preventing people from disengaging from combat with various slows and such, but once they have made some distance, we cannot realistically catch most builds due to the simple fact that our two gap closers (spectral grasp and dark path) are both targeted abilities – once you cannot hit them with those, they’re safe assuming they’ve invested in any mobility.

While it’s great that Anet would like us to operate in the way that they describe, they have to realize that the reality does not match the vision, and they’re not making any changes to bring those two things closer together.

I suspect their reference to poison in regards to attrition is for its healing reduction effect, more than its DOT.

Not that it makes much difference as healing matters less than your ability to stay out of the enemies attack arc.

Anet has proven how out of touch they are with the necro playerbase. its as simple as that

the part about poison made me laugh though. lets assume we’re in a situation where you absolutely need poison(lolwut), a thief can do it so much better with a shortbow equipped its not even funny. how can they make a post like that or a patch like this with a straight face?

Here’s the problem with the Necro form of attrition, its not sustainable. And it needs to be IF the profession is designed not to get mobility to escape, nor great ways to keep opponents in the fight.

Right now by comparison the Ele bunker has sustainable attrition, meaning he does not have a huge health pool or toughness, at least by default, but he endlessly reinvigorates himself throughout a fight.

Imagine an Ele bunker like a sink half full of water with the plug open, but the faucet running. The water runs down the drain, but gets filled back up equally (or almost as equally) as it is running down by the water coming in. This lets you last a loooong time in a fight.

Now the Necromancer is more like a sink full of water with the plug open as well, but the faucet off. He has more water to begin with (regular health + LF) but once it starts draining (when a fight begins) his lifespan is finite, it drains to a zero point with little refill – while other attrition builds (including thief and guardian ones), can refill during the fight, either by direct healing / cleansing or escaping or stealthing to stop taking the damage.

The Necro would function properly as an attrition class if either Life Force could be built fast enough in battle to use our heal many times over, or if health stealing abilities were good enough to negate at least some respectable portion of the life we lose in a long fight. But life draining skills and traits are utterly gimp, a drop of water in that sink against burst damage, and Life Force has too few skills that give it or buff it. And to even invest in those skills means you have sacrificed a great amount of offense (either stronger conditions, longer fears) or sacrificed the defensive traits that make us survivable in the first place (meaning slower draining Life Force, a bigger pool, things like stability, improved wells, etc).

The Necro can be attrition in damage, or to some lesser extent, survivability, but he can not be great at attrition in both, and he can never be great in mobility or locking down an opponent close to him. Other professions simply have far less tradeoffs to make, even in the same playstyle, and they get to have multiple strengths in these categories, while we must choose but one, and in fact are almost limited to one, offensive attrition via conditions.

“The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. "

Still dont understand why they think making a class with natural high health and deathshroud is a good design choice. If other classes get dmg reduction abilites and uniqe class skill, while we are stuck with bad DS, no dmg reduction abilites, because of DS CMON.

If i have 100.000HP and do an average of 10dps i will never have fun with the class, everything in the class will always feel weak because of this.

Would be nice if they actually made a video of this class of what they want this class to be.

Agree with everything in the post.

wiazabi.2549:

Would be nice if they actually made a video of this class of what they want this class to be.

By their comments, mastery of Death Shroud is the secret to being leet sauce. But I just don’t get how.

Death Shroud dancing is really only possible with the 5s cooldown, a heavy investment, and then you can’t get stability, which is the thing you need to stop being CC’d in DS and bursted. And the 10 second cooldown is just too long for DS to always be the answer, you can easily get chain bursted within those 10 seconds.

I tried a 5s cooldown build, while already having high crit chance, and using going instantly in/out of DS to try and keep Fury up permanently in order to proc more bleeds. The class just becomes a micro managing nightmare in this style though, you often forget to pop up every 5s or are just doing something else that prevents keeping it up. The extra crit chance didn’t feel like it really upped my damage much anyway, since the high crit means your power is so low you don’t hit crits hard, and the 2s internal cooldown on bleed procs limits the amount that you can pile in consecutive attacks anyway.

Beyond that it simply wasn’t fun managing the timing, on top of our natural dependency to be constantly aware of every condition on us, and on our enemies, and be aware what skills they were using and trying to react to that. Complexity is one thing, but you shouldn’t have to do the equivalent of typing 100+ words a minute to stay competitive.

So like you, I really don’t understand what they expect mastering this class to put it on even footing with others is supposed to entail ideally.

