Guild Wars 2

I started playing GW2 in the middle of season 2, and have from the start mained necro and still do. I love necro and utterly enjoy playing it, with Reaper only making me love it even more.

However from the beginning all I heard about necro is how it’s not good enough; this was nerfed, that need a buff, another profession can do all we offer better, we have no decent this and that, and so on.
I haven’t been on the necro forum for some time, but a quick look shows there’s still the whole ‘necro being weak’ going on. I looked at some of the other profession forums, and they seem to have way less negative posts about the given profession.

So what I want to ask/know is since the necro players who frequent the forum seemingly keep pointing out all the problems with necro, it still seems like the devs never really do anything to change or alleviate the problems in some way the players find useful.
It’s like they make a lot of changes, which never really address what the players want changed.
Of cause I might be completely wrong with that assumption, and if I am, I would really like to know why necros generally are still getting so negative views and still seems to be inferior to all(?) other professions in some way or another.

Thanks for reading.

Currently Necro condi is the only build that is meta in all game modes.
Power Necro is kind of lackluster outside WvW zerging.

Reapers Shroud, while a welcome sight for Necros, has lower dps than camping Greatsword.
Greatsword itself is often deemed too slow to be useful in anything except casual pve (dungeons and world bosses). You might as well resign if you have a Necro on your team using Greatsword in pvp (much to my shame as I love Greatsword).

While I will agree we are in a much better place than we were pre Heart of Thorns (no necro meta is now all necro meta in fractals), a few buffs here and there to up the performance of builds outside condi would be refreshing.

The frustation probably comes from the fact that we have useless things like soul comprehension and bad designed mechanics. Just look at our shroud at its interaction with healing. While i see that allowing healing our healthpool while in shroud is op, it is still bad design when a class mechanic completly negates healing. Healing should still have a some effect while in shroud. Maybe it should heal our Lifeforce pool instead of our healthpool.

The thing that I’ve noticed while being a Forum Monger for this class/game for the last 3 years is that while the Necro forum is usually filled with the most “X is bad” posts, it’s also the most non-hostile forum on the entire Official. There are a vast majority of times where, for all the negativity you may observe, the discussion is reasonable and peaceful, while on other forums there are threads upon threads of people completely detonating at the sight of certain balance changes, bugs, upcoming releases, etc. etc.

TL;DR Necro forum is generally more pessimistic, but a whole lot less polarized and toxic than just about every other forum here.

Everyone that posts on this forum or elsewhere, including video posts, has a view to express. The Necromancer forum has usually been pretty good about constructive criticism and offering reasonable solutions to perceived deficiencies. There are still posts that express negativity, though.

The Dev’s care about players’ experience but hyperbole probably goes right into the bin.

For example, Rise is still good and other professions with similar skills received the same nerf. The last patch was equitable, I think.

The changes to Life Blast is a clear buff to core Necro and improves all core builds, not just some seldom used trait.

Personally, the reason I find Necro weak is because it is trash tier in the part of the game I play the most of. Small scale WvW. Why? Necro is brought down by too many high sustain builds that can’t be killed by Necro’s meh damage anymore, inability to avoid being run over, lack of good stability.
The last two can be overcome, but going into WvW and immediately getting killed by an immortal Druid that wins by pressing 1 and kiting away whenever you get close or a Warrior with 30k hp, 2600 armor, and the ability to hit for 10k like it’s nothing while regenerating more hp than weak bleeds can dish out is more than disheartening. It’s simply unplayable.

The key skill of this game is mobility. Necro has nearly none. That is why no matter what necro does, a talented kiter will win the fight. What necro needs is a little mobility in my opinion. Or at least that is what devs can give without a full rework.

By the way I play ranger main (necro is my second toon) and druid can only win due to staff 3, gs 3 like skills, which gives an imitation of mobility.

Pro tip:
Your personal experience with the game does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Anet. Especially not with all the data they gather from every profession and every game mode.

