Guild Wars 2

We all know where necro stands in spvp, and this is a post about one of the many things that make necro bottom tier, yet is not often mentioned – the weapons. Plain and simple – their design and synergies are often bad or unbalanced. Or both.
So without further introductions, let old dr Zef diagnose this dead patient:

1. The Dagger – unlike most things necro this weapon’s sin is being OP. Powerful melee damage, cleaves, fast mulitple hits for triggering on hit effects, great life force build up on auto, solid hp leech on #2, very good immobilize on 3, and both #2 and #3 having 600 range.

It’s near impossible to not go dagger when playing necro.

Rating: 4.5/5

2. The scepter And here comes the redhaired fat stepchild with crooked teeth. The scepter is hands down the worst weapon in necro’s kitten nal. What is supposed to be a sustained ranged condi weapon in reality is a deathwish,

Crimes of the scepter are numerous. Firstly for a ranged 1v1 weapon it lacks the power to be such. There is no direct nor condi burst to make you a threat before opponent grows a beard and you’re long dead. If you’re looking for defensive option, like on mesmer’s scepter – good luck! There ain’t none here, unless you’re talking cripple from grasping dead, but that has to land first, and it’s one chance per 10s.
Nail to it’s coffin is the 900 range, which kills it’s chances to be a viable condi-snipe tool (welll that and lack of burst).

Scepter has no place in battle with opponent who is fighting you and not running away or not aware you’re there picking him off.

Rating: 1.5/5

Staff – imagine you have 5 skills. None of them good. Wasted 10s is how i feel about the staff. 4 outta 5 skills are marks, which unless used directly on enemy are a waste of a cast. They’re visible from a mile and a simple dodgeroll solves all the mark problems for the enemy. When that’s done and avoided what you’re left with is most often putrid mark for condi cleanse and slow, power based auto. I won’t say auto-attack is bad, it’s far better then scepter and has 1200 range. But it’s still not very strong, and very brain dead. Ranger’s bow auto attacks heavily reward positioning making them far less boring. With staff it’s a snoozefest.

Rating: 2.5/5
Axe I stand corrected by community. Axe damage is horrid. It needs some serious buffing of it’s AA and #2 damage skill. Still while lacking in power the overall concept is good – vulni + burst + aoe retal. But those damage numbers needs some attention.

Rating: 2/5

warhorn – warhorn rocks, a control weapon with swiftness, lf gain and cripples. Made for moving around and melee combat., dagger’s best friend.
Rating: 5/5

offhand dagger – guess that’s supposed to be the offhand condi weapon. The condi cleanse with blind is nice, but enfleebling blood is a dissapointment for a #5 skill. Soon we’ll have that on a trait when entering ds (currently we get nerfed version), so that shows how trashy it is.

rating: 2.5/5

focus reaper’s scythe is nice for some fast vulni stacking and life force gain (+ regen). It’s a bit too visible, but still a good #4 skill. It’s the spinal shivers that give me the chills. 1.25s is a horrid cast time, and at best it strips 3 boons. On other character that may be impressive, but necro is known for corrupting boons, not just stripping them. And that trait that does the very same skill when opponent is below 50%. Shows how little spinal shivers are valued.

rating: 2.5/5

When it comes to weapons necromancer really got the short end of the short stick. Lack of defensive options (such as blocks or evades, or even a kitten blind (save single blind on offhand dagger), lack of solid condi burst (on character that’s supposed to be THE condi class), lack of good melee power cleave (reaper will adress that) and lack of a clear role for most of them (staff, scepter, focus), combined with some of them being ridicously op (dagger& warhorn) screwes necro in spvp even more.

I hope A-net will wake up and start thinking about how to adress these necro issues.

I think something is wrong if you’re rating axe that much higher than scepter.

The bad design is there but I don’t think it’s for the reasons you lay out, and you’re clearly biased towards power necro.

I thought axe was only good for building LF and minion masters to increase minion damage through vulnerability.

You would be correct Vizard. I don’t really know what Zeft is talking about here. A lot of these are pretty good. Scepter isn’t so bad, staff is nice, off-hand dagger is great and has a nice condi-transfer. Axe is pretty bad though.

@Roe – you can’t compare a weapon of dps to a weapon of condi… so rating on them would be down to what they do not what they are in comparison

HardRider.2980:

@Roe – you can’t compare a weapon of dps to a weapon of condi… so rating on them would be down to what they do not what they are in comparison

I didn’t make the comparison.

