Guild Wars 2

I mean come on…
why is it the least used class in wvw
why is it the least used class in dungeons
why can’t you speed run with it?
why does no one get a necro?
Because the dps is bad because condition damage is so nerf
What do you guys think

I think that ppl that complain about necros not being good don’t know how to play necro.

Most people I know don’t play them because they’re boring.

I suppose they could use a buff though. I ditched my condition sword build on my warrior so my Necro friend could actually do damage.

They are incredibly boring..

I always played necro-like classes in MMOs but I find myself ignoring my poor necro.

I’m not feeling drunk with malefic power or devious glee when I play it.

The whole kit does not merge into a greater whole, it just feels like you pile a bunch of random abilities into an enemy or area and hope something dies.

This is very different than, say, elementalist, where you have to cc something to land churning earth, or the target must be burning for fire grab, or you need to finish your own combos to properly heal groups.

From the most boring to least boring.

1) Warrior
2) Necro
3) Ranger
4) Mesmer
5) Thief
6) Guardian
7) Engineer
8) Elementalist

Not only is necro boring as heck to play but, the sound effects they make are very annoying.

As a former necro main, I definitely can say they’re quite boring after a while.

There is a Necro forum: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer
and then there is this: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/36-necromancer/
0o
My 3rd 80 character is a Necro. (1st Thief, 2nd Elementalist, 4th may be Guardian or Warrior or Mesmer; not hurried to get those 3 ranked up)
Necro is fine as is. (imho)

then why don’t people let you use it in rush groups
because its weak

Pfft I see more necro than engineer in dungeon.

Class design is half baked with GW1 concepts in GW2 game modes, lack of real roles or need for specialization, but roles carried over for this profession from GW1. Now it is just lost. Without trinity to balance around, this game is just weird. I think if we had a direct healer class and revamped skill system, this game would have infinite potential.

Necromancer minion AI is awful and..just so many other things show that they don’t know what they’re doing with the combat in this game. Necromancer falls by the wayside, it’s just the tanky caster class…with no real distinction now that the healer paradigm is gone.

Where’s Soul Leech?

Spoil Victor?

This Necromancer is a joke.

I think the whole problem revolves around Death Shroud being a really terrible class mechanic. There is no way we can get the burst of other classes while having an ekstra hp bar.
Death shroud skills in general feels horrible in the way you wanna stay in it as little as possible or to soak some dmg ( block invulnerability evade skills are better we have neither ).

So no the class do not need a major buff, it needs a major redesign.

Having leveled a Engineer and Necro and doing sPvP with mesmer/guardian, I can say those two classes have some of the greatest concepts, but worst executed. Engineers require a large button combo that other classes can do in way fewer while getting fewer results while necros can be easily countered and have no burst. This kinda goes against the design philosophy (which they managed to do correctly with most of the other classes) is that there is no holy trinity. That every class can be support, condition damage, burst, tanky, etc. Sadly they need a lot of work to make that happen.

The biggest problem may also be the simplicity of the skill design. You have boons and conditions and everything revolves around those. This leaves little room for creativity with skills imo. I was fighting a guardian earlier and I went thro an entire skill combo, only to have him black 2/ evade/ and basically counter my dots with heals/removals. Then he spins and puts out a ton of burst.

Many say these classes are fine, etc. Sadly the numbers say other wise. Engineers are the least played classes, necro is higher than these (but only slightly). There’s a reason these classes aren’t being played, if there wasn’t a reason besides the overly used “they don’t know how to play their class”, then there would be a lot more.

I think the problem is that ANet has stripped gameplay down to two things – survive long enough to kill or kill fast enough to survive. The professions that excel at those things do well in the meta (mesmer, thief, guardian, warrior for pve) but those that don’t do either well are muddled with confused design concepts and lack significant roles.

wiazabi.2549:

I think the whole problem revolves around Death Shroud being a really terrible class mechanic. There is no way we can get the burst of other classes while having an ekstra hp bar.
Death shroud skills in general feels horrible in the way you wanna stay in it as little as possible or to soak some dmg ( block invulnerability evade skills are better we have neither ).

So no the class do not need a major buff, it needs a major redesign.

