Guild Wars 2

I’m interested in playing a Necromancer/Reaper character next, but the overwhelming opinion seems to be that the Necro/Reaper is sub-par compared to others. I’ve heard such mixed things about this class that I decided to ask directly.

I exclusively play PvE, and I’ve played a Guardian/Dragonhunter [Hammer+Longbow is great fun, maxed it out], Engineer [Flamethrower made it very dull, abandoned at Lv80], Ranger [Longbow build wasn’t very interesting, abandoned at Lv60] and Mesmer/Chronomancer [Sword+Shield/Greatsword is amazing, working on it now], but none of these had the same controversy about them.

Can anyone please explain the Good, Bad and Ugly aspects of the Necromancer/Reaper class? What is good and what is bad, why are they so disliked and whether they’re honestly worth playing. Any insight or advice would be appreciated, for myself and others with this question.

Necro is amazingly good for a lot of raid content, which is why I’ve decided to seriously roll one for once (I’ve rolled necros in the past, but always ended up deleting). Necros are great in a lot of raid fights for epidemic, which is great for melting adds, handling condis, and for working well in ranged condi situations.

Well….

When you say “PvE” that’s quite a spectrum, from running around open world to PUG dungeons to organised dungeons/fractals to raids. I’m at the low end myself, open world and dungeon PUGs. I figure you are an open worlder judging by your builds for other classes. So, from that perspective…

For what it’s worth, the best time I have on a power build for a solo unbuffed small kitty golem kill is on a shroud camping reaper. A condi engi did a little better, but golems with a million HP and 1400 toughness flatter condi.

How can this be, for a sub-par class? It’s because the shroud reaper with the right traits gets might and vuln on auto-attack, leading to 25 vuln and 22-25 might with no external buffs or food. I don’t think any other class has anything like that. Some can do it for a burst, but the reaper keeps it up all day for maybe 30 seconds out of 40. Sustained might and vuln, decent CC, good condi control, some decent bursty openers for before you go into shroud, two health bars… Reapers win hard the solo PvE fights.

There is a decent variety to necro builds. You get:
- solo reaper shroud builds for pure personal dps
- dagger/focus + greatsword + shroud + blood magic builds for proper groups, that provide some vuln + life steal to the group and expect might/fury/etc in return
- dagger/warhorn + staff death shroud (not reaper shroud) builds for when you gotta have range or tag in zergs
- scepter/dagger condi builds for hard targets that give the 30 second bleeds time to work

FWIW, I suspect “overwhelming opinion” is mostly people repeating a qT raid DPS chart from reddit. I am sure it is a fine analysis of raid DPS. But a thing to remember about raid meta builds is most of them assume that somebody else is generating 25 might and 25 vuln (and fury, and spotter, and quickness, and alacrity, and grace of the land). Solo PvE just doesn’t work like that.

It’s because the shroud reaper with the right traits gets might and vuln on auto-attack, leading to 25 vuln and 22-25 might with no external buffs or food. I don’t think any other class has anything like that.

Seem like you got a lot to discover about other profession in GW2. This much should be manageable by any warrior, mesmer, elementalist, engineer, ranger and probably revenant. Note that it shouldn’t take to much of an investment to include thief in this list. It may be a little bit harder for the guardian but it shouldn’t be impossible to achieve.

The necromancer in PvE is :

The good : solid with an ability to spread condition
The bad : unable to be healed by it’s allies when in shroud
The ugly : bottom tier when it come to anything other than dps

The issue of the necromancer in group content PvE have always been it’s selfish design. being the best at inflicting vulnerability is, sadly, the worst joke of the game since it’s cap at 25 and any profession is capable of doing this much. Meanwhile, other condition that are extremely potent in PvP, are almost useless in boss encounter. The focus of support on downed allies hurt my mind and my heart…

Well… Considering that the core necromancer in GW1 was one of the best support profession while the elementalist was just a stupid glass canon with little to no support. We can say that they switched their roles at some point in the hundreds year of history between GW and GW2.

Dadnir.5038:

It’s because the shroud reaper with the right traits gets might and vuln on auto-attack, leading to 25 vuln and 22-25 might with no external buffs or food. I don’t think any other class has anything like that.

Seem like you got a lot to discover about other profession in GW2.

Well, perhaps so. As I said, I’m a lower end player.

If you could point me to some examples of classes getting 22-25 might + 25 vuln for more than three quarters of a long fight, I’d be really grateful.

I mean it blew my mind a year ago when I watched Nike’s Lupi kill here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TBrT-DOqxo
…not just for the lupi solo (which I couldn’t dream of) but because he got 7-25 might and a little vuln and he was over 20 might for a lot of it.

