Guild Wars 2

It’s hard work being a necro. This is the main thing I’d like to get across. If you’re along side a very tight-nit team over the mic and everyone is peeling for you and holding your hand and catering to your needs then you can go pro for sure :P. But when you dive into the deep end alone even with plenty of experience the hammers will come down on you.

It’s really really tough being a necro. Reasons:

1. No stability: Other classes enjoy the freedom and option of having stability. Stomping when they please. Resing when they need to. Avoiding nasty pitfall grabs in nasty little troll maps. Solid gold. Cant be shook. That means necros have to work 10x as hard evading, timing everything, and just being on their toes. If not, enjoy the ride.

2. Lifeforce build-up: Thieves, mesmers and rangers enjoy the luxury that is stealth without the need to put in any kind of work to earn it. They can hop in and out freely, make mistakes, and not feel that threatened. Guardians, engineers, warriors mesmers all enjoy their invulnerability without care. No need to actually do something to become immune to everthing that hits you for a time. Just gotta wait somewhere while it resets. Blocks, vigor, and all the other good perks are theirs for the popping. WE have to work for our extra defense. Which actually really really sucks lol.

3. No mobility: So unlike every other class in the game, when we’re in a fight, we’re pretty much not leaving until you die or the enemy decides to leave by avenue of all those buffs stated above. So.. we cant just leave. Maybe if we use a wurm but that’s not reliable. It really isn’t. So we’re meant for fighting. So why do we get thrown around like a rag doll? Who knows..

4 Hard ****ing work: Since every other class is going invis, throwing clones around, spamming their stuns and knockdowns/knockbacks our way. Constantly regenerating, cleansing (passively even), hitting us with their fury crits, jumping in every direction either by dashing or shadowsteping or just teleporting, and doing all the fun stuff we can’t, we have to do the work. We have to not make mistakes. We have to find the real mesmer, find the thief, reserve our precious stun-breakers for dire moments, evade as much cc that comes our way as possible, and pretty much do everything lol. While they smash spams like they’re playing hungry hungry hippos.

Necro’s are the enemy of every other class. lol They are all designed with specific intent to be able to combat a necro successfully. We on the other hand are susceptible to every class since they all have something we cant defend. Whether it be CC, high mobility or whatever. They have the stuff to beat us. They all good friends lol. It’s us vs them XD

I swear when they made necros they didnt really think of them as necros. Other classes they saw what they were supposed to be and showered them with all the fun stuff they could think of to accommodate it’s theme. Thieves can go stealth.. well lets give them as much freaking stealth as we can possibly crap into their skills sets. Mesmer clones and stealth… same thing. I won’t go over all of them lol

Necros… When you think of necro’s (or at least when I do) I think vampires, liches, other dark strong and powerful dudes. Not a rag doll. I can’t remember the last book I read or even movie (especially movie) I’ve seen where the vampire get’s slapped around like a ball. Tossed around. Back and forth.

Or, I cant remember when a vampire or any dark spellcasting figure was flabbergasted when somebody went invisible.

Or, I cant remember them siphoning life worse than some holy paladin guy.

Or, I cant remember when a necromancer couldnt’ raise the dead XDDD. ( im just picking on em IDC so much about the process but many do)

I cant recall when a vampire was slow and sluggish. Falling on his face. Durrrrr. Or when a necromancer needed to fight other people as if they were the villain. Wondering where they went. Figuring out how to survive. I understand it’s a game and everyone should have to do those things… (and i would say that again to assert that idea to all classes that didnt follow suit) but honestly. We have to work so freaking hard. Everyone else is zipping around, taking blasts of hammers to the face and not flinching, and we’re like the opposite lol.

Us and them people. XD

I agree that it is not the easiest profession to play, but every profession has its own shortcommings. Necro’s lack mobility indeed, but can do severe overall damage due to the conditions and area conditions it can cast. This is why I think that a necro is good and usable in a fight with for example at least 3 vs 3, but one of the less professions in 1 vs 1 (also depends on the quality of the opponents ofc). I like playing necro, and most matches I think I am useful to my team. The only class I most of the time have problems with are thieves, they are too fast for your Marks (like Reapers Mark seems to never work on thieves) and when they are close to death they can easily escape due to the lack of our mobility. Disappearing everywhere annoys me all the time. They can be killed pretty fast, but the chance they they kill you faster is high overall.
Still, I love playing Necro, and wont quit it for sure.