Part of the problem is the mechanics around DS #1.

First of all it has 1 second cycle time. Even Staff #1 is only 3/4 second.

Second, it looses damage the moment you dip below 50%. Meaning that once your below 50% DS you can just as well jump out. Staff #1 do more DPS than DS #1 when below 50% DS, never mind that it pierces by default and has longer range.

The second issue is the worst one btw. This because DS drops by some 4% each second even when not taking damage. This means that at full DS you get perhaps 12 attacks at max DPS, a bit more with a application of DS #4.

Honestly I feel that DS could be reworked to have DS 2 and 3 on F2 and F3, a engineer kit like F1 transform (observe how the human elite Reaper of Grenth is able to provide a DS like appearance while producing a Plague like PBAOE) that would give DS1, DS4 and 3 other offensive skills, and a F4 that would produce a more defensive DS transformation (stability, damage absorption) but still allow us to use our normal attacks and utilities.

The F1 kit skills would cost DS on use, but having the kit equipped should not cause a over time drain.

F2 and F3 would cause a direct drain.

F4 would behave as the current DS.

Zonzai.2341:

I think the problem is that ANet has stripped gameplay down to two things – survive long enough to kill or kill fast enough to survive. The professions that excel at those things do well in the meta (mesmer, thief, guardian, warrior for pve) but those that don’t do either well are muddled with confused design concepts and lack significant roles.

And the gave favors kill fast over survive, as ANet constantly hound bunker builds in SPVP.

digiowl.9620:

Zonzai.2341:

I think the problem is that ANet has stripped gameplay down to two things – survive long enough to kill or kill fast enough to survive. The professions that excel at those things do well in the meta (mesmer, thief, guardian, warrior for pve) but those that don’t do either well are muddled with confused design concepts and lack significant roles.

And the gave favors kill fast over survive, as ANet constantly hound bunker builds in SPVP.

Yes, they should be building up other builds making them good, not nerfing existing builds.

You kidding me? Necros eat conditions every meal of the day. I know people that play Necro and they love it lol. They laugh in malicious laughter as the person they condition stack dies without them having to even get close.

Eminence.3728:

You kidding me? Necros eat conditions every meal of the day. I know people that play Necro and they love it lol. They laugh in malicious laughter as the person they condition stack dies without them having to even get close.

Try facing a p/d thief, necros can remove and stack their bleedas on them maybe (5-8) stack and they will clean it while the skill the necros has is 90min CD, the thief doesn’t have CD and if you’re lucky to stack 8 bleeds on the thief good luck with that since the damage suck balls.

I don’t know about major buffs, but Necro’s are in definite need of attention. Lets start with BUG FIXES and at least get the class into the shape it should have been in when the game was launched – minion fixes, trait fixes (remove jagged horror already), fix our skills so they do what they are supposed to.

Additionally, Necro’s lack a good burst damage option… most every other class has this at least as an option. Axe is incredibly weak and dagger is not great either.

Wasn’t it Arena Net that said we should be able to play the style we want to? Except we are pigeon holed into a condition/attrition spec type, which is annoying.

Unfortunatley, conditions do not work as well as burst damage – there is no getting around this issue at present. In WvW fights are brief affairs, meaning condition builds only reach a fraction of their potential – take into account passive/active condition removal and it really starts to paint a bleak picture.

In saying that, I believe conditions on a whole need to be looked at.

Rannulf.9417:

Eminence.3728:

You kidding me? Necros eat conditions every meal of the day. I know people that play Necro and they love it lol. They laugh in malicious laughter as the person they condition stack dies without them having to even get close.

Try facing a p/d thief, necros can remove and stack their bleedas on them maybe (5-8) stack and they will clean it while the skill the necros has is 90min CD, the thief doesn’t have CD and if you’re lucky to stack 8 bleeds on the thief good luck with that since the damage suck balls.

I’ll assume you meant 90sec.

Avoid the thief then. There are classes/builds certain classes/builds are better against. You can’t expect a single class to be on equal footing vs all other classes. For example, a guardian would have a hard time with ranged classes as opposed to other melee classes just due to the fact that they are not mobile enough and often have a harder time closing the distance gap.