Part of the problems within the past year is that the dev’s visions of necromancers got changed and do not match reality. For awhile it did, back during HoT beta weekends when Robert Gee showed us how promising Reapers were. We had access to chill to keep enemies close, we had added sustain via blighter’s boon to compensate for our lack of active defense, and we finally got some personal stab so we aren’t tossed around like a ragdoll as much. Remember those Robert Gee appreciation threads on both necro & mesmer forums? I praised our savior Robert Gee for giving us an elite spec that I thought was fun, action filled, engaging, and competitive. And I was running mostly power reaper builds back then.

So what happened when HoT launched…

-First nerf came in on blighter’s boon, while some say it became better for soloers, it effectively made us worse in team fight situations (where reapers really belong).

-While Power enthusiasts were asking for Greatsword buffs, they buffed Scepter instead, pushing the meta further towards condi. Apparently spamming scepter auto is fun to someone on the class balance team.

-Then the nerf to chill came down hard. Chill damage was overtuned, even necros admit to that. But they didn’t just nerf chill damage, they stripped chill damage completely and replaced it with bleed. They also at the same time nerfed chill duration all around, so we can no longer keep enemies close. I can’t remember the last time anybody complained about chill during this past season, and I wonder why.

-In the same patch where chill got gutted, they nerfed our reaper shroud 3 stab uptime. They reduced our stab uptime and increased the cd on it. This hurt more than you can imagine, because I’m once again tossed around like a ragdoll. Pulled, pushed, knocked down, stunned, dazed, feared, all common occurrence now when you’re in a team fight against worthy, competent opponents.

By now all viable power reaper builds went out of the window, Robert Gee’s vision of Reapers disappeared. Nerfing chill for sake of balancing condi meta directly affected power reaper builds as well

-Of course everybody knows about the latest Rise nerf. While I can understand this same type of nerfs to other classes that have active defense, this nerf on us really hurt. We still have to use it because it’s either this or spectral armor. But let’s not sugar coat this, this was a harsh nerf.

They pretty much sold us a vision of a wonderful elite spec that upgraded baseline necros and made us better. We had viable power & condi reaper builds that were both competitive but not overpowering at HoT launch. Then they chopped it all up and we’ve seen a steady string of nerfs since HoT. All this because Anet is incapable of balancing sPvP and giving each classes multiple viable builds.

Bottom line is right now, condi reaper is still viable in competitive play. But we are easily trained down, easily cc’ed, and we are only dangerous when we are left alone which we almost never are against competent players. In WvW power is still viable in large scale zergs but the boonshare meta has made things more difficult for us; there are more boons than we can corrupt and power damage is reduced by all sorts of protection boons and damage mitigation. In PvE…well who cares, PvE is easy in GW2 no matter what class you play.

So yeah, I guess we’ll have to wait until the next expansion to hear from Robert again, and see what he’s gonna sell us next. If it wasn’t for the new Capricorn map being fun, I doubt I would be playing this game right now.

Devil’s advocate post here (pve only):

I don’t find necro to be weak at all, if anything the opposite. My power reaper wrecks everything that stands in front of it, and my condi MM necro has no problems whatsoever. I’d take either one into dungeons or fractals without reservation. Most of the complaints I’ve heard comes primarily from pvp main players, so you’ll have to ask them what the problem is.

Be happy you atleast have a build! Unlike eles
I’ve been asked to switch from ele during several pvp matches and id switch to necro and we’d do fine

Chasind.3128:

Be happy you atleast have a build! Unlike eles
I’ve been asked to switch from ele during several pvp matches and id switch to necro and we’d do fine

Welcome to the Necro life. Ele has been on top of the pile for very nearly all the years the game has been out. Forgive us if we don’t feel a whole lot of pity. Maybe if more classes realize how terrible it feels to be non-viable in certain game modes, the devs will actually address the concerns of players

bearshaman.3421:

Devil’s advocate post here (pve only):

I don’t find necro to be weak at all, if anything the opposite. My power reaper wrecks everything that stands in front of it, and my condi MM necro has no problems whatsoever. I’d take either one into dungeons or fractals without reservation. Most of the complaints I’ve heard comes primarily from pvp main players, so you’ll have to ask them what the problem is.

