Guild Wars 2

Every time i use necro in pvp, there are always moments where i wonder if the class’ designers actually extensively use the classes they design in game, against good players. The changes from the last feature pack were very much needed and appreciated but there is still a really irritating problem. Necromancers (power necros especially) are often sitting ducks in pvp.

Fights in pvp change and can change very quickly, a fight that might be in your favour suddenly becomes lost if other players show up unexpectedly. When this happens every class aside guardians and necros have skills they can use to leave. Personally i don’t appreciate being put in certain death situations, even if its not very often.

I hardly think it would be game breaking to put a death shroud skill with a 40 sec cd similar to Lupine’s blast but with a 1200 range charge without a target. The classes appear to have been balanced for equal levels of sustain so it makes no sense to have one class have escapes and another one not.

No, wurm and spectral walk are not escapes, not when one requires you to set up and the other useless when every class can either catch up or immobilize before you can get far enough to port back.

Eh would some escape mechanic be fun & useful ? yes.

However it wouldn’t really go with the core design of the class being “less Mobile”

The real problem here is that the necro’s ability to sustain becomes less & less effective the more enemies are present.

This is mainly due to the fact the necro relies so heavily on death shroud & life force. Something that degrades over time and as you take damage (in shroud) while basically acting like a second health bar (one that prevents healing).

Other classes however have damage mitigation mechanics that are strictly time based & reduce damage taken by a set % no matter how much damage you take (all without preventing healing taken.

Just some food for thought, many ideas for fixing/reducing this problem have been suggested. Unless something is done however necro sustain will never be balanced properly.

@necro sustain, I don’t really see why group fights would be a problem, either the enemies are all targeting you in which case you have a couple things you can pop, aoe fears and etc, and your team is able to have free reign for a 5-10 seconds which is enough time to turn a fight around, or they’re not focusing you which case you put out so much aoe damage with life transfer and tainted shackles and then lich form that they’ll really wish they had focused you.

You’re an unstoppable killing machine in 1v1 fights, it wouldn’t be balanced if you were also able to facetank a group of five players crashing down on you.

If the design intention is for the class to have bad mobility then that is pretty silly considering mobility is a huge part of pvp. If abysmal mobility is the class design then our sustain should be based on effectively countering multiple classes at the same time, not just simply delaying death for a few seconds till we hopefully get saved from a mesmer-thief gank.

There should be something effective we can do when a ranger is shooting from 1500 units away while at the same time being targeted by a hambow warrior, not just go into DS and hope to out last the stun lock, immobilize and rapid fire.

Devs should be the first ones to recognize this, they designed the class. I’ll never understand how it is players are better at using a class than the creators. They should probably come down from their theoretical cubicles and play ranked for a few months.

Personally i think a 30-40 second cd lupine blast ds skill would solve two thirds of the problem. Its something that can combo with spectral walk and dark path for much better spacing. The skill’s velocity is pretty high and makes us invulnerable during the charge making it a pretty effective play in every situation.

Tobias.8632:

@necro sustain, I don’t really see why group fights would be a problem, either the enemies are all targeting you in which case you have a couple things you can pop, aoe fears and etc, and your team is able to have free reign for a 5-10 seconds which is enough time to turn a fight around, or they’re not focusing you which case you put out so much aoe damage with life transfer and tainted shackles and then lich form that they’ll really wish they had focused you.

You’re an unstoppable killing machine in 1v1 fights, it wouldn’t be balanced if you were also able to facetank a group of five players crashing down on you.

1v1, yes no problem even in some 2 on 1s depending on the class but the problem is rapidly changing fights and stun locks. For example, you are fighting a warrior and suddenly you take burst damage from a ranger that is almost double from your effective range. Ok, you pop DS but now since we have virtually no stabilty you are getting stun locked by warrior and still taking damage from ranger. How long do you think DS will last?

In a more extreme scenario, you start taking burst damage from mesmer and thief. If you are surprised by a mesmer it will take you a few moments to locate the real one, meanwhile you are taking backstab damage that can hit from 6-10k. On my thief, the moment i am surprised by a mesmer, i just port out, check how many people joined the fight then port back. Elementalits have their lightning, warriors have their swords. rangers can stealth and/or use gs. All we have is the prayer of death shroud that delays the inevitable in these type of situations.

flesh wurm is a great skill to escape. it just requires you to have more map awareness compared to other classes escape mechanics.
it’s an instant stunbreaking 1,2k range blink that doesn’t need to be aimed because you set it up before the fight.