I haven’t really been paying attention to necro patch notes but I’m just saying…
Play your strengths.

About Necromancer lack of burst and escape mechanics Anet used “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature” philosophy, calling necro attrition based class. But with only a few mechanics to do so and upcoming unknown rework of AoE, it may be harder without any major buffs to play even that role.

I don’t see the problem with necros in dungeons – we often have 3 necros in our guild-dungeon groups and never had any trouble with that.
But then, we don’t do real speedruns, because none of us find those very compelling.

And I’ll always love their survivability

Eminence.3728:

Rannulf.9417:

Eminence.3728:

You kidding me? Necros eat conditions every meal of the day. I know people that play Necro and they love it lol. They laugh in malicious laughter as the person they condition stack dies without them having to even get close.

Try facing a p/d thief, necros can remove and stack their bleedas on them maybe (5-8) stack and they will clean it while the skill the necros has is 90min CD, the thief doesn’t have CD and if you’re lucky to stack 8 bleeds on the thief good luck with that since the damage suck balls.

I’ll assume you meant 90sec.

Avoid the thief then. There are classes/builds certain classes/builds are better against. You can’t expect a single class to be on equal footing vs all other classes. For example, a guardian would have a hard time with ranged classes as opposed to other melee classes just due to the fact that they are not mobile enough and often have a harder time closing the distance gap.

I haven’t really been paying attention to necro patch notes but I’m just saying…
Play your strengths.

Avoid the thief then? Seriously, that’s your answer? “Excuse me, mister thief, please stop attacking me, I have no counter for you so I’m just going to walk away from you now. Theif? Stahp Thief! I’m avoiding you, stahp killing meeeeee….”
As for your ludicrous statement about guardians having difficulty closing the distance gap, have you never played one? They have multiple jumps, they can close gaps insanely easy. I’m confused as to which game you’ve been playing because I’m pretty sure it’s not GW2

joe.9815:

the least used class in wvw

[citation needed]

the least used class in dungeons

[citation needed]

you [can’t]speed run with it

[citation needed]

no one get a necro

[citation needed]

Always love those people that claim things without providing any data or proof

My main is a necro. I LOVE IT! Simply because of the AOE support + damage it can deal. If you use a dagger mainhand, its has pretty good DPS aswell as the number 2 skill siphon health. Compared to well bomb and bone minions, you can deal some pretty good AOE damage.

In that video, notice how fast the 3-4 risens die? I mean, all of them die pretty fast

joe.9815:

I mean come on…
why is it the least used class in wvw
why is it the least used class in dungeons
why can’t you speed run with it?
why does no one get a necro?
Because the dps is bad because condition damage is so nerf
What do you guys think

What I think?

1. Engineer
2. Engineer
3. You mean like Spectral Walk?
4. What?
5. Ok, I admit Condition Damage sucks. But that’s not a Necro specific problem.

I also think that considering how Necros are one of the strongest duel classes in game that they do not in fact, need buffs.

“Necros cant burst” Not True
“Necros have no escape options” – Not true
“Death Shroud is a bad mechanic” – Not True
“People dont understand Necromancer” – Very True
“People dont know how to choose stats wisely and thus certain classes feel gimped” Very True

The only thing wrong about necromancer are the minions, they are very much uninspired. I can build my necro to heal, i can build my necro to bunker, i can build my necro to buff my allies, I can build my necro to burst, I can build my necro to deal condi damage (although to many people do), I can build my necro to deal massive aoe damage. Go ahead buff necro I enjoy playing broken classes

Necros are fine against things that can bleed.

Anything else, I feel like a useless liability.

World objects that need direct damage to kill (all the kinds of turrets, Fimbul’s ice shield in HotW, siege in WvW, ANYTHING like that) I’m stuck tickling it down for minutes at a time unless I blow all my DeathShroud lifeforce on attack #1 – and I can’t get lifeforce back from object damage so that just works once and not for long enough.