March 18th grand feature patch

• Finally we fixed a long lasting bug since beta, so now the so called Necromancer no longer a class, but a mob as intended.

I have never seen a class rely so much on free casting,there good,but since there balanced around dhuum and Ds so much when i don’t take the trait or any of my utility’s are on Cooldown or life force is at 0 it becomes struggle wars 2 lord forbid a thief starts focusing you.

i actually enjoy playing my necro more than my mesmer atm. yes, they got stealth and some invulnerabilities, but overall the class lacks aoe and is forced into an ai class which is terrible in wvw.
i love being able to use my wells and marks and all aoe abilities on my necro and i get way more loot and kills out of that one.
but u are right, the necro lacks lots of defensive skills. ds is buggy and u cant even finish someone in ds. our downabilities are terrible too and the only way to get stability is ds and plague. the life force issue is not as big, but its annoying that u dont start off with some life force if u died after using life force up.
im still having fun with my power necro though. at least im not a stupid veilbot and can actually kill something and also i can choose to use ai ankitten ot forced to.

btw anet please fix our ai, ds and well bugs….its been a while.

I think that what make the necro really fun to play, you have to be award of what going on the fight.
Our long kitten CD force us to use our skill wisely and since we cant escape a fight we cant just make an error and run away like our opponents.
That what make our class enjoyable, the challenge lol.
Rather having a hard time fighting other than just being an op class.

The only level 80 character I have is a necro. Played the game for 4 months in 2013 and I just came back last January. The only problem with necro which I strongly believe is Anet absurdity is the lack of any kind of leap or teleport which makes this class so hard to play because you cant disengage to any fight may it be wvw, pvp, pve. Not too mention bugs that I was surprised is still present when I resume playing this game lol. Despite this I still like playing an underdog class in any mmo.

1: #returnshade
2: Life force building is ok, promotes skillful play, cooldowns tied to stuff in deathshroud on the other hand aint, a-net chose one: cooldown based power with infinite usage option or no cooldown on resource based usage options.
3: Fine, again promotes skillful play and should be core of necro mindset like in GW1, you fight to win or die, no cover, no sissies.
4: Kinda, if you want it easy play guard or warrior.

#bringbackshade!

I only realized now, how DS managing is utterly unfair to every other class. Your skills are gated behind not one, but TWO cooldowns and resource management too if it wasn’t enough. Resource in a cooldown based game … jeez … At least thieves and warriors (rolls eyes) can manage it in a better way.

But we can agree on that, that necro should be able to keep people in combat, near to them. And tweak the “the closer you are the bigger danger the necro means to you” stuff. So it will be kinda “kill me or gtfo” situation for the necro.

Why not both? ;D

Don’t get me wrong I want changes as much as the next necro but people seem to complain a tad to much at times. I mean let’s be real here in 1v1’s and even group scenario’s a necro running a dhuumfire condi terror build with epidemic is no joke. I mean heck if we were so bad off we’d be losing every 1v1 encounter which is not the case. I feel we are rather lackluster in PvE content though that’s for sure and could some better way of surviving focus fire than having to rely on DS for all our mitigation purposes.

Brighteluden.2974:

Don’t get me wrong I want changes as much as the next necro but people seem to complain a tad to much at times. I mean let’s be real here in 1v1’s and even group scenario’s a necro running a dhuumfire condi terror build with epidemic is no joke. I mean heck if we were so bad off we’d be losing every 1v1 encounter which is not the case. I feel we are rather lackluster in PvE content though that’s for sure and could some better way of surviving focus fire than having to rely on DS for all our mitigation purposes.

Noone wanted dhuumfire, its the evil stepchild that has a doomcannon while you just wanna be major of a little safe town that some giant monster might attack once a year.

With poor mobility; no block, evade, nor invulnerability; poor or very situational access to stability and vigor; a resource-dependent, cool down-gated active defense which does not scale relative to the number of opponents nor the damage we’re receiving; and high vulnerability to CC which doubly punishes us by inhibiting our ability to build life force, the necro is anything but an attrition class.