I’m not biased, a-net is.

Axe is a 1v1 power weapon and what it does, it does well. There’s a sick burst under #2, some decent damage and vulni stacking under auto, and some retal under 3. These skills make sense and axe is a viable, dangerous weapon for a power necro.

Scepter is a viable, dangerous condi weapon…on a mesmer. Just take a look at their scepter to see how it’s done. On necro it’s a sloooooow damage build up, 0 defense, semi-ranged 1v1 weapon. Not even able to see the dirt behind axe in terms of practical combat.

Honestly i cannot believe that anyone would rate axe higher then staff or scepter…

Axe 2 is not even remotely close to burst. Maybe in comparison to axe 1 it could be considered burst. But against anything else. Nope.

Axe is just flat out the most useless weapon in the game. Scepter is ok because it atleast has a purpose. Although its clunky and pigeonholed. Staff is just pure utility and its weak at that.

I would give axe a 0/5, scepter 2/5 and staff 1.5/5.

Yeah, I have to be honest, this just seems like a frustrated and biased condi Necro rant. All of our weapons lack practical defenses and things of that sort, that say, a Mesmer has. That’s mostly because it’s not what we’re supposed to do.

Necro has its issues across the board, but trying to be another class isn’t really the answer. Also, axe isn’t what I’d consider “fine” nor would I ever rate it over Staff, which is one of the most mandatory pvp weapons for necro, as it’s a (yes, nerfed) utility weapon.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I’m not biased, a-net is.

Axe is a 1v1 power weapon and what it does, it does well. There’s a sick burst under #2, some decent damage and vulni stacking under auto, and some retal under 3. These skills make sense and axe is a viable, dangerous weapon for a power necro.

Scepter is a viable, dangerous condi weapon…on a mesmer. Just take a look at their scepter to see how it’s done. On necro it’s a sloooooow damage build up, 0 defense, semi-ranged 1v1 weapon. Not even able to see the dirt behind axe in terms of practical combat.

You are extremely bias. Axe is easily our worst weapon. Not just my opinion, but everyone excluding you feels that way. Its life force generation is too slow, valn stacking also too slow, feast is also extremely slow. Its range is just awful and its damage is rubish to say the least. Scepter doesn’t do quite as much raw damage as the axe does but it has +300 range, condition application and coverage, shorter cast and targeted cripple. Comparing to two though is like night and day. They’re different weapons with different functions. But when the scepter auto actually out damages the axe auto we have a problem.

Its life force generation is also a major problem. Both dagger and staff far exceed the axe in this regard with far less effort. Not to mention when you compare the axe with weapons from other professions that fill similar roles it becomes abundantly clear just how weak the damage actually is. Averaging HALF the damage output of weapons with twice its range.

Compare the Scepter on necro with other profession’s weapons with similar roles. The Scepter sits somewhere in the middle. Not the best but defiantly not the worst by any stretch of the imagination. Mesmer Scepter is far more defensive then necro’s. And you can see this with its skills. While necros focuses more on field control, all be it minor field control, the Mesmer’s scepter is a defensive condition weapon. Its torment application is really slow compared to the necro’s bleed and poison application. The two weapons serve very different play styles. I think Feast of corruption needs some work as its kinda awkward with a pure condition set up as opposed to a hybrid set up but its still not bad.

I would also agree that Axe is not a great weapon, however the notes on the scepter, staff and off-hand dagger couldn’t be any more true.

Scepter as a whole needs to do much more damage. I think its abilities are great in design, they are just too weak in damage.

Staff is good, but I find myself switching weapons as soon as the cd is ready. Its autoattack is decent for staying at range while building life force but as a power necro #2 is pretty bad and autoattack doesn’t do much damage. Dagger is the only viable weapon for power necro to actually outdps another class (staff provides utility & burst).

Axe needs a skill chain on #1, ie: hit once, hit twice, large hit + 5 stacks of vuln (8s). #2 and #3 are good I believe. Although, again as said in the OP, dagger is the superior melee weapon. Maybe increase range to 900?

I think the OP blew this out of proportion, and yes, it sounds like a biased rant.

You can’t review a particular mechanic in a game without considering other mechanics that are connected to it and affect it in certain ways. As such, you can’t review necro weapons on their own without considering the ability to weapon swap and death shroud.