The problem with power reaper is that GS auto and GD are slow as hell and pretty much all you bring to groups is mediocre dps. So why bring you, a power reaper, when they could have a class with higher dps and/or a class with more utility, especially if it’s utility only their class can bring? Our blinds are okay at best, we have almost no class-specific buffs and we don’t exactly have much else of worth either. Then there’s stuff such as CPC which isn’t even that bad on paper, but a condi necro utilizes it much better without crippling their dps and even then there’s classes which do a better job at managing enemy projectiles. Condi necro has the “advantage” as in that basically everyone can pick it up due to them surviving quite a bit while not having an overly complex rotation (even though most people manage to kitten up badly here), condis being extremely strong in a good chunk of current content and well, epidemic.

gavyne.6847:

Part of the problems within the past year is that the dev’s visions of necromancers got changed and do not match reality. For awhile it did, back during HoT beta weekends when Robert Gee showed us how promising Reapers were. We had access to chill to keep enemies close, we had added sustain via blighter’s boon to compensate for our lack of active defense, and we finally got some personal stab so we aren’t tossed around like a ragdoll as much. Remember those Robert Gee appreciation threads on both necro & mesmer forums? I praised our savior Robert Gee for giving us an elite spec that I thought was fun, action filled, engaging, and competitive. And I was running mostly power reaper builds back then.

So what happened when HoT launched…

-First nerf came in on blighter’s boon, while some say it became better for soloers, it effectively made us worse in team fight situations (where reapers really belong).

-While Power enthusiasts were asking for Greatsword buffs, they buffed Scepter instead, pushing the meta further towards condi. Apparently spamming scepter auto is fun to someone on the class balance team.

-Then the nerf to chill came down hard. Chill damage was overtuned, even necros admit to that. But they didn’t just nerf chill damage, they stripped chill damage completely and replaced it with bleed. They also at the same time nerfed chill duration all around, so we can no longer keep enemies close. I can’t remember the last time anybody complained about chill during this past season, and I wonder why.

-In the same patch where chill got gutted, they nerfed our reaper shroud 3 stab uptime. They reduced our stab uptime and increased the cd on it. This hurt more than you can imagine, because I’m once again tossed around like a ragdoll. Pulled, pushed, knocked down, stunned, dazed, feared, all common occurrence now when you’re in a team fight against worthy, competent opponents.

By now all viable power reaper builds went out of the window, Robert Gee’s vision of Reapers disappeared. Nerfing chill for sake of balancing condi meta directly affected power reaper builds as well

-Of course everybody knows about the latest Rise nerf. While I can understand this same type of nerfs to other classes that have active defense, this nerf on us really hurt. We still have to use it because it’s either this or spectral armor. But let’s not sugar coat this, this was a harsh nerf.

They pretty much sold us a vision of a wonderful elite spec that upgraded baseline necros and made us better. We had viable power & condi reaper builds that were both competitive but not overpowering at HoT launch. Then they chopped it all up and we’ve seen a steady string of nerfs since HoT. All this because Anet is incapable of balancing sPvP and giving each classes multiple viable builds.

Bottom line is right now, condi reaper is still viable in competitive play. But we are easily trained down, easily cc’ed, and we are only dangerous when we are left alone which we almost never are against competent players. In WvW power is still viable in large scale zergs but the boonshare meta has made things more difficult for us; there are more boons than we can corrupt and power damage is reduced by all sorts of protection boons and damage mitigation. In PvE…well who cares, PvE is easy in GW2 no matter what class you play.

So yeah, I guess we’ll have to wait until the next expansion to hear from Robert again, and see what he’s gonna sell us next. If it wasn’t for the new Capricorn map being fun, I doubt I would be playing this game right now.

this say it all

Um Necro is one of best classes in the game. It has NEVER been in more demand than it is now. If they gut Epidemic like they did with ELE staff, then it may be back to the early vanilla days.