I’d be fine with one of two situations:

1) ArenaNet stops with the BS and just simply come out and state the necro is not an attrition profession but, rather, a burst class. Then change our skills around to further align us with this revisioning of the necro.

2) Align how the necro actually plays with the words that come out of the devs mouths with regards to being an attrition class, hard to kill, win or die, difficult to escape from, anti-mobility profession, don’t want to hang around in their kill zone, etc.

I’m fine with several (not all) of our glaring vulnerabilities. But there has to be a balance or compensation for that. With all those strikes against us listed above, we should have mechanics that make us slow but near-unstoppable juggernaughts who – if you don’t kill us quickly – will tear other classes apart if they remain within 600 range or less of us. Instead, we’re just meat shield ragdolls who get punted around, delaying the inevitable defeat.

I don’t mind working harder on a necro relative to other classes. I just want to see that work rewarded through the inclusion of mechanics which permit us to play as a true attrition class without having to jump through hoops to get there. To achieve this, it must be intrinsic to necros in all incarnations; not just through very specific niche builds.

In other words, I don’t want to be told, “Oh, but you CAN play attrition on necro! Just slot spectral armor, spectral walk, and traits which decrease spectral cool downs while increasing their uptime.” No, I don’t want attrition on a necro limited to a small sub-set of specialized builds; I want it to be achievable with any build. If we’re an attrition class, then everything available to us should be able to fulfill that role.

It’s like Bhawb has been stating of late how the minion master’s skills and traits are finally synergizing to make for a pretty decent attrition build. Now take the lessons learned there and apply them to our other trait lines, weapon skills, and utility slots to give all flavors of necros access to attrition mechanics in one form or another.

I don’t really disagree with most of you. I do like playing the underdog class myself. I actually don’t play my warrior like I used to. I still, and probably always will, play my necro as my main.

The thing that truly bothers my is the lack of skill cap. If a necro is so tough to play, if we do indeed have so many barriers and mistakes cost us more, then there should be a higher skill cap. A really good necro who makes very little mistakes and knows their class up and down should have the margin of being able to out-play any class who’s skill cap is mediocre.

It just seems that half the time you’re good just to be on par with players who’s class does half if not most the work for them.

TheDevice.2751:

I don’t really disagree with most of you. I do like playing the underdog class myself. I actually don’t play my warrior like I used to. I still, and probably always will, play my necro as my main.

The thing that truly bothers my is the lack of skill cap. If a necro is so tough to play, if we do indeed have so many barriers and mistakes cost us more, then there should be a higher skill cap. A really good necro who makes very little mistakes and knows their class up and down should have the margin of being able to out-play any class who’s skill cap is mediocre.

It just seems that half the time you’re good just to be on par with players who’s class does half if not most the work for them.

Actually we do have a ridiculous skillcap, but its not in twitch reflexes like on a ele or combo rotation like engi, its sadly defensive resource management (to which every SC brood war fan will scream yay like i did when necro DS was revamped from downed to teleport to current version) which doesnt give much flashy oh you dead now son plays. We are the Frost DK in comparison to the cc immune en mass plague Unholy or the omg he just healed for 99% of his hp Blood spec, our cheer goes, oh he got a free Howling Blast and oh he managed to avoid that 1/40 cc going at him, yay.

TheDevice.2751:

1. No stability: Other classes enjoy the freedom and option of having stability.

This one is not entirely true. Engineers have even worse access to stability.
Toolbelt skill for a bad turret utility that stunbreaks and gives 1 sec stability (like the necro well) with the added penalty that this toolbelt skills is not available while the turret is in use. Then theres throw elixir B, which gives AoE 4 sec stability which would be OK if it weren’t for the fact that the skill has a cast time and its not stunbreaker, therefore it’s useless for reacting to stunlocks.

Mesmers have marginally better one, but far from stellar (mantra with 2 uses of 2 sec stability), which is much better than necro but still not that good.

Warriors on the other hand have 6 stunbreakers in utility skills, mostly on very viable skills. Dolyak signet and balanced stance, 2 stunbreakers with 8 sec stability. Balanced stance can be extended to 10 sec with a trait and another trait triggers balanced stance on CC. So with just those traits and 1 utility slot, warrior can have 2 stunbreakers and 20 sec of stability (before any boon duration bonus), every 40 sec.
Warriors are crazy OP.