Mindx.9610:

“Necros cant burst” Not True
“Necros have no escape options” – Not true
“Death Shroud is a bad mechanic” – Not True
“People dont understand Necromancer” – Very True
“People dont know how to choose stats wisely and thus certain classes feel gimped” Very True

Tell me of one ability that necros have that can do burst damage and not steady damage
Does a necro have a single teleport, burst of speed ability? No. hey have a signet for 25% increased speed and a condition removal that the can use once. Unfortunately when you’re stunned or crippled, remove the condition, but are still close to the enemies that did it they do it again, so no, necros don’t have an escape ability.

Is it their DPS that makes them boring? Haven’t seen a suggestion here.

What would you liked to see buffed for necros? Condition damage? Speed? Survivability?

Mirta.5029:

Mindx.9610:

“Necros cant burst” Not True
“Necros have no escape options” – Not true
“Death Shroud is a bad mechanic” – Not True
“People dont understand Necromancer” – Very True
“People dont know how to choose stats wisely and thus certain classes feel gimped” Very True

Tell me of one ability that necros have that can do burst damage and not steady damage
Does a necro have a single teleport, burst of speed ability? No. hey have a signet for 25% increased speed and a condition removal that the can use once. Unfortunately when you’re stunned or crippled, remove the condition, but are still close to the enemies that did it they do it again, so no, necros don’t have an escape ability.

Fears, Dark Path, Spectral Walk, My meta must be way ahead of anything your doing because i can escape pretty much anything with just these 3 options and i dont even use staff. 3 forms of chill staff DS and focus. I run around with foot in the grave so i have no problem with stuns or knock backs for the most part. Necros burst isnt in the form of just 1 ability, ghastly claws, life siphon and life transfer used together is tons of damage, maybe not comparable to true burst classes but the damage is there….add in bone minions and its some serious damage. Lich form can do crazy burst as well. Did i mention dark path? O and Dark pact is your friend.

Necromancers in GW2 don’t come even close to the design concept the developers had in mind.

Golem charge bone minions well of suffering and dagger auto attack is also another form of some crazy burst damage

Only thing they should change in PVE (not in PVP) is removing the bloody condition cap, especially for bleeding. This is why you do not see allot of necro’s since necro is a profession that use condition in most builds (in bigger or smaller numbers). My main is a necro and i can actually do allot of damage as long I’m not in a party that does have an overkill on condition damage based members (more as 2 in a party is to much in general) and than i will see my damage go down, since my mainstat is actually persion and not condition damage.

@Calae.1738 if you did put some “I think” in your message i could not give any commentary on it, but now your just talking BS, since my main is a necro and I’m leveling a warrior at this moment and i have great joy in it.

Mindx.9610:

Mirta.5029:

Mindx.9610:

“Necros cant burst” Not True
“Necros have no escape options” – Not true
“Death Shroud is a bad mechanic” – Not True
“People dont understand Necromancer” – Very True
“People dont know how to choose stats wisely and thus certain classes feel gimped” Very True

Tell me of one ability that necros have that can do burst damage and not steady damage
Does a necro have a single teleport, burst of speed ability? No. hey have a signet for 25% increased speed and a condition removal that the can use once. Unfortunately when you’re stunned or crippled, remove the condition, but are still close to the enemies that did it they do it again, so no, necros don’t have an escape ability.

Fears, Dark Path, Spectral Walk, My meta must be way ahead of anything your doing because i can escape pretty much anything with just these 3 options and i dont even use staff. 3 forms of chill staff DS and focus. I run around with foot in the grave so i have no problem with stuns or knock backs for the most part. Necros burst isnt in the form of just 1 ability, ghastly claws, life siphon and life transfer used together is tons of damage, maybe not comparable to true burst classes but the damage is there….add in bone minions and its some serious damage. Lich form can do crazy burst as well. Did i mention dark path?

now when you’re talking about burst damage you’re fairly wrong there. Life transfer – 2000 damage, life siphon – 1000 odd damage, Lich Form 2000 damage a shot, a shot takes what? 2-3 seconds to do? That’s not burst damage. That’s pretty much steady damage. Now warriors are able to burst with abilities doing 10 000 – 12 000 damage in a short period of time. That’s burst damage. I’m not saying that necros are bad at steady damage though, it’s just that their most powerful abilities can’t even compare to some other classes.