I can stack 25 might burst on an ele or engi (in a build I wouldn’t want to use for real), but not for whole minutes. I think the old ele scepter/focus + lightning hammer rotations I learned (from DEKeyz videos) did 10-15 might on average.

Then when I applied Brazil’s “Grave Digger” build and saw my necro getting 25 vuln, plus 22 might with the target above 50% health and 25 might below, with no food and no strength runes/sigils, just by auto-attacking, and keep that up for 30 seconds out of every 40, nobody was more surprised than me. For solo open world PvE for regular players, using magic find food rather than fired golden dumplings etc, and no “practice ten hours to stack 25 might on ele”, I’m not aware of anything like that.

But I guess the builds I see on places like metabattle are group builds. Maybe there’s this whole other world of solo builds I don’t know about? Do you have any links?

Necro is amazing in PvE. It’s fun and all builds are useful. Some more then others, naturally, but depends mostly on the situation/encounter.
Don’t listen to anyone. Create your char and play it. You may like it or not.

Interesting comments. What are your opinions on the Reaper? I’ve heard that is fairly good aswell. Still in love with my Chronomancer though.

I think the comments about necro being bad are mostly historical. In the past, necro had the lowest DPS of all classes (with mesmer) and no utility to make up for it.

But reaper improves on this and now reaper is competitive in all aspects of PvE. Open-world, necro/reaper is amazing (self-buffing is really high) but it also works now in instanced content, including raids (condi reaper mostly).

So go for it, you may or may not like it, but it is viable and overall PvE is currently well balanced.

people consider the necro sub part somethime because it can do as good as others but without giving any “plus” to the team. Warriors, mesmers, rangers, revenant etc.. all do their stuff while buffing the party, the necro allmost do nothing as they self buff and stack vulnerability where all classes make vulnerability so this is not usefull here.

- no might buff
- no fury buff
- no mobility boost
- no direct dmg boost (or indirect, vulnerability is allready provided by everybody’s auto attacks nowadays)
- no efficient team heal
- no quickness/alacrity etc..

So necro are loved for their special mecanics for “those who know”:

- vampiric for the party
- epidemic !
- condi transfer
- boon corruption
- good condi damage, good direct damage AT RANGE
- one of the, if not the, best dps uptime of the game

all those are indirect help compared to direct help other classes provides. This lead to least apparent usefullness, this does not mean you are less usefull to a team, just they notice less.

TzuCon.5368:

Interesting comments. What are your opinions on the Reaper? I’ve heard that is fairly good aswell. Still in love with my Chronomancer though.

When I say necro I include Reaper as well. Also arguably core necro is the most useful today of all core specs. All of the other professions must include their Elite spec in their build, necro can do their thing without Reaper. So probably its one of the better balance wise between core and elite spec.

You have a lot of extra health that is “wasted” when other classes can survive with low Health.

Your DPS is low and your support is low. Your skill cool downs are really high.

The class is really fun, but only a couple of gimmicks keep it barely alive in PvE.

In pvp, the situation is better, but you still rotate very slow have terrible ranged fighting and are hard countered close by meta classes. You are pretty godly in stronghold however.

nekretaal.6485:

You have a lot of extra health that is “wasted” when other classes can survive with low Health.

Your DPS is low and your support is low. Your skill cool downs are really high.

The class is really fun, but only a couple of gimmicks keep it barely alive in PvE.

In pvp, the situation is better, but you still rotate very slow have terrible ranged fighting and are hard countered close by meta classes. You are pretty godly in stronghold however.

Yes that’s me and I’m walking away.

It sounds like the Necro/Reaper have some problems contributing directly to team-situations, but are still viable when compared directly with other individual classes?

Group specced reaper is bringing heal/lifesteal/darkfields/chill spam left and right.
Also prevents bleeding of downed teammates.
And best condition cleanse in game.

Is it not enough? I do not think so – it is just not as visible as 25 stacks of might + banners from PS WAR….

TzuCon.5368:

It sounds like the Necro/Reaper have some problems contributing directly to team-situations, but are still viable when compared directly with other individual classes?

Necros used to have this problem. This isn’t really the case at all in the post-HoT game. Ryouzanpaku pointed out a lot of this, but there’s also projectile defense and the best cleave in the game for raids, thanks to Epidemic.

They’re also one of the few classes that can perform strong dps from ranged, which is a unique advantage that can help in something like the VG fight.

TzuCon.5368:

It sounds like the Necro/Reaper have some problems contributing directly to team-situations, but are still viable when compared directly with other individual classes?