It’s just not that simple.

A few things I’d like to point out:

In a PvP setting, axe really is not that good because it attacks slow, and axe 2 is easily dodged. The moment the enemy sees the numbers tick off on him or her, he or she will dodge to mitigate the damage.

And offhand dagger doesn’t “condi cleanse” it transfers three conditions—which is awesome. Dagger 5 enfeebling bleed is does pretty good condi damage. You can pair offhand dagger with scepter for more damage if you feel the scepter is inadequate by itself.

I think the point with the scepter is to stack condition with 1, snare and inflict more bleeds with 2, hit dagger 5 for even more bleeds, and finish with scepter 3 for a bit of burst + life force.

It’s possible to do this in battle without being instantly blown up – at least I’ve managed to somehow do it.

And if the opponent is already on you, there’s nothing stopping you from swapping out to mainhand dagger or go into death shroud.

Lastly, it doesn’t seem that the OP considered the role of the scepter as a support weapon. It’s the only weapon we have that inflicts poison—which reduces healing by 33 percent—which can be useful in certain instances.

I don’t know. I just don’t think scepter is all that bad when you use it for what it was intended to do. Maybe the OP just doesn’t enjoy the slower pace of condition weapons and the need for more defensively play.

In defense of axe. Being often dodged = dodge bait. And that’s a huge value on it’s own. Especially given the reallly short cd on it when traited.

As for scepter – you have to do little better then single target, 900 range, very poor direct damage and slow condi buildup to rank as viable support in my book. Just ask yourself if you’d go scepter + dagger/staff into pvp, knowing things might get up close and personal more then once.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

In defense of axe. Being often dodged = dodge bait. And that’s a huge value on it’s own. Especially given the reallly short cd on it when traited.

As for scepter – you have to do little better then single target, 900 range, very poor direct damage and slow condi buildup to rank as viable support in my book. Just ask yourself if you’d go scepter + dagger/staff into pvp, knowing things might get up close and personal more then once.

Erm. People go scepter+dagger/Staff in pvp more often than axe. O.o it’s called a Terrormancer. Maybe not more than dagger anymore, but for pvp across the entirety of the game, scepter staff has been one of the most used.

ok my bad. Axe does have horrid auto damage. Guess it’s cause i played axe on power setting, and scepter on condi…..which makes scepter more viable as ranged hybrid weapon rather then pure condi. Well there goes that dream.

So ok axe needs some serious attention and scepter some condi-burst love.

I use axe all the time but it is an awful weapon

The sad thing is that Scepter makes a better Power weapon than Axe does. Improved range and comparable direct damage, but also the bonus of condition damage and poison utility.

In a condition damage build, of course, axe is completely worthless and Scepter is the best we have.

Dagger is horribly designed, but makes up for that with ridiculous damage numbers that make it quite viable.

Axe needs something more. It’s lacking all around. It has arguably more utility than the dagger, but is still on the low end of utility. Its damage is laughable and its range doesn’t make up for it. It definitely needs some work.

Focus needs a lower cast time on Spinal Shivers. Lower it to 1 second flat.

Warhorn trait shouldn’t be in the Curses Line.

The Scepter being so terrible is why condition necromancers are considered the worst pvp build there is, right Zeft?

Other than warhorn(still an OH) I can’t say we have great design in weapons others we just settle down for them especially staff it’s just there I feel like I get more from procs,sigils and runes.

My biggest problems with our weapons is the stupid long pre/post cast times especially when they are slow moving projectiles. That is what kittenes me off about the necro, feels so clunky, slow, etc. I don’t know why we have to suffer from a lack of mobility and insanely high cast times on the weapon skills. It’s like the necro rides the short bus with regard to cast speed.

I don’t really agree, this is how I would break down the weapons.

Dagger mainhand 3/5:
The auto is great in every way. Everything else is subpar. Dark pact has a huge cooldown, and a large cast time. The immobilize is nice, but subpar compared to other immobilize skills in everything except immobilize duration. Life siphon is great in concept, but takes too long to cast in actual combat and doesn’t scale well with number of enemies.

Axe 1.5/5:
Most of the rating is for the 3 skill unholy feast, it is a great necro oriented skill. Auto-attack is almost useless, simply doesn’t do enough because vuln on auto alone with no damage is weak (look at mesmers sword, way way better). I don’t even need to dodge the 2 skill, just walk out of range, it is good in concept though. The weapon needs to be 900 range since we will now have a bunch of melee skills and no power ranged weapon. The auto attack needs to be reworked even with that.