Spectral walk seems like a temporary state like death shroud. It does not grant you invisibility like mesmer’s abilities do, therefore enemies can still be aggroing you an it does not teleport you away, so in order for you to be faster than them I suppose you have to use the 25% speed signet with it? That’s two utility slots taken for something a bit like an escape. Did not find an ability named “Dark path”. Are you sure that it’s not your racial ability? What race are you playing your necro as? What weapons are you using? Did you mean “Dark Pact”? Immobilize ONE enemy?

Vorch.2985:

Is it their DPS that makes them boring? Haven’t seen a suggestion here.

What would you liked to see buffed for necros? Condition damage? Speed? Survivability?

Pets…

Im mainly talking about pvp cuz general mob ai is rediculously easy to escape. Your numbers are wrong for each of those abilitys they are much stronger than you think. My lich crits for 3.6k – 4kconstantly. Dark Path is your death shroud ability that lets you teleport to a target

Mindx.9610:

Im mainly talking about pvp cuz general mob ai is rediculously easy to escape. Your numbers are wrong for each of those abilitys they are much stronger than you think. My lich crits for 3.6k – 4kconstantly. Dark Path is your death shroud ability that lets you teleport to a target

TO target, not AWAY from one. I mostly run dungeons and fractals. Swamp fractal – teleports, invisibilities come in handy, as a necro you pretty much have to make sure that nothing hits you while running, because you CAN’T teleport or go invisible. Teleports and invisibility comes in handy in Orr when you don’t want to fight everything that you see (was going there as an ele-mesmer group yesterday and well, mesmer was really useful in helping me complete the zone fast), CoE you can avoid plantforming trough lazers if you have an escape ability. To make my necro usable I had to get her re-traited and re-geared for condi damage. I don’t feel useless, but having no such abilities that other classes have is a bummer.

Mirta.5029:

TO target, not AWAY from one

Yes but i guess the way i see it and the way i use it in pvp is if your running away from something but still have a target in front of you you can gain much distance from your original target and control the one you teleported to with a fear or immob.

Oh how could i forget…..Flesh wurm

This thread is meant for PvP.
PvE heroes need not apply.

As someone who has been playing a necro from the start let me point out a few things. First let me say I still really like playing the necro but they could improve a lot of things.

First off what I don’t like. Someone mentioned damaging things that can’t bleed, like siege, doors etc. This is very true. They take forever for a necro to kill. Golem charge works well but it’s got a decent cooldown.

Golem AI sucks. Many times you’ll see it standing around doing nothing. Why haven’t they fixed this by now?

Necro’s lack burst. This is true. Sure you could spec for power and go dagger/dagger and change up your build but you’re still not going to get those really high numbers that other classes have. But most of the necro skills are built around condition damage.

They nerfed epidemic down to 5 or 6 targets. This was the necros most powerful spell specially in pvp or WvW. Before you could spread the all the conditions on a target to everyone in the range of the epidemic now just hits a max of I think 5.

Okay positives or why some of the above isn’t so bad. In WvW yes you lack burst but you have lots of wells/marks. You can do lots of damage to multiple people and can still hit a decent amount with epidemic. Especially if your Control T targets and get lots of conditions on them before epidemic. People must understand this before you make one. You’re more of a support class. You can do a moderate amount of damage to a lot of people. You’re not going to do tons burst damage to one.

Also as a caster you’re very hard to kill. You have more HP than any other caster class and you have second lifebar.

You have great range with staff marks to put on walls and in front of people your chasing or behind for people you’re being chased by.

You practically have perma swiftness with locust swarm (warhorn) and spectral walk. Remember they stack in duration so drop both at the same time and your refresh will come up fast.

Pve wise I love necros especially when you’re fighting 10 things at once. Single target weak mobs you’re not as effective as it takes time to stack bleeds. Bosses and mobs with lots of HP you’re actually very effective. I find I’m very effective in dungeons and fractals. Mainly due to the mobs having lots of HP so you can stack all your bleeds you can use lots of wells/marks because your normally fighting multiple mobs at once.

My 2 cents.

In pvp necros are pretty strong. In a 1v1 battle you have to be super, incredibly good at keeping a 900 distance. Anything lower distance would be a bunker build. And landing all ur skill shots/aoe.