If you cant escape with flesh wurm, you couldn’t have escaped with any other blink either. Depending on where you set it up, the enemy won’t even see you once you blinked because they dont have the line of sight to your new position. No other blink can do that because they all require line of sight to aim.

While classes with easy access to stealth can just escape with 5% HP, as a necro you have to be more aware about the fight and the map and calculate how low you can go with your HP, lifeforce and cooldowns before you reach the point of no return and have to escape.

So yes, there are better escape mechanics in the game (mainly stealth) but flesh wurm can be used as an escape mechanic and does a very decnt job at that.

EDIT:
oh and the things you can do with spectral walk… not essentialy and escape, but it’s a great unique mobility skill.
And its uses in combination with flesh worm can be huge.

I think sometimes necros expect a bit too much from balance. I used to main necro at some point before I swapped to guardian and nowadays I’m playing mesmer. I exclusively do PvP.

If you swap out necro for any other zerker class, the result remains the same. If you are getting focused by a pain train, unless your teammates peel for you, you will end up in downstate.
Mesmer is the same, even with Blink off cd – thief/mesmer paintrain can easily follow up
Power Ranger is the same, Signet of Stone only delays the inevitable, while still being susceptible to CC.
S/D-F ele? No defense at all.

Thief with Stealth is one of the rare exceptions, but it is a lot more complicated issue.
Without going deep into that, let me just say that Thief nearly pushed out all zerker roamers with the ability to stealth and disengage again and again.

Meditation guardian is the other exception, since all his utilities heal him for a respectable amount and he has further blocks to negate a surprise burst with follow-ups.

Hence why these 2 zerkers are the most viable bursters in the current meta.

But apart from these, I’d say, necros are in line with all the other zerkers.
If anything, I’d say it is a good design. You have so many ways to blow up ppl in 1o1’s or 2o1’s (being a zerker you should really focus on +1’ing fights), it is only fair to be vulnerable to focus fire.

What really grinds my gear is why those 2 classes are exceptions to that rule. I think it has nothing to do with necro balance – instead those 2 classes should be brought in line with the rest of zerkers.

glorius.1235:

I think sometimes necros expect a bit too much from balance. I used to main necro at some point before I swapped to guardian and nowadays I’m playing mesmer. I exclusively do PvP.

If you swap out necro for any other zerker class, the result remains the same. If you are getting focused by a pain train, unless your teammates peel for you, you will end up in downstate.
Mesmer is the same, even with Blink off cd – thief/mesmer paintrain can easily follow up
Power Ranger is the same, Signet of Stone only delays the inevitable, while still being susceptible to CC.
S/D-F ele? No defense at all.

Thief with Stealth is one of the rare exceptions, but it is a lot more complicated issue.
Without going deep into that, let me just say that Thief nearly pushed out all zerker roamers with the ability to stealth and disengage again and again.

Meditation guardian is the other exception, since all his utilities heal him for a respectable amount and he has further blocks to negate a surprise burst with follow-ups.

Hence why these 2 zerkers are the most viable bursters in the current meta.

But apart from these, I’d say, necros are in line with all the other zerkers.
If anything, I’d say it is a good design. You have so many ways to blow up ppl in 1o1’s or 2o1’s (being a zerker you should really focus on +1’ing fights), it is only fair to be vulnerable to focus fire.

What really grinds my gear is why those 2 classes are exceptions to that rule. I think it has nothing to do with necro balance – instead those 2 classes should be brought in line with the rest of zerkers.

Yes it is fair to be vulnerable to focus fire but i don’t see how fair it is that the other classes can choose to run from you if your teammates show up to focus fire and when the reverse happens you are stuck.

I decided to do a long practice run and shatter mesmer alone can easily break through death shroud and still dissappear leaving you vulnerable. There is almost 0 chance that you can counter burst a mesmer, with the blocks, invulns and stealth and still deal with a hammer warrior. In a situation like that i would have preferred to leave the fight but i don’t have that option, but a mesmer in the same situation can do it easily. Meanwhile we both have fairly equal levels of sustain.

Ragion.2831:

Yes it is fair to be vulnerable to focus fire but i don’t see how fair it is that the other classes can choose to run from you if your teammates show up to focus fire and when the reverse happens you are stuck.

Mesmer has 1 port, just like necros, but the port requires LoS, unlike Wurm.
So in that regard, necro has the upper hand. Granted, Wurm itself is vulnerable to damage, but then again, if someone from the paintrain stops to kill your Wurm, it should give you enough time to react.

In a scenario, where a mesmer tries to glue himself to you, you have the upper hand, with the Wurm + sWalk combo. Talking about all utilities off CD.