Well, The real issue of the necromancer is more that it’s mechanisms are overpowered on the paper and sucks when it come to practice. Anet restrain the necromancer in a lot of area (like supportor mobility) because (and I think we all recall this) they think that :

When we will master the shroud we will understand how strong the necromancer is

Sadly it’s been almost 4 years and we are still trying to master the shroud to the point that we feel strong when we play a necromancer. Sure enough, one day we will achieve this goal… maybe.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

bearshaman.3421:

Devil’s advocate post here (pve only):

I don’t find necro to be weak at all, if anything the opposite. My power reaper wrecks everything that stands in front of it, and my condi MM necro has no problems whatsoever. I’d take either one into dungeons or fractals without reservation. Most of the complaints I’ve heard comes primarily from pvp main players, so you’ll have to ask them what the problem is.

The problem with power reaper is that GS auto and GD are slow as hell and pretty much all you bring to groups is mediocre dps. So why bring you, a power reaper, when they could have a class with higher dps and/or a class with more utility, especially if it’s utility only their class can bring? Our blinds are okay at best, we have almost no class-specific buffs and we don’t exactly have much else of worth either. Then there’s stuff such as CPC which isn’t even that bad on paper, but a condi necro utilizes it much better without crippling their dps and even then there’s classes which do a better job at managing enemy projectiles. Condi necro has the “advantage” as in that basically everyone can pick it up due to them surviving quite a bit while not having an overly complex rotation (even though most people manage to kitten up badly here), condis being extremely strong in a good chunk of current content and well, epidemic.

One: Who said I had to use greatsword?

Two: My build uses Blood Magic, so I provide everyone with a dps boost and healing through all the Vampiric stuff, and make use of the two good wells. So I do provide something to the group.

In any case, only raids get that picky, and at that point, it depends on who’s leading it as to what gets picked. I’ve seen some who would want a power necro, and some who don’t. And the same for pretty much every other build in the game.

bearshaman.3421:

Devil’s advocate post here (pve only):

I don’t find necro to be weak at all, if anything the opposite. My power reaper wrecks everything that stands in front of it, and my condi MM necro has no problems whatsoever. I’d take either one into dungeons or fractals without reservation. Most of the complaints I’ve heard comes primarily from pvp main players, so you’ll have to ask them what the problem is.

Well in pve you can make almost any build work on necros so it is not surprising but even in pve condi it currently superior then power builds. Heck for open world pve necros are probably the best profession you could take. For raids/fractals necros are ok (also good enough to take atleast 1 spot, which is fine i guess) but i wouldnt call them amazing.

In pvp power builds are just terrible. Honestly the only place power builds have some viability is wvw zerg fights. Condi necros are decent/good but they get carried by the amount of condis the can put out and by their range (900+ and reaper shroud has a gap closer).

Chasind.3128:

Be happy you atleast have a build! Unlike eles
I’ve been asked to switch from ele during several pvp matches and id switch to necro and we’d do fine

Yes the SAME build we have been using pre hot and post hot. It has always been scepter and staff condi spam and it seems it will still be until the next major update. Power reaper was viable for a very very short time until Blighter’s Boon RiP’ed. Now that support healbot ele also bit the dust along with the stability and harsh Rise nerf that extended even to the minions themselves there wont be much keeping Reapers up and running for long in a team fight with a bursty meta coming right up.

Mind you , the healbot ele can still function with Menders and Magi Amulets but now there wont be any more 1vs2ing burst builds for long. Druids preformed so far with Menders so just try to adapt. Sorry but sympathy for other classes is not that abundant on this subforum (Maybe I’d sympathize with the dirty Thieves a bit) .

That aside still waiting for Lich, Staff 2, Scepter 2 and Terror nerfs of old to be reverted.

As every major company (like lol,warframe etc) they rely on numbers rather than feedback.They always have been.

So no they dont care, you may save yourself the trouble of creating such threads

bearshaman.3421:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

bearshaman.3421:

Devil’s advocate post here (pve only):

I don’t find necro to be weak at all, if anything the opposite. My power reaper wrecks everything that stands in front of it, and my condi MM necro has no problems whatsoever. I’d take either one into dungeons or fractals without reservation. Most of the complaints I’ve heard comes primarily from pvp main players, so you’ll have to ask them what the problem is.