Howeverrrrrr, In pve necros could use a buff. I’ve been using a well/dagger staff. at 1 point i was fighting only 2 mobs at diessa plateau near the bottom of the map next to a skillpoint with flame legion I died ..3 TIMES!

Tldr: pvp- more effort same result pve- very low dps compared to guardian/engy/ele/ranger/thief

The problem with people and the Necro are a few things:

1. People think its scepter and dagger staff or nothing ( which has zero burst)
2. People cant wtf pwn something in 2 seconds like a Thief or Warrior so it much be gimp.
3. It doesnt have a million ways to avoid damage so it must be gimp.
4. Because you can’t spec glass cannon and win easily it must be underpowered.

My advice.
1. Play more than just the cookie cutter specs.
2. Get some Toughness and Vitality
3. Learn that there is more than one way to contribute to a Dungeon run.
4. If your group has 25 bleed stacks on a target switch the another target or think about switching specs.

Useful notes.
1.Vulnerability increases the dps of all group members on a particular target. So in a dungeon consider each stack of vuln a 5% increase instead of 1%
2. You can easily get 17-20 stacks of vuln on a target with focus 4 and axe 1 20+ with well of Suffering.
3. Try using the above abilites before using the channeled axe 2 ability.
4. Switch to dagger after channeled axe 2
5. Necro’s have no burst damage.

For the record, the only thing that the necro is weak at is cleave aoe damage from close range. That is the only think IMO that is lacking on this class. If Dagger 1 or axe 2 was cleave I would say we would be almost overpowered.

With the current meta and the recent talks about nerfing aoe damage I see cleave dmg being reduced significantly.

are people actually aware of the fact that if you cannot use condition damage on something you actually also unable to crit it? If you are not aware of it, check it. You know that condition damage tends to ignore invulnerability in many cases and in all cases in pvp? It never is as bad as you think it is. Beside like you can see in the video above the AoE damage of a necro is very high in pve, my necro does have a other build, but it clears just as fast big groups.

Power necro is kinda good but needs some further love.
Condition necro is kinda weak mostly because conditions themselves need a buff in general.

Necromancer minions are special, as in they have two braincells and half of them don’t work. That’s my only complaint about the Necromancer, really. Well . . . that, and they excel at condition damage, but the 25-stack limit kind of puts a damper on that.

The problem with necromancers is that they exist in this game. A master of outlasting and wearing an enemy down slowly in a burst centric game where most things in PvE one shot you and things in PvP do almost the same. I’d say don’t expect any balancing anytime soon because its more than just “buffing” the class is flawed on a conceptual level, just like engineers.

Necros can ~3 sec burst kill with wells.

No stabilitty, no spammable (short cd) stunbreaker, unreliable condition removal (ok this is wrong, but face is necromancer the master of conditions, have only 3 20+ sec cooldown condition cleansers – fail compared to rune of the soldier shout guardian (or even warrior).

Anet says they are supposed to outlast enemy. Meh I tried everything, and it just doesnt work. Even fully building around Death shroud for tanking of damage doenst work in wvw. No anti-CC = no life in wvw. You must also sacrafice utility slow for swiftness (warhorn alone is unreliable).

To much broken/bad traits. To much unreliable weapons, dagger just bad (should hit multiple weapons). Axe, same (should do more damage, and hit more enemies). Scepter is ok but to much bleed focus. It should do burn, bleed and poison, to reduce ‘removal’ by enemy chance. Or they should introduce necromancer specific condition.

Fear is to short, to long cooldown.

18k hp is nice in pve, but in wvw, doesnt mean a kitten, enemies eat try it. Every anti CC ability is sooooo much better then a few thousands of hp.

Vorch.2985:

Is it their DPS that makes them boring? Haven’t seen a suggestion here.

What would you liked to see buffed for necros? Condition damage? Speed? Survivability?

The first priority for the profession should be changes to condition damage. I think the most balanced fix to that would be adding more condition-stacking. That way, even when people remove (which is constantly) it we can put it back on them.

Bug fixes for minions should be the second priority for this profession. Making minions viable with proper traits should be third.

If all of those things were added the Necro would be competitive with anything out there.