• You even have a strong immob, against a spec that has 0 condi cleanse.
• Vuln stacks and chill, against 0 condi cleanse.
• 1 or 2 fears (depends on choice of weapons), against 2 stunbreaks – 1 of them is the port that you have difficulties with.

Ragion.2831:

I decided to do a long practice run and shatter mesmer alone can easily break through death shroud and still dissappear leaving you vulnerable.

Of course it will eat through your DS if you take the full burst. Shatters take an immense amount of preparation compared to even your own burst skills, to be on par with other bursts. not to mention their obvious tells – you can dodge a MB+Shatter combo so easily when the mes is visible, it’s really frustrating as a mesmer main
Ofc, when he jumps on you from stealth (+1’ing the fight), it can surprise you, but such is the nature of stealthed bursts in this game.

Ragion.2831:

There is almost 0 chance that you can counter burst a mesmer, with the blocks, invulns and stealth and still deal with a hammer warrior.

True, which is why you should reserve your Wurm for escaping if you are expecting a +1. If you blow it in a 1o1, you will be left with no escapes – just like a mesmer if he blows his Blink in a 1o1.
On a side note, your ability to retaliate has got immensely buffed with the new Elite stab changes. Now Lich is actually meaningful and feared. Prior to patch, it was ridiculously underpowered. Even as a mesmer, I thought it was plain wrong to counter a 180s cd elite with a single boonstrip.
With the new stab change it is no more 4s Lich time, then swapping out for DS to defend yourself, but can stay Lich for the full duration. That itself is a huge buff imo when it comes to counterpressure your enemy.

But let me turn the tables. Do you really think it’d be fair to successfully escape from such an unfavoured matchup, without any kind of serious effort or planning ahead (saving your Wurm to disengage) as a glass cannon?
Yes, if you face a Control class (warrior in this case) and a burst class (mesmer), you will bite the dust quite quickly, unless you react fast enough to get out of the CC-fest. If you decide to stick around, or have no means to disengage, you should suffer the consequences.

Ragion.2831:

In a situation like that i would have preferred to leave the fight but i don’t have that option, but a mesmer in the same situation can do it easily. Meanwhile we both have fairly equal levels of sustain.

Just like you, the mesmer has to manage his cooldowns aswell. Like I said before, it all comes down to CD-management. If you blow your disengage ability in a 1o1, don’t be surprised, that you can’t escape a +1 later on.

And this is just the Mesmer. Other zerk classes, ranger and S/F ele are – arguably – having it worse.

glorius.1235:

Ragion.2831:

Yes it is fair to be vulnerable to focus fire but i don’t see how fair it is that the other classes can choose to run from you if your teammates show up to focus fire and when the reverse happens you are stuck.

Mesmer has 1 port, just like necros, but the port requires pathing, unlike Wurm.
So in that regard, necro has the upper hand. Granted, Wurm itself is vulnerable to damage, but then again, if someone from the paintrain stops to kill your Wurm, it should give you enough time to react.

In a scenario, where a mesmer tries to glue himself to you, you have the upper hand, with the Wurm + sWalk combo. Talking about all utilities off CD.

• You even have a strong immob, against a spec that has 0 condi cleanse.
• Vuln stacks and chill, against 0 condi cleanse.
• 1 or 2 fears (depends on choice of weapons), against 2 stunbreaks – 1 of them is the port that you have difficulties with.

Ragion.2831:

I decided to do a long practice run and shatter mesmer alone can easily break through death shroud and still dissappear leaving you vulnerable.

Of course it will eat through your DS if you take the full burst. Shatters take an immense amount of preparation compared to even your own burst skills, to be on par with other bursts. not to mention their obvious tells – you can dodge a MB+Shatter combo so easily when the mes is visible, it’s really frustrating as a mesmer main
Ofc, when he jumps on you from stealth (+1’ing the fight), it can surprise you, but such is the nature of stealthed bursts in this game.

Ragion.2831:

There is almost 0 chance that you can counter burst a mesmer, with the blocks, invulns and stealth and still deal with a hammer warrior.

True, which is why you should reserve your Wurm for escaping if you are expecting a +1. If you blow it in a 1o1, you will be left with no escapes – just like a mesmer if he blows his Blink in a 1o1.
On a side note, your ability to retaliate has got immensely buffed with the new Elite stab changes. Now Lich is actually meaningful and feared. Prior to patch, it was ridiculously underpowered. Even as a mesmer, I thought it was plain wrong to counter a 180s cd elite with a single boonstrip.
With the new stab change it is no more 4s Lich time, then swapping out for DS to defend yourself, but can stay Lich for the full duration. That itself is a huge buff imo when it comes to counterpressure your enemy.