Scepter 3/5:
The auto attack on this weapon is strong. The two skill grasping dead is pretty good for kiting, it could do a little more damage (bring back the bleed or make it 2 stacks of torment). Feast of Corruption is an ok skill because it does decent damage and has good lf regen, but I still think it needs to be condition oriented because the rest of the weapon doesn’t scale well with power. Also, mesmer scepter is terrible, necro scepter >>>> mesmer scepter. Mesmer scepter has big fat interruptable dodgeable skills. You can dodge/interrupt the 2 skill after you hit them, the 3 skill is a 3 second channel, and the auto is a huge cast as well.

Staff 3/5:
Auto is ok, it would be great if it applied a condition or was a 50% projectile finisher. Mark of blood is great low cooldown damage and regen. Chillblains gives two of the strongest debuffing conditions, it’s pretty good. Putrid Mark is strong, but needs to work on allies again (maybe just one condition from allies). REaper’s Mark is also pretty good, could maybe use a small CD reduction.

dagger offhand 3.5/5:
Really strong skills, condition transfer+ blind is epic on deathly swarm. weakness and bleeds is good, but enfeebling blood takes too long to actually land (3/4 second cast plus half second fall time). It also has too long of a cooldown, it could be 20 seconds, or they could make the weakness last a little longer.

Warhorn 4/5:
AOE 2s Daze on a low cast time is epic strong, could use a blast though. Locust Swarm is similarly awesome, aoe cripple + swiftness + lf is real strong.

Focus 2/5:
REaper’s touch needs to be more consistent, vuln is nice, regen is nice, but on the same skill is weird. Should either grant fury to allies or weakness to enemies. Spinal Shivers just has a really long cast time, so it either needs to deal more damage, or have a smaller cast time (chill of death doesn’t need more damage though).

@Zapv Take away MH dagger LF gain it’s over for it at least PvP wise, axe is for aesthetics, scepter AA is too slow #2 is just there #3 is not rewarding enough for it’s requirements, staff is just there.

We can agree the best weapon combinations are scepter/dagger /WH & staff, I rely more on sigil & runes then the weapons themselves.

Axe is there for lifeforce regen off downed people and proccing fire/air sigils while baiting or waiting for something better to come off cooldown…unholy feast is actually pretty darn good in wvw though.

Focus seems very underrated, spinal shivers is devastating to anyone who is into thier cooldowns.

I dont get what you are talking about, its Staff=Dagger>Warhorn/Offhand-Dagger>Focus/Scepter>Axe, numbers rating are worthless since you cant honestly compare weapons from one profession to weapons of another unless they do the same role with the same playstyle and same build balance (which noone of the necro weapons really do). Also dagger is in general a average power weapon (i would even argue that the 2 target cleave made it worse by moving its role from single target overpower instead of making 2 and 3 more interesting or provide more quality of life/something more than spam 1 for pve).

Staff isnt really a good weapon. Its just our only 1200 range weapon. Rating it highly doesnt make any sense.

OP is overrating the dagger.

No necromancer has ever appeared in a high level Pvp tournament with dagger. The weapon doesn’t have GAP Closers, or defensive tools to survive in melee like reflects or Stability.

Necromancers really did get the short end of the weapon stick.

I think the reason our weapons suck is MINIONS. Their DPS is figured into the overall power budget for the class, Also, their finishers. But since they suck, necromancers who don’t use them have low DPS and no finishers.

nekretaal.6485:

OP is overrating the dagger.

No necromancer has ever appeared in a high level Pvp tournament with dagger. The weapon doesn’t have GAP Closers, or defensive tools to survive in melee like reflects or Stability.

Necromancers really did get the short end of the weapon stick.

I think the reason our weapons suck is MINIONS. Their DPS is figured into the overall power budget for the class, Also, their finishers. But since they suck, necromancers who don’t use them have low DPS and no finishers.

No necromancer has ever appeared in high level pvp tournaments and not been a liability.

spoj.9672:

nekretaal.6485:

OP is overrating the dagger.

No necromancer has ever appeared in a high level Pvp tournament with dagger. The weapon doesn’t have GAP Closers, or defensive tools to survive in melee like reflects or Stability.

Necromancers really did get the short end of the weapon stick.