Warrior is like the burger with everything….

Don’t get me wrong, Warrior is my highest ranked toon in WvW…

They have supreme mobility and can far out-attrition the attrition class…

A-net, tell me again why Necros don’t get mobility? Was it attrition? I can’t remember…

ManCaptain.3154:

TheDevice.2751:

1. No stability: Other classes enjoy the freedom and option of having stability.

This one is not entirely true. Engineers have even worse access to stability…

Well this would almost be true but they also have elixer S. It isn’t technically stability but has the same uses.

When I qq about stability I’m loosely including things like that.

ManCaptain.3154:

TheDevice.2751:

1. No stability: Other classes enjoy the freedom and option of having stability.

This one is not entirely true. Engineers have even worse access to stability.
Toolbelt skill for a bad turret utility that stunbreaks and gives 1 sec stability (like the necro well) with the added penalty that this toolbelt skills is not available while the turret is in use. Then theres throw elixir B, which gives AoE 4 sec stability which would be OK if it weren’t for the fact that the skill has a cast time and its not stunbreaker, therefore it’s useless for reacting to stunlocks.

Mesmers have marginally better one, but far from stellar (mantra with 2 uses of 2 sec stability), which is much better than necro but still not that good.

Warriors on the other hand have 6 stunbreakers in utility skills, mostly on very viable skills. Dolyak signet and balanced stance, 2 stunbreakers with 8 sec stability. Balanced stance can be extended to 10 sec with a trait and another trait triggers balanced stance on CC. So with just those traits and 1 utility slot, warrior can have 2 stunbreakers and 20 sec of stability (before any boon duration bonus), every 40 sec.
Warriors are crazy OP.

Wait… did you just say that the profession with 2 blocks, a aoe reflect a reflect wall, 7 seconds of stability (count the invul from elixir too) and 12s of stealth (that is min basic setup, more blasts being more stealth) CAN BE EVEN COMPARED to 3s of stability… aaaaaand nothing else?

All I hear is a bunch of whining and complaining. That’s all I ever hear on any of the profession forums. Necro’s have their own strengths and weaknesses just like every other profession. If you can’t deal with their weaknesses by playing to their strengths then go roll something easier.
Another thing;
Who ever said that a Necro is only a “vampire” like being?? Tired of people complaining about what a necro should be, instead of enjoying what it is in GW2. You can be a Necromancer who enjoys summoning the dead, or one that enjoys plagues and DoTs in the form of conditions, and even for you vampire fans you can play a build that siphons health. Stop complaining and ranting about what your view of a necromancer should be in GW2. There are multiple ways to play a Necro, with their own strengths and weaknesses; some playstyles have a higher skillcap to master, and if you can’t figure it out look for help, ask around, or roll a different character. So tired of seeing multiple threads on all the profession forums that only rant and complain; want your experience to get better? Better it yourself by learning and investing time, not everything is going to be given to you easily.

Star.8401:

All I hear is a bunch of whining and complaining. That’s all I ever hear on any of the profession forums. Necro’s have their own strengths and weaknesses just like every other profession. If you can’t deal with their weaknesses by playing to their strengths then go roll something easier.
Another thing;
Who ever said that a Necro is only a “vampire” like being?? Tired of people complaining about what a necro should be, instead of enjoying what it is in GW2. You can be a Necromancer who enjoys summoning the dead, or one that enjoys plagues and DoTs in the form of conditions, and even for you vampire fans you can play a build that siphons health. Stop complaining and ranting about what your view of a necromancer should be in GW2. There are multiple ways to play a Necro, with their own strengths and weaknesses; some playstyles have a higher skillcap to master, and if you can’t figure it out look for help, ask around, or roll a different character. So tired of seeing multiple threads on all the profession forums that only rant and complain; want your experience to get better? Better it yourself by learning and investing time, not everything is going to be given to you easily.

What necro was in GW1: Punishing enemy movement, a massive true damage vampire and aoe master that beefs his allies and the kinda always dominant in corpse filled areas either a armada of death or a crazy suicide bomber factory
WITH the following weaknesses: their own skills hurt them 9/10 times, their mana costs were stupidly high/rely on killing kitten/doing massive damage to survive and had kinds stupid cast times with obvious animations.