But let me turn the tables. Do you really think it’d be fair to successfully escape from such an unfavoured matchup, without any kind of serious effort or planning ahead (saving your Wurm to disengage) as a glass cannon?
Yes, if you face a Control class (warrior in this case) and a burst class (mesmer), you will bite the dust quite quickly, unless you react fast enough to get out of the CC-fest. If you decide to stick around, or have no means to disengage, you should suffer the consequences.

Ragion.2831:

In a situation like that i would have preferred to leave the fight but i don’t have that option, but a mesmer in the same situation can do it easily. Meanwhile we both have fairly equal levels of sustain.

Just like you, the mesmer has to manage his cooldowns aswell. Like I said before, it all comes down to CD-management. If you blow your disengage ability in a 1o1, don’t be surprised, that you can’t escape a +1 later on.

And this is just the Mesmer. Other zerk classes, ranger and S/F ele are – arguably – having it worse.

You either do not play Necromancer, or you are blind or just blank out everytime you play one. Sure, both players have to manage their CD’s…

Just that eg. Mesmer has more burst, CC and survivability than a necro while popping less skills. Blocks, invulns, stealth, stunlocks and damage in one set of skills. Necro has a little burst, a second healthbar and then… nothing.

Like, seriously. To do any decent amount of damage you have to take Dagger+ WH and/or Focus, + one or two wells, which leaves you with spectral walk or spectral + wurm. Meaning situational at best mobility and rest simply damage and one-2 CC.

A Mesmer has the same or more burst, while having way more CC, and the option to block attacks or just stealth away, not to mention the “teleports” from spawning clones/illusions.

Easy equation :
Mesmer DMG > Necro DMG
Mesmer CC > Necro CC
Mesmer Survivability > Necro survivability
Mesmer Monbility > Necro Mobility.

And last but not least :

Mesmer gets help: Necro is kittened.
Necro gets help: Mesmer goes stealth and is the kitten out of there.

Shiki.7148:

You either do not play Necromancer, or you are blind or just blank out everytime you play one. Sure, both players have to manage their CD’s…

I’m not exactly sure why you had to jump on me so imperiously, but I’ll play along for now.

Shiki.7148:

Just that eg. Mesmer has more burst, CC and survivability than a necro while popping less skills.

How exactly? Please elaborate on this.

Shiki.7148:

Blocks, invulns, stealth, stunlocks and damage in one set of skills. Necro has a little burst, a second healthbar and then… nothing.

I just made a very short list in my previous post, that you seem to have missed, about what advantages you have over the meta mesmer. It is quite lackluster and could use a bit of adding – the point was to draw attention to the fact that power necros do have some advantage over the meta mesmer.
Blocks, invulns, stealth, stunlocks and damage in one set of skills
you are actually wrong here – none if these exist all at once in the meta builds.
A CI Lockdown build has the potential to have all these abilities combined together, but

• a.) They are far less common than shatter specs
• b.) have to play absolutely perfectly to shine with it. Granted, if done so, it does wonders.

If you think that necro has little burst, I’d advise you to look up Hollts PvP montages or even watch some tournament matches of Radioactive [dK] – granted, the latter is probably not the best example of how to play a power necro (simply personal opinion).

Shiki.7148:

Like, seriously. To do any decent amount of damage you have to take Dagger+ WH and/or Focus, + one or two wells, which leaves you with spectral walk or spectral + wurm. Meaning situational at best mobility and rest simply damage and one-2 CC.

Locust Swarm is a feast against a mesmer. Not only it dispawns clones and thus halv the mesmer’s damage but grants you additional life force aswell.
If you, however, choose to grab Focus instead of Warhorn, then you’ll have a high vuln. stacking skill on a relatively low cd and a decent boonstrip + chill that does quite good damage – not adding sigil procs to the equation.

All while having a mainhand with a strong immob and way more superior AA than the mesmer’s. The #2 is excellent to track down stealth (hint: usually they’ll use decoy after you Fear). The AA is absolutely superb to get rid of clones from the mesmer’s dodge, again crippling both his offense and defense.
I’m actually not sure how the LF on AA works with the new cleave – whether it adds X amount/target or adds X amount regardless of how many targets you hit. If it’s the first, it’s another LF feast for the necro. But I’d happily have someone correct me and explain how this ability works.

Shiki.7148:

A Mesmer has the same or more burst, while having way more CC, and the option to block attacks or just stealth away, not to mention the “teleports” from spawning clones/illusions.