I think the reason our weapons suck is MINIONS. Their DPS is figured into the overall power budget for the class, Also, their finishers. But since they suck, necromancers who don’t use them have low DPS and no finishers.

No necromancer has ever appeared in high level pvp tournaments and not been a liability.

If i remember correctly The abjured uses necro. Not sure if actual tournaments, but they win like every weekly NA cup with Nos in their team. Although it’s the only team using that class, sadly.

Zebaru.9762:

spoj.9672:

nekretaal.6485:

OP is overrating the dagger.

No necromancer has ever appeared in a high level Pvp tournament with dagger. The weapon doesn’t have GAP Closers, or defensive tools to survive in melee like reflects or Stability.

Necromancers really did get the short end of the weapon stick.

I think the reason our weapons suck is MINIONS. Their DPS is figured into the overall power budget for the class, Also, their finishers. But since they suck, necromancers who don’t use them have low DPS and no finishers.

No necromancer has ever appeared in high level pvp tournaments and not been a liability.

If i remember correctly The abjured uses necro. Not sure if actual tournaments, but they win like every weekly NA cup with Nos in their team. Although it’s the only team using that class, sadly.

They bring Nosoc, but thats what they mean by liability. The whole team is good, so it isn’t hard to win anyways for them. But for tournies against other “pro” players Nosoc ends up getting trained down and they end up with outnumbered fights because it’s so easy to take down their Necromancer. If he was playing something else with the same mastery as his Necro the team would likely benefit from it in the long run.

Another way to look at it is Necro isn’t much of a center piece or focal point of a team, he’s just a zerker filler for the most part. Good for him though for playing Necro anyways. Necromancer isn’t “bad”, it really isn’t. It just has the worst scaling defenses and is too kitten slow making it get outclassed in team fights and for roaming, which are basically the two roles a zerker usually fills.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

solid hp leech on #2

I kept reading after this but please don’t go so carefree with adjectives. :p

Ara.4569:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

solid hp leech on #2

I kept reading after this but please don’t go so carefree with adjectives. :p

The heal on dagger 2 is quite strong. The only thing bad about that skill is that the cast time is so long.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ara.4569:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

solid hp leech on #2

I kept reading after this but please don’t go so carefree with adjectives. :p

The heal on dagger 2 is quite strong. The only thing bad about that skill is that the cast time is so long.

That tends to matter though. If it was a 1 second cast and put a leeching effect on the enemy over time or was just a 2 second channel, that’d be something else, but 3.5 sec channel drags down its value significantly, especially in pvp.

The only really well designed weapon concept/cooldown/execution wise that I think thenecro has is the warhorn.

Staff is really kind of bland. Great at aoe and our most useful utility, but I’d rework the auto attack at the very least, and have #4 transfer ally conditions again too.

Axe is really only useful to me in WvW in a GvG type of environment. #2 can channel for 10k on squishies. #1 skill I think needs a complete rework, 3 should be a blast too imo.

Scepter is alright I guess. I think they could make the auto attack more interesting/regenerate life force better and #3 to be changed to another condi applying move, preferably to help cover easy to get conditions.

Dagger could use a cd reduction on the immob, 25s is ridiculous especially for that cast time, and since we have trouble keeping people close to us.

OH Dagger. Nice skills, would like a little bit of a cast time reduction or cd reduction. Just one or the other.

Focus I really only use in WvW, I realize it’s in the PVE meta but I play WvW/PvP mainly so my main use for it again is in WvW, especially spinal shivers on eles. Would reduce cast times on both skills if I could.

I feel like the weapons have more of a PvP designed mentality and we ironically are designed badly for PvP. It’s hard to see a place in the meta for a class with low mobility/active defense or just straight up no invulnerablity. And rarely any support. Would be cool if some skills got reworked though.

The problem concept/execution wise is anet’s stubborn insistence that the necromancer be a no-utility damage class with low damage.

We all know the problems.

Focus: has too long cast times
Axe: has a worthless #1 skill
Dagger: lifesteal sucks, #2 should be a ranged AoE spike, a leap, or a densive buff
Staff: too-long cool downs on marks
Warhorn: #4 should be a finisher so isn’t such a situational skill
Offhand Dagger: #4 projectile doesn’t hit reliably, cast times
Scepter: #3 should be something a condition spec can better use. All scepter condition durations shoud be doubled and the proposed lingering curse trait eliminated.