This conclusion is plain wrong. Pure BS

nekretaal.6485:

The class is really fun, but only a couple of gimmicks keep it barely alive in PvE.

Actually, my experience was the complete opposite. Necro/Reaper was/is the class I had and have the least ‘staying alive’ problems on. I basically danced through HoT. I run a condition ( asc. Viper ) build, and while it is certainly true that this particular variation of the profession has close to no burst capability, I get stuff done and I get mobs dead. Does it take a few seconds longer than other classes, due to conditions needing a few moments to start ticking? Sure. But “barely alive” in PvE couldn’t be further from the truth for me. It’s more like “last one standing” depending on what happens around me.

TzuCon.5368:

It sounds like the Necro/Reaper have some problems contributing directly to team-situations, but are still viable when compared directly with other individual classes?

It depends on what you mean by ‘team-situations’. In a big world boss zerg and in most if not all HoT events, absolutely nobody is going to give a kitten. I mean, seriously. I run a TON of HoT events and I’ve never been called out for playing a Necromancer. Learn how to deal with breakbars and when to use CC, learn the encounters, – something ALL players should do, regardless of what profession they play – and you’ll do fine. And even in smaller events, like defending a rally point or escorting an NPC…nope, can’t say I’ve ever had anyone single my toon out for anything, good OR bad.

I’m honestly not really sure what you expect from this thread. Every profession has its weaknesses and faults; every single profession is going to be better or worse at this one thing that another profession can do better or worse. You’re not going to find out whether or not you like playing Necromancer/Reaper until you’ve played one. I started playing one when they weren’t even considered part of “the meta” – which, as I don’t raid or PVP, meant exactly this to me: nothing.

Ask yourself this: do you want to be desired in absolutely every aspect of ( PvE ) gaming? If that is the case, Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer or Elementalist with their mass of party contributing buffs/raw DPS/utility might indeed be the better choice for you.

But that says absolutely nothing about whether or not the required play style to fulfill those roles would appeal to you. It didn’t appeal to me. I chose Necro to be my main. And I’m having FUN out there because the Necro ( condi ) play style appeals to me.

/shrug
/two cents

Annonrae.3681:

nekretaal.6485:

The class is really fun, but only a couple of gimmicks keep it barely alive in PvE.

I’m honestly not really sure what you expect from this thread. Every profession has its weaknesses and faults; every single profession is going to be better or worse at this one thing that another profession can do better or worse. You’re not going to find out whether or not you like playing Necromancer/Reaper until you’ve played one. I started playing one when they weren’t even considered part of “the meta” – which, as I don’t raid or PVP, meant exactly this to me: nothing.

Ask yourself this: do you want to be desired in absolutely every aspect of ( PvE ) gaming? If that is the case, Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer or Elementalist with their mass of party contributing buffs/raw DPS/utility might indeed be the better choice for you.

But that says absolutely nothing about whether or not the required play style to fulfill those roles would appeal to you. It didn’t appeal to me. I chose Necro to be my main. And I’m having FUN out there because the Necro ( condi ) play style appeals to me.

Mostly I wanted more up-to-date information on the general performance of the Necro/Reaper, given that the majority of the commentary around was written pre-HOT or immediately afterwards, and was mostly negative. But I appreciate your thorough post, I think I will make a Necromancer next and try it for myself.

Thanks to everyone who contributed for the various answers.

Condi reaper is very viable. Power is less desired, but still perfectly functional. There are better alternatives, both for raw damage and for team-support, but the only thing stopping you from playing necro in all content available are people with heads in their kitten.

Sadly, such people are very attracted to raiding scene…

TzuCon.5368:

It sounds like the Necro/Reaper have some problems contributing directly to team-situations, but are still viable when compared directly with other individual classes?

Necros/Reapers are horrible team supporters, that is true. Vampiric Aura is a joke and that’s pretty much all the group-buffs they bring; transfusion is actually pretty decent utility, CPC isn’t bad either as it destroys projectiles now and then there’s stuff like well of power which is okay, but gets easily outclassed and you shouldn’t really have many reasons to ever take it. Necros don’t bring any party-wide DPS increases, they don’t share boons etc.
However, they strive when conditions/debuffing come into play, which is what makes them mostly desired for raids and high level fractals where those things gain in importance.
That’s mostly for condi necro. Power necro is pretty much just kittened, sadly.

I’ve been using a necro/reaper for quite some time now on fractals, dungeons and raids, and I must say, a condi necro is very, very good. Still amazed after 300h on my current necro how good the dps is, especially a necro with a greatsword is. I love necros!