Again, please expand on the damage part, I’m curious how you got to that conclusion.
As for CC, the traditional Sw/T + GS shatter build has 2 CC abilities: iWave and Diversion. The latter requires either a clone or the mesmer himself to stand next to you.

As for the teleports from spawning clones – I’m assuming you were referring to Phase retreat – I guess, the piercing LB is just perfectly suitable to help you out in that situation.

I have the impression, however, that you were talking about more of a CI Interrupt spec. Please correct me if that was not the case.

Shiki.7148:

And last but not least :

Mesmer gets help: Necro is kittened.
Necro gets help: Mesmer goes stealth and is the kitten out of there.

I’m also having trouble understanding this deduction. Stealth itself does not grant you a way out of fights, especially those on a relatively long cd, that mesmers have.
If the mesmer goes Stealth and ports out, it means that during the 1o1 the necro didn’t manage to make him blow either of his stunbreaks – which implies that something went horribly wrong from the necro’s part in that matchup.

Actually survivability is decent. A core problem of the class is simply not being able to get breathing room.

Blocks(gear shield, shelter), invulns(distortion, stances kinda, renewed focus), dodges due to vigor, invis and ports are defensive and allow you to escape focus fire or disengage.
All of these are tools that allow a player to actively defend himself. On the other hand DS is simply a button press that helps with enduring. It is not really active and your survivability comes from beeing able to face tank stuff. This leads to necro players feeling powerless when confronted with focus fire. And to be honest you are pretty powerless. You press one button and hope things clear up when your life force is empty/ or stunbreaker/putrid/heal ready. Meanwhile you are also easily disabled from applying counterpressure when in deathshroud since your mechanic makes it so that you have to eat CC and can’t retaliate back.

As something anecdotal: even though i have worse mobility on hamguard i feel i can more easily disengage due to the class giving me block and invuln and thus avoiding CC till i can line of sight most things that get thrown at me.

Although, especially power necro feels like a wrecking ball – come late to the party and set the house on fire – you are doing that from inside the house. Once committed to the fight you are most likely staying until it ends.

Bellamy.9860:

Actually survivability is decent. A core problem of the class is simply not being able to get breathing room.

Blocks(gear shield, shelter), invulns(distortion, stances kinda, renewed focus), dodges due to vigor, invis and ports are defensive and allow you to escape focus fire or disengage.
All of these are tools that allow a player to actively defend himself. On the other hand DS is simply a button press that helps with enduring. It is not really active and your survivability comes from beeing able to face tank stuff. This leads to necro players feeling powerless when confronted with focus fire. And to be honest you are pretty powerless. You press one button and hope things clear up when your life force is empty/ or stunbreaker/putrid/heal ready. Meanwhile you are also easily disabled from applying counterpressure when in deathshroud since your mechanic makes it so that you have to eat CC and can’t retaliate back.

As something anecdotal: even though i have worse mobility on hamguard i feel i can more easily disengage due to the class giving me block and invuln and thus avoiding CC till i can line of sight most things that get thrown at me.

Although, especially power necro feels like a wrecking ball – come late to the party and set the house on fire – you are doing that from inside the house. Once committed to the fight you are most likely staying until it ends.

Like I stated in my first post in this thread, when it comes to dealing with focus fire thieves and guards have it best, thanks to their “uniqueness” in the zerker meta. Mesmer comes at 3rd place probably, then Ranger/necro and then last S/F ele.

Like I said, those classes should be brought in par with the other zerkers – ie: make focus fire just as hard to deal with on them too.

I might be partially biased when it comes to mesmer, but I’d say the survivability/damage “ratio” is somewhat in balance.
It takes a piano concerto and rather good tactical insight to successfully deliver a full mesmer burst, whilest a ranger/necro/thief/guardian burst is somewhat “easier” to pull off.
Based on this logic, mesmer bursts should land less frequently than the other classes’ – so they’d need compensation in another areas. I’m still not convinced that mesmer mobility/survivability is that much better, but I can see how it could be more appealing in certain situations.

That’s being said, I still don’t think that other zerkers (apart from the 2 golden boys) have such an edge over necros when it comes to 1v1.
+1’ing is a different story and classes that can stealth on their own (like mesmers) absolutely have an advantage in this regard, as they have the element of surprise on their side.

In a zerker comparison, i don’t think mesmer is superior to necro. The class has it’s issues (esp thief but also condi vulnerability) but also some things going for it (mobility in the form of portal and easier access to positional advantages, boon removal, somewhat low cd burst combo that is harder to land though, access to safe stomps ).
My only point is about things you can do with different classes against focus fire and, to be honest, mesmer has more active play there than necro which is important because active play and options makes it so you feel less limited by your class and more limited by your own skill.