I agree completely with whats been said. I’ve mained necro since I started this game and the amount of money and time i’ve invested into the profession leave me kinda tied to it.
So I’ve toughed it out and tried a plethora of different builds and strategies and find like mentioned…If im not multi-tasking my kitten off and managing cooldowns…i’m doomed to simply get out dps’s, out lasted by most classes. The issue I find is we dont accell at well….anything. we’re not the best at a single thing i feel like…other classes stack conditions better than we do….other classes survive/bunker better than we do…we’re not the strongest class physically in terms of damage output…..so what DO we hang our hats on exactly?

I find to accell at all with this class I simply have to not look at skills or traits for their effects per say, but simply out Stat my opponents from a combination of eq, trait alignement and skill usage. So i may not be better than X profession in theory…but if I can simply out damage or out last on paper; then it’s w/e…

I just find it dissapointing really….our class as a whole seems to have no true identity….we’re the masters of nothing…we have hands down the most buged/useless/broken skills and/or traits, and a pretty useless profession Mechanic in Death Shroud.

I sometimes Want to cry thinking about why I didn’t invest my time and money in another profession that could accomplish something. Tons of time and gold later…got 4-5 Different EQ sets for builds…none very good…Commander Tag, and more useless junk on a wasted profession. oh joy….

Meh, what is supposed to keep everyone in the game alive is movement. By that i means we are more or less forced to trying to keep out of the attack arc of whatever we are fighting because our heals and other abilities are not supposed to keep up with the damage done. I don’t mind using dodge and movement to get out of heavy hits and AOEs, but having to constantly circle simply because anything else is suicide becomes draining in the long run. Especially given that for such a action oriented game the controls are still very traditional RPG.

Either give the option to actually trait into healing abilities that make a difference, or give us honest to deity action controls. This half and half results in the player fighting the controls as much as the opposition.

There is no Necro philosophy. There is no one at Anet passionate about Necro in any of their meetings. It is clear from the Traits being 40% useless, Minions being compeltely useless in all but the most casual friendly content, and the lack of any useful skill synergy. No one at Anet plays a Necro or has any unifying vision for Necro. They are simply throwing ideas at a hat and going with whatever people happen to land in the patch server.

The way it works is the people at Anet choose which meetings they go to depending on what they are working on. The problem is no one is working on Necro. No one is going to meetings saying, “Hey guise this is kind stupid and changing it will only damage Necro.”

So basically whenever a Necro issue is brought up, a bunch of people, who have no interest in Necro whatsoever, come up with solutions as quickly as possible to get it out of the way so they can move on to the stuff that interests them specifically.

Necro will continue to be neglected and the populations of Necro players will continue to shrink, guaranteeing that Necro remains the lowest priority. There is no other possible outcome.

If you are a Necro player there is really nothing for you in GW2 and there doesn’t look like there will be in the future either if they continue to follow this “population dictates priority” style of post development.

screw you ANET….seriously you are a bunch of bullkitteners. No respect for you guys anymore, and one of the worst experience with class balance i have seen in MMOs.

1. We now can confirm you don’t care about the necro because it was listed last.

2. Everything you just said was a lie, and against your original “philosophy” of the class. remember when it was all about outlasting other professions? YA screw you again.

3. You just lost even more customers, Good game you won.

Pendragon.8735:

<snip>

Oh man. You said it all much better than I could ever have in regard to why necromancer’s attrition just fails.

It’s good to point out though that when talking about “rules and boundaries” or “philosophies” they don’t have to be currently true. It simply means that we can hope that in the future, necromancer will improve along those lines as I certainly don’t think the current state of the necromancer would live up to that.
One of the things that I really expected to see in the necromancer philosophies but couldn’t find was the necromancer’s ability to manage conditions relatively better than other classes. Mesmer though is a very dangerous and close runner up to this and I’m afraid some more neglects to the necromancer and some buffs to the mesmer would even take that away from us.

One the thinks that bothers me now is we all can agree that the current Necromancer doesn’t fit very well with their philosophie about the profession so it needs more time. Okay.
But wait a second, didn’t they tell us more than once before the game’s release that they were not including secondary professions and more game PvP modes to have a better balance on professions? And they included weapons to have a better way to balance builds and less skills than GW1 to have a better balance?
Oh boy, that sounded so good to be truth. The truth now is we still have a lackluster profession 3 months after the launch and if you see the balance patches and don’t want to cry or laugh after doing it, you sir deserve my full respect.
But hey! We rock now underwater! Thank you so much AN

Pendragon.8735:

Here’s the problem with the Necro form of attrition, its not sustainable. And it needs to be IF the profession is designed not to get mobility to escape, nor great ways to keep opponents in the fight.