Necro GW2 presentation/what it was advertised: A mighty glacier that
wears down enemies with damage over time or cc and manipulates conditions all while thriving in the midst of combat WITH the mighty weakness of low mobility and having to survive via resource management, NOT as a condi burst kitten with by now nerfed or bugged transfers that is like a fly vs newspaper in any cc situation.

Star.8401:

All I hear is a bunch of whining and complaining. That’s all I ever hear on any of the profession forums. Necro’s have their own strengths and weaknesses just like every other profession. If you can’t deal with their weaknesses by playing to their strengths then go roll something easier.
Another thing;
Who ever said that a Necro is only a “vampire” like being?? Tired of people complaining about what a necro should be, instead of enjoying what it is in GW2. You can be a Necromancer who enjoys summoning the dead, or one that enjoys plagues and DoTs in the form of conditions, and even for you vampire fans you can play a build that siphons health. Stop complaining and ranting about what your view of a necromancer should be in GW2. There are multiple ways to play a Necro, with their own strengths and weaknesses; some playstyles have a higher skillcap to master, and if you can’t figure it out look for help, ask around, or roll a different character. So tired of seeing multiple threads on all the profession forums that only rant and complain; want your experience to get better? Better it yourself by learning and investing time, not everything is going to be given to you easily.

Then read something else…

Not sure what you mean by lack of mobility/escape.
Sure our choices are more limited than most professions, but spectral walk has gotten me out of a lot of tight situations. You don’t need to preserve your stun breakers as much since you can use doom when you’re knocked down.

Think about Rush and Judge’s intervention. Player presses button, character moves / ports to the target. Nothing complicated. End of story.
You press a button as a necro and you pull a spectral fart behind you to trick your enemies and run in the opposite direction. If you survived. Or the cliffjump trick. You get the idea.

Spectral Walk can be very handy, but generally when you’re being chased by groups of invaders you’re trying to go forward to catch up to your server’s players (at least in my experience). Spectral Walk escape just ports you back into the kittenstorm that’s following you.

Spectral Walk is great in a niche situation, mainly 1v1 or 1v2… but it doesn’t adequately work as an escape mechanism when you’re being chased by groups of ravenous warriors.

Dark Path would be great if they could;

A. Speed up the projectile
B. Work out the parthing issues with blades of grass and bumps in the earth

Just make it a ground targeted teleport as it was in beta … Problem solved. Hopefully they will revert past changes in March and this will be one of them.

Oh, and the Flesh Golem, my usual Elite skill does not work properly really. Lots of times it just stands around doing nothing while I am attacking.

I wish they made it so spectral armor gives you stability :C

Indeed I’ve got quite annoyed that Necro’s do not have any mobility. The lack is just too big.

Still DS is an amazing mechanic, sadly we can t use it either for stomps (except if you learn the DS stomp trick, still you have to get the 30 SR trait that gives you stability upon entering DS (foot in the grave).

I work with a survivable build, do some stuff with that and duel with that. I also upload vids on Youtube about my duels. What I came to the conclusion is Necro is the best counter class in Gw2.

Mesmer- Zerker : Corrupt boon + terror fear bye bye, Condi mesmer: Corrupt boon + condi transfer.

Warrior-chill and poison , bye bye

Engi- Power Engi: corrupt boon +terror fear combo , Condi Engi: Transfer condis

Guardian- corrupt boon + terror fear combo + poison(inc of condi cleanse)

Ranger- Zerker: corrupt boon if he uses rampage as one otherwise terror fear combo. Condi Ranger: Condi transfer.

Thief- Perma stealther: AOE spam + terror fear combo. Condi thief: condi transfer

Elementalist- Zerker ele: corrupt boon + terror fear combo. Diamond skin Ele: DS + (if you have it Fleshgolem).

Well these are my tactics I defeat my oppnenents in a 1v1.

Alot of people were saying: Necro got major nerf because of Diamond skin ele , well Diamond skin ele’s are quite easy to kill. Or the spec hell lot in Water and Earth magic so they will have no dps or they do not spec in water and are quite glassy.