Bellamy.9860:

My only point is about things you can do with different classes against focus fire and, to be honest, mesmer has more active play there than necro which is important because active play and options makes it so you feel less limited by your class and more limited by your own skill.

This is where the intended playstyle comes into the picture.
While mesmer seems to be more like a hit&run prof and thus have better chance to actually run from focus fire, necro requires indeed a different approach. Having superior on-point pressure compared to mesmer for example is what’s been taken into account in my opinion.
First step is to admit that you will never be able to outrun focus fire.
Next is to try to counterpressure instead of playing defensively – a Fear here, a Chill there, drop your well(s), “tank” in it. Since people are usually used to look at someone’s back while they’re applying pressure, this might catch them off guard. (hence the WTS finals against Abjured)
With the fixed downstate (16 bugs, really ANet?), you are a threat even when you are downed.

A class design is at play and I’m afraid it is intended to function the way it currently does. Horrendous, if you ask me, but nevertheless a conscious decision.

Starting to see the issues with building for survivability when it’s not possible I see. Eventually that leads to playing full glass power or full glass condi. I did tell you this a week or so ago.

glorius.1235:

Bellamy.9860:

My only point is about things you can do with different classes against focus fire and, to be honest, mesmer has more active play there than necro which is important because active play and options makes it so you feel less limited by your class and more limited by your own skill.

This is where the intended playstyle comes into the picture.
While mesmer seems to be more like a hit&run prof and thus have better chance to actually run from focus fire, necro requires indeed a different approach. Having superior on-point pressure compared to mesmer for example is what’s been taken into account in my opinion.
First step is to admit that you will never be able to outrun focus fire.
Next is to try to counterpressure instead of playing defensively – a Fear here, a Chill there, drop your well(s), “tank” in it. Since people are usually used to look at someone’s back while they’re applying pressure, this might catch them off guard. (hence the WTS finals against Abjured)
With the fixed downstate (16 bugs, really ANet?), you are a threat even when you are downed.

A class design is at play and I’m afraid it is intended to function the way it currently does. Horrendous, if you ask me, but nevertheless a conscious decision.

Problem is “tank it” doesn’tr really work when you ar epingponged around 90% of the time due to not having decent stability acces, or get bursted down because all you have is a second hp-bar and no block etc. of any description. Can’t run, can’t survive – thats the necro currently.

NeXeD.3042:

Starting to see the issues with building for survivability when it’s not possible I see. Eventually that leads to playing full glass power or full glass condi. I did tell you this a week or so ago.

This is one of the main problems with necromancer.

Practically ALL the defense comes from death shroud & spectral armor.
(while spectral armor is consistent death shroud becomes progressively weaker the more enemies you fight)

There really is no point in getting the defensive traits because their effect is generally so minimal it won’t matter in the long run anyway.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

NeXeD.3042:

Starting to see the issues with building for survivability when it’s not possible I see. Eventually that leads to playing full glass power or full glass condi. I did tell you this a week or so ago.

This is one of the main problems with necromancer.

Practically ALL the defense comes from death shroud & spectral armor.
(while spectral armor is consistent death shroud becomes progressively weaker the more enemies you fight)

There really is no point in getting the defensive traits because their effect is generally so minimal it won’t matter in the long run anyway.

Only defensive traits I ever take are still in offensive traitlines.

Necros best defense is offense. Everyone gets it eventually.

Shiki.7148:

Problem is “tank it” doesn’tr really work when you ar epingponged around 90% of the time due to not having decent stability acces

None of the zerker classes have stability on their utility bars, so not exactly sure how or why necros should be different. Not having a reliable Vigor source is a much bigger issue. You can fix it by adding Energy sigils to the mix, but then you’ll lose out on damage somewhat.

Shiki.7148:

or get bursted down because all you have is a second hp-bar and no block etc. of any description.

One might argue that having a second HP bar is actually more useful to soak up damage opposed to invuln skills. Whilest the first lets you contest a point, the latter doesn’t do so. In small fights DS is somewhat close to blocks/invulns. The problem becomes relevant when facing outnumbered situations aka focused fire. Then again, if 5 ppl are tunnelvisioning you, your team must be utter garbage not to capitalize on it and apply counterpressure, single-ing out one of their squishies – sorry, there’s no nicer way to put it. It’s is not a cele class, don’t try to outheal the incoming damage, it won’t work. Instead you have to apply the “best defence is an offense” mindset and retaliate somewhere else.
People keep blaming Nos and point at him saying “well, well, Necro is indeed garbage. Look at how bad he did against oRNG”, while in fact they forget that Abjured’s (arguably) main DPS, Magic Toker failed miserably at applying counter- or any kind of pressure.