Good: Survivability. 100% crit in shroud. Two health pools.
Bad: Range.
Ugly: Elite Skills could be more exciting.

The good i guess lots of condi cleanse.

The bad, unnecessary amount of wind up skills. Headbutt. Eviserate, precision strike and a lot more, do alot of damage but dont take days to cast unlike grave digger, executioners scyth, minions. The execution skills that do have a longer cast time like killshot on warrior for example are offset by quickness which the class has.

The ugly, pretty much everything else about the class. Too many bad traits, its like when they don’t know what to do for a trait, they give it health siphon that doesnt really make a difference. Shouts trait, wells trait, even trait specifically for grave digger. I struggle to understand how 277hp is going to help you when you are taking damage from everything mid cast.

If it isnt irrelevant siphons, it is just flat out useless traits. Has anyone actually taken relentless pursuit over chilling nova or augry of death. If you really want to talk about relentless pursuit in todays game, make the trait have shroud 2 teleport

If it isnt the traits it is the utility dependence, no flexibility, so need utilities all the time and no decent passives to help unlike warrior. Warrior pretty much the only other skilless class in the game has passives all over the place and they have more flexibility but get endure pain at 50%hp, get stunned, auto stun break and toughness boost. Necro’s unholy sanctuary triggers when you are pretty much dead but that was changed for warrior. Shouldn’t it be shroud CD is reset at 50% hp? especially seeing as we are likely to give up soul reaping for it. If we arent, well then it s a tanky bad damage set up which wont be breaking anything.

I could be here all day writing everything wrong with this class lol

Ragion.2831:

The good i guess lots of condi cleanse.

The bad, unnecessary amount of wind up skills. Headbutt. Eviserate, precision strike and a lot more, do alot of damage but dont take days to cast unlike grave digger, executioners scyth, minions. The execution skills that do have a longer cast time like killshot on warrior for example are offset by quickness which the class has.

The ugly, pretty much everything else about the class. Too many bad traits, its like when they don’t know what to do for a trait, they give it health siphon that doesnt really make a difference. Shouts trait, wells trait, even trait specifically for grave digger. I struggle to understand how 277hp is going to help you when you are taking damage from everything mid cast.

If it isnt irrelevant siphons, it is just flat out useless traits. Has anyone actually taken relentless pursuit over chilling nova or augry of death. If you really want to talk about relentless pursuit in todays game, make the trait have shroud 2 teleport

If it isnt the traits it is the utility dependence, no flexibility, so need utilities all the time and no decent passives to help unlike warrior. Warrior pretty much the only other skilless class in the game has passives all over the place and they have more flexibility but get endure pain at 50%hp, get stunned, auto stun break and toughness boost. Necro’s unholy sanctuary triggers when you are pretty much dead but that was changed for warrior. Shouldn’t it be shroud CD is reset at 50% hp? especially seeing as we are likely to give up soul reaping for it. If we arent, well then it s a tanky bad damage set up which wont be breaking anything.

I could be here all day writing everything wrong with this class lol

I agree about some of the traits, there are many mediocre and few really bad traits.

Relentless Pursuit is far from useless tho. Perfect for Matthias for instance, where you have a single boss without adds(you cant use Chilling Nova, which is not very good anyway). And same for any other boss with fewer adds that can snare you. Also could be used in pvp if you play Reaper without shouts, why not.

PVE, fair enough. Reaper without shouts though is really bad. Reaper without shouts is about as good as core necro. You at least need rise and CTB as often as possible in PvP. The trait to me just seems to be as niche as fall damage traits.

If the trait allowed you to break or ignore those conditions easily then that would be a different story.

I never have any problems with my 3 reapers – 1 gs/staff , 1 gs/d and last is a viper minion build and tbh all 3 works with no probs . Reason i have 3 is so i dont have to switch builds for certain situations like dungeons or fractals or just plain xp farming ( minion vipers great for farming ) . When you start to listen to all the feedbacks you tend to find alot of negativity is from players who prefer a style of play that the necro doesnt give – eg warriors/guardians/mesmers etc . Just like in reality if you got 100 ppl and gave a list of 10 items and asked them to choose what they prefered or rated as gd , you would get a big range of answers as its due to personal preference .
I dislike using a warrior but i enjoy using a close combat necro/reaper which some ppl say – oh but you are using melee and warriors are best at melee . End of the day its down to what you like and are comfortable playing as.
Ive played with a guildie who uses ranger as a main chr and never tried a necro/reaper because of the opinions of others , he saw my reapers in action and made a necro and its now his 2nd main chr and he enjoys playing as it