In this vid I defeat a diamond skin ele: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHtwLWj72j4&feature=c4-overview&list=UUnoiVn59v9x05e_stkI_x8w (skip to 9:33) (I am sry if you hate the music XD)

Still I make a big post about this. And I hope some changes for mobility and stability will come soon

Necro was my first toon and I still love her to death (pun intended!).

My only real issue is lack of mobility. Every other class has a “get away” ability, except necro. The only thing we can do is chill or cripple, but even with Traveler’s runes you’re still only running in slow-mo compared to everyone else. Other than that, I love love love my Dalila.

Head Crowned, I have noticed the issue with the Flesh Golem as well. Extremely frustrating, to say the least.

Necros not having mobility is fine but they certainly should have stability. How can we be an attrition class when we can get ping ponged around so easily?

Since the idea is “necros are dangerous to be near but aren’t very mobile”, why not add stability to the necro in ways that force us to move less.

For example if the Well of Power added 1 sec of stability per pulse while you’re in it, it’d limit our mobility by forcing us to be in the well to get stability.

If the Wurm minion gave us 2 seconds of stability every 10 seconds we’re within 600 range of it, that’d give us stability while limiting our mobility.

Or a trait that gave us 2 seconds of stability if our staff marks are activated while we’re inside them (other than the mark of blood since it’s cooldown is too small and since it already gives us a boon if we’re in it). Adding to the idea that we’re dangerous to be near, while also rewarding skilled play.

Stuff like that would be interesting, stuff that makes us dangerous while hindering our mobility.

Tbh I think necro mobility isn’t too shabby (strictly speaking from WvW experience here). There are many ways to increase swiftness uptime (Death trait line, traited Warhorn/Spectral Walk and more) and with my build right now I maintain about 95% Swiftness Uptime.
All I need right now would be a leap or ground-targeted teleport.

The problem with getting away by crippling/icing is that pretty much other people are resistant to it so that’s most of the time not an option. I mainly use Spectral Walk and after a while spectral recall to get away, but Spectral walk has a pretty long cooldown. I’m a bit experimenting which Utility skills I chose; I had Signet of Spite, Spectral Walk and Well of Power a long time, but the wells didn’t seem too effective so I replaced it foor Corrupt Boon. Epidemic is a nice skill but actually only useful when you’re facing 3 or more opponents at the same time, so I did not put it my skillbar (I mainly play sPvP).

If we cant have stability i want a decent way to get vigor.

CastIron.7364:

Tbh I think necro mobility isn’t too shabby (strictly speaking from WvW experience here). There are many ways to increase swiftness uptime (Death trait line, traited Warhorn/Spectral Walk and more) and with my build right now I maintain about 95% Swiftness Uptime.
All I need right now would be a leap or ground-targeted teleport.

Run speed is fine, but by mobility people are referring to in combat mobility – teleports, blinks, leaps, whirls etc…

We have solid run speed up time with the signet, war horn and s-walk.

I actually use traveller runes so i can free up a utility slot and don’t need to run that crappy signet.

Avigrus.2871:

CastIron.7364:

Tbh I think necro mobility isn’t too shabby (strictly speaking from WvW experience here). There are many ways to increase swiftness uptime (Death trait line, traited Warhorn/Spectral Walk and more) and with my build right now I maintain about 95% Swiftness Uptime.
All I need right now would be a leap or ground-targeted teleport.

Run speed is fine, but by mobility people are referring to in combat mobility – teleports, blinks, leaps, whirls etc…

We have solid run speed up time with the signet, war horn and s-walk.

I actually use traveller runes so i can free up a utility slot and don’t need to run that crappy signet.

The only times I wanted a leap etc. is when chasing a thief/ele or when I got ambushed by some gankers. But generally those skills are not needed if you watch out. Sometimes Spectral Walk and a corner/cliff is all you need (funny how many players aren’t used to a necro porting around). That said I wouldn’t mind some mobility skills, but I feel like there are more pressing issues right now.
Again this is from the perspective of roaming, if you are zerging you better not stay behind.

Main things i would like;

- Stability at a reasonable cost
- A leap / port
- Siphoning to work well

I guess I’m the only Necro that thinks the class is really strong for basically any situation, and I don’t put any weight into escaping a zerg after it’s already on top of you with a few movement skills or stealth.