Shiki.7148:

Can’t run, can’t survive – thats the necro currently.

We’ve been over it – S/F ele, LB Ranger are all on the level of Necro, when it comes to disengaging. And even worse sustain-wise.
Mesmer is a lot worse sustain-wise, but has a slightly better chance at leaving a fight.
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I know your problems and believe or not, I share your opinion as in necros should get some tweaks. You just happen to bring up the wrong arguments, which will eventually get you nowhere. It is not an issue when you get countered by another player on the forums, but not receiving the necessary buffs, just because you are asking for the wrong things while backing it up with unviable arguments tends to be irritating.

Shiki.7148:

Easy equation :
Mesmer DMG > Necro DMG
Mesmer CC > Necro CC
Mesmer Survivability > Necro survivability
Mesmer Monbility > Necro Mobility.

Mesmer burst > necro burst
necro sustained dmg > mesmer sustained dmg
mesmer cc (f3 daze) ~= necro cc (warhorn)
mesmer immob < necro immob+cripple
necro survivability (DS sustain, lifesteal, big HP, heal) > mesmer survivability (evades, low HP, low heal)
necro mobility (wurm no LoS, spectral walk) ~situational= mesmer mobility (1 LoS blink, stealth)

quBit.6437:

Shiki.7148:

Easy equation :
Mesmer DMG > Necro DMG
Mesmer CC > Necro CC
Mesmer Survivability > Necro survivability
Mesmer Monbility > Necro Mobility.

Mesmer burst > necro burst
necro sustained dmg > mesmer sustained dmg
mesmer cc (f3 daze) ~= necro cc (warhorn)
mesmer immob < necro immob+cripple
necro survivability (DS sustain, lifesteal, big HP, heal) > mesmer survivability (evades, low HP, low heal)
necro mobility (wurm no LoS, spectral walk) ~situational= mesmer mobility (1 LoS blink, stealth)

Mesmer has clones, TP’s via clones/illusions and stealth for surtvivability, aswell as a block/invuln. And there are also stunlock-builds which is WAY more than a 3 second daze. Necro Lifesteal is absolute crap. And Necro heal gets interrupted easily and often , while Mesmer have an instant-cast heal, and a heal that resets cooldowns for clones or illusions – not sure which. And as for burst vs sustained dmg… even if it was true, it isn’t a factor because , devoid of defensive options as the necro is, you will die before the sustained dmg comes into play. And if you take defensive traits your damage will take a nosedive so hard you’ll end up way behind mesmer in sustained damage, too. So…yeah.

Shiki.7148:

Necro Lifesteal is absolute crap.

Necro lifesteal is the most underrated thing in this game. You can siphon on every single hit with no cooldown (which adds up alot with warhorn #5 + focus #4 + dagger auto combo for example) and more than double the siphon on every crit without cooldown. Dagger #2 heals you for an average healing skill worth of HP on a super low CD while still putting out decent dmg. Throw sigil of blood in there as well and you got yourself some considerable self sustain. Just because it’s not meta, people think its kitten. Do the math or try it, you would be surprised how much self healing you can get. People also seem to forget that lifesteal doesnt only heal you but also damage the enemy at the same time.

A lifesteal necro can often outheal a zerker warrior just by trading hits. A mesmer has to hit mad burst while being very vulnerable to a zerker war.

Really? An average of 120 health/second lets you trade blows with a Zerker warrior? I doubt it.

Siphoning skills are pretty good. Siphoning traits are horridly ineffective.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Really? An average of 120 health/second lets you trade blows with a Zerker warrior? I doubt it.

Siphoning skills are pretty good. Siphoning traits are horridly ineffective.

The total HPS is much higher than 120. The warrior only has the healing signet and maybe some regeneration boon. Necro has a big heal (consume conditions), regeneration and lifesteal.

I’m not saying you can outheal the warriors damage, but you gain enough healing throughout the fight that you can keep up your DPS and bring the warrior down before you go down. It’s all about the actual DPS uptime in the fight, not about big hits or DPS on a target golem. And lifesteal helps a ton with DPS uptime. Just like warriors Healing signet helps with their DPS uptime while other classes have to pause DPS to heal or stealth or whatever.

NeXeD.3042:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

NeXeD.3042:

Starting to see the issues with building for survivability when it’s not possible I see. Eventually that leads to playing full glass power or full glass condi. I did tell you this a week or so ago.