The problem with power reaper is that GS auto and GD are slow as hell and pretty much all you bring to groups is mediocre dps. So why bring you, a power reaper, when they could have a class with higher dps and/or a class with more utility, especially if it’s utility only their class can bring? Our blinds are okay at best, we have almost no class-specific buffs and we don’t exactly have much else of worth either. Then there’s stuff such as CPC which isn’t even that bad on paper, but a condi necro utilizes it much better without crippling their dps and even then there’s classes which do a better job at managing enemy projectiles. Condi necro has the “advantage” as in that basically everyone can pick it up due to them surviving quite a bit while not having an overly complex rotation (even though most people manage to kitten up badly here), condis being extremely strong in a good chunk of current content and well, epidemic.

One: Who said I had to use greatsword?

Two: My build uses Blood Magic, so I provide everyone with a dps boost and healing through all the Vampiric stuff, and make use of the two good wells. So I do provide something to the group.

In any case, only raids get that picky, and at that point, it depends on who’s leading it as to what gets picked. I’ve seen some who would want a power necro, and some who don’t. And the same for pretty much every other build in the game.

One: Greatsword is one of your best DPS-options, not using it would be weird; especially with Warhorn being a meh swap and OH dagger not exactly doing much for power builds anyway. Not to mention the pull on GS can be helpful.

Two: Sure. A condi necro can do the same, give additional support through transfusion (keeping scholar buffs up) and even then, vampiric isn’t as good as, lets say, Empower Allies. Not to mention the warrior could also stack 25 might for the group on his own and bring banners on top, along with more reliable blast finishers and other things.

You can say what you want, unique necromancer support is sub-par compared to what other classes bring; at least classes such as thief make up for it with much higher dps. Also, just for the record, I never said necro brings nothing, I said they don’t bring enough and what they bring often isn’t that good in comparison either.

the way they check data is by seeing who all plays a char. feedback is mostly irrelevant as every class calls one another op and themselves up. a ton of people play necro. which means its not useless and deff not up. just not op anymore.until that population drops dont expect any buffs.

gavyne.6847:

-While Power enthusiasts were asking for Greatsword buffs, they buffed Scepter instead, pushing the meta further towards condi. Apparently spamming scepter auto is fun to someone on the class balance team.

I for one would ask for review of Spite trait line. It’s good in vacuum, but for raids it’s just filled with Vulnerability and Might procs that are already covered by someone more useful and not only at low health.

On the other hand in fractals Vulnerability is often not capped and Power builds surely bring more of it.

Lack of useful scaling Elite skill is also an issue.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

You can say what you want, unique necromancer support is sub-par compared to what other classes bring; at least classes such as thief make up for it with much higher dps. Also, just for the record, I never said necro brings nothing, I said they don’t bring enough and what they bring often isn’t that good in comparison either.

Vampiric group buffs have similar problems to Spite Might/Vulnerability traits. It just doesn’t stack with most effects. Empower Allies will be further amplified by crits and a handful of buffs/debuffs, while Vampiric is unaffected by most of those.

I was under the impression that life steal damage and healing was affected by power and healing power, which would mean that might would affect it. Vulnerability should also affect it. Is this some weird glitch I was unaware of? (Need to go test things…)

bearshaman.3421:

I was under the impression that life steal damage and healing was affected by power and healing power, which would mean that might would affect it. Vulnerability should also affect it. Is this some weird glitch I was unaware of? (Need to go test things…)

Yes lifesteal is affected by healing power and power. But the lifesteal damage is different from direct damage and condition damage (also armor is useless against it) because of this vulnerability doesnt affect it. Also lifesteal in general has terrible scaling so it doesnt really matter anyway.

bearshaman.3421:

I was under the impression that life steal damage and healing was affected by power and healing power, which would mean that might would affect it. Vulnerability should also affect it. Is this some weird glitch I was unaware