Right now by comparison the Ele bunker has sustainable attrition, meaning he does not have a huge health pool or toughness, at least by default, but he endlessly reinvigorates himself throughout a fight.

Imagine an Ele bunker like a sink half full of water with the plug open, but the faucet running. The water runs down the drain, but gets filled back up equally (or almost as equally) as it is running down by the water coming in. This lets you last a loooong time in a fight.

Now the Necromancer is more like a sink full of water with the plug open as well, but the faucet off. He has more water to begin with (regular health + LF) but once it starts draining (when a fight begins) his lifespan is finite, it drains to a zero point with little refill – while other attrition builds (including thief and guardian ones), can refill during the fight, either by direct healing / cleansing or escaping or stealthing to stop taking the damage.

The Necro would function properly as an attrition class if either Life Force could be built fast enough in battle to use our heal many times over, or if health stealing abilities were good enough to negate at least some respectable portion of the life we lose in a long fight. But life draining skills and traits are utterly gimp, a drop of water in that sink against burst damage, and Life Force has too few skills that give it or buff it. And to even invest in those skills means you have sacrificed a great amount of offense (either stronger conditions, longer fears) or sacrificed the defensive traits that make us survivable in the first place (meaning slower draining Life Force, a bigger pool, things like stability, improved wells, etc).

The Necro can be attrition in damage, or to some lesser extent, survivability, but he can not be great at attrition in both, and he can never be great in mobility or locking down an opponent close to him. Other professions simply have far less tradeoffs to make, even in the same playstyle, and they get to have multiple strengths in these categories, while we must choose but one, and in fact are almost limited to one, offensive attrition via conditions.

+1 Internets on this post. Necro was my first 80, Elementalist was my second; this pretty much encapsulates the biggest observation I made comparing them (with my builds and playstyles).

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

One the thinks that bothers me now is we all can agree that the current Necromancer doesn’t fit very well with their philosophie about the profession so it needs more time. Okay.
But wait a second, didn’t they tell us more than once before the game’s release that they were not including secondary professions and more game PvP modes to have a better balance on professions? And they included weapons to have a better way to balance builds and less skills than GW1 to have a better balance?
Oh boy, that sounded so good to be truth. The truth now is we still have a lackluster profession 3 months after the launch and if you see the balance patches and don’t want to cry or laugh after doing it, you sir deserve my full respect.
But hey! We rock now underwater! Thank you so much AN

More and more i think their problem is that DS and such are inherently bunker-ish, but they want to eliminate bunkers as a viable build because it leads to static sPVP play where the focus will be on keeping the bunkers standing on the capture points.

So they try to do anything and everything to force us to move…

digiowl.9620:

More and more i think their problem is that DS and such are inherently bunker-ish, but they want to eliminate bunkers as a viable build because it leads to static sPVP play where the focus will be on keeping the bunkers standing on the capture points.

So they try to do anything and everything to force us to move…

Yeah and that would have made sense if they actually did something about other bunker and insane healing attrition classes. How is it that after so long, Guardians are still THE bunker class and no matter what they change about them, they are very reluctant to do something to them as a whole? Why is it that many other classes can go through an attrition fight better than the necromancer? Not only does an elementalist or thief can survive better with an attrition build, they also deal more damage in that mode. And then Anet is only cautious about necromancers being able to bunker or having high sustainable health gain through the yet-broken life siphoning abilities.
If their philosophy was that, they would have already done something to prevent people from winning Forest by just defending only two points.
Stuff like that seem to only be considered overpowered if they are in the Necromancer’s arsenal.

Quillixx.7034:

• Necro
  • The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

Reading through the various comments on each class, I found myself thinking the necro doesn’t even come close to living up to it’s own descriptor.

…they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights.
Unfortunately necros are the only attrition based class. Such a description has NEVER been used to recount another profession in GW2. I can’t seem to even begin to properly describe the let down that such a dynamic is actually part of our balance, when none of the other professions are attrition based. The only comment that keeps popping into my mind over and over is, “Well, in an attrition necro vs necro fight, we can guarantee that a necro will win.”

The only fights that remotely resemble attrition based gameplay would be going up against a profession running a bunker build. Between the passive and active healing those builds maintain, and their cleansing capacities, our condition based builds fall embarrassingly shy of acceptable.

…and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills.
This is another comment from the quote that really felt far from being unique, and definitely not something that allows the necro as a profession to overtake our opponents. Yes, we can interrupt, and we have few options. The primary downside to this is, all of our interrupts are such a short duration, that we don’t actually have an opportunity to capitalize on these moments. The responsiveness of our interrupts are also extremely clunky.

The most common example would be attempting to interrupt a heal our opponent is about to cast. The average cast time of a heal across most professions is 1s. If the necro is mid cast on another ability and attempts to interrupt, the queue system is such that by the time our interrupts are done casting themselves, they are too late. Staff 5 is 3/4s casting time, Warhorn 4 is 1/2s casting time, Spectral Grasp is 3/4s + projectile travel time, and Flesh Golem Charge is 3/4s cast time + 1-4s before the pet may actually initiate the ability. DS 3 is instant, but switching takes 1/2s, and we have no visibility if the recharge when not in DS form.

…allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.
This comment actually makes me pity anyone that thinks it’s remotely true. Necro is the ONLY profession without a burst speed weapon attack, or utility ability. The only utility that ‘could be’ used as a teleport is Flesh Wurm. But with the 1-1/2s cast time, it cannot even conceivably be used as a gap closer. If you’re chasing after someone and you cast it at max range, by the time it goes off, you’re practically standing on where it spawns. EVERY other profession in the game has a means of disengaging the necro from combat, and once outside cast range, the necro has ZERO CHANCE of catching up to them.

The fact that it has been stated over and over that necros can keep opponents in combat, aside from it being completely untrue, is utterly disheartening. Every comment of this sort should include an asterisk that reads ‘So long as they remain in range, and do use their abilities to get out of range.’

Did anyone else read that quote and think to themselves that the current version of the necro in-game doesn’t live up to that class balance description?

We need a dev answer to this. It would be so much appreciated.

Amorlaliance.9156:

We need a dev answer to this. It would be so much appreciated.

There is no Developer focused on Necro specifically so there is no one that could respond with anything more than a Generic “please try to understand we have a plan” response that focuses on even more meaningless justifications.

There simply is no Necro passion at Anet. And that is a shame. Necro is a massively popular class in MMOs. To have Anet just crap on it like this really sends a negative message to the entire MMO community.

XiL.4318:

Amorlaliance.9156:

We need a dev answer to this. It would be so much appreciated.

There is no Developer focused on Necro specifically so there is no one that could respond with anything more than a Generic “please try to understand we have a plan” response that focuses on even more meaningless justifications.

There simply is no Necro passion at Anet. And that is a shame. Necro is a massively popular class in MMOs. To have Anet just crap on it like this really sends a negative message to the entire MMO community.

I know i’m a fool but i still have hope !

The ANet quote about the necro abilities is misleading as it has fallen for the “list all abilities” approach rather than what is possible in viable builds. While we can possibly achieve some of those abilities individually we can only ever have two or three available to any one viable build (indeed many are contained in our elites so only one per build there). This is largely because of the buggered trait line structures and
mandatory useless traits like reanimator.

edit: Actually I am starting to think that the devs are only looking at the abilities list and not how we can actually use those abilities realistically. To me they are either “in denial” about the necro issues, relying on the list itself as some form of justification of “profession fineness”, or they just plain do not understand how the necro builds work in reality. Probably a combination of both.

Oldbugga.7029:

The ANet quote about the necro abilities is misleading as it has fallen for the “list all abilities” approach rather than what is possible in viable builds. While we can possibly achieve some of those abilities individually we can only ever have two or three available to any one viable build (indeed many are contained in our elites so only one per build there). This is largely because of the buggered trait line structures and
mandatory useless traits like reanimator.

edit: Actually I am starting to think that the devs are only looking at the abilities list and not how we can actually use those abilities realistically. To me they are either “in denial” about the necro issues, relying on the list itself as some form of justification of “profession fineness”, or they just plain do not understand how the necro builds work in reality. Probably a combination of both.

Combination of both, compounded by denial, cheered on by bias, and tea bagged by stubborn fiscal conservatism.

More like they actually believe their own PR spin (ability metadata only and not how to implement it)….Blizz often falls for this too. Spin =/= implementation…..snowball fights =/= bug fixes…….balloons =/= reasonable build options…..wintersday…lol …summer here 38c.