This is one of the main problems with necromancer.

Practically ALL the defense comes from death shroud & spectral armor.
(while spectral armor is consistent death shroud becomes progressively weaker the more enemies you fight)

There really is no point in getting the defensive traits because their effect is generally so minimal it won’t matter in the long run anyway.

Only defensive traits I ever take are still in offensive traitlines.

Necros best defense is offense. Everyone gets it eventually.

Totally agree. I roam in wvw a lot, and I am either full glass condi (6/6/0/0/2) with perplex runes, or 6/2/0/0/6 zerker build, with some valkyrie thrown in for some health. Defense is Sarmor, and bursting wether it be condi burn, or dagger/axe2/shroud/lich/heal/shroud/axe2/dagger and keep going until everything is dead.

The entire idea behind the profession requires heavy ground work.

We’re niche. I’d say that the Necromancer shares most of his problems not with other professions, but with PvE Boss mechanics.

Some skills are cool and great, but we don’t live long enough to even make use of them.

quBit.6437:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Really? An average of 120 health/second lets you trade blows with a Zerker warrior? I doubt it.

Siphoning skills are pretty good. Siphoning traits are horridly ineffective.

The total HPS is much higher than 120. The warrior only has the healing signet and maybe some regeneration boon. Necro has a big heal (consume conditions), regeneration and lifesteal.

I’m not saying you can outheal the warriors damage, but you gain enough healing throughout the fight that you can keep up your DPS and bring the warrior down before you go down. It’s all about the actual DPS uptime in the fight, not about big hits or DPS on a target golem. And lifesteal helps a ton with DPS uptime. Just like warriors Healing signet helps with their DPS uptime while other classes have to pause DPS to heal or stealth or whatever.

From siphon traits, 120 HP/S is about as good as you can expect, unfortunately. If you go all out in Zealot’s gear and full siphon traits, probably up to 200 if your opponent isn’t avoiding your attacks.

Again, siphoning traits are awful. Siphoning skills are good. Life Siphon untraited and with 0 healing power (and most dagger builds have healing power, even if it’s just from the Spite minor) is 173 HP/Second if you cast it on cooldown. Add Bloodthirst and that jumps to a minimum of 213.67 HP/second in the same situation.

Every siphon trait in the game is still worse than a single instance of regeneration.

even if it was only 120HP/s, thats still better than engineers backpack regenerator at the same trait point cost. and on top of that, it does not only heal but also damage, and the amounts double when hitting two targets instead of one. count in the sigil of blood for another ~100hp/s and life siphon ~400hp/s and your consume conditions heal ~200hp/s and youre well above a warriors hp/s even without using your consume conditions. it does add up alot and makes for very good self sustain. because the siphon has no internal cooldown, you can burst heal alot.

Consume Conditions has no passive HP/s, Sigil of blood is available to anyone, and a single trait from engineer outheals multiple traits from Necromancer.

quBit.6437:

even if it was only 120HP/s, thats still better than engineers backpack regenerator at the same trait point cost. and on top of that, it does not only heal but also damage, and the amounts double when hitting two targets instead of one. count in the sigil of blood for another ~100hp/s and life siphon ~400hp/s and your consume conditions heal ~200hp/s and youre well above a warriors hp/s even without using your consume conditions. it does add up alot and makes for very good self sustain. because the siphon has no internal cooldown, you can burst heal alot.

No, not “the same trait point cost.” That is every siphoning trait combined. I’ll be doing a breakdown later, but my initial calculations show the average healing/second with massive investment into siphon traits and stats ends up at ~115 healing/second.

Yes. Maximum investment into siphoning traits yields less healing/second than 0 healing power Regeneration.

Is there any extra value in the way that siphons can be used concurrently with regeneration? Sort of like that one ranger build that used regeneration + troll unguent + a signet to have fairly consistent healing over time, with significantly higher intensity than regeneration alone?

Softspoken.2410:

Is there any extra value in the way that siphons can be used concurrently with regeneration? Sort of like that one ranger build that used regeneration + troll unguent + a signet to have fairly consistent healing over time, with significantly higher intensity than regeneration alone?

Not really, because to get consistent Regeneration, you have to give up the fast-hitting skills that best utilize siphons due to camping staff.

Or use Unholy Sanctuary, which doesn’t work with siphons at all.

The Ranger build has far more actual HP over time, plus it is completely passive, it doesn’t require the ranger to actually hit anything, and can’t be “turned off” with death shroud. That means they have better regen, for less investment, that is more reliable. So… yeah it is obviously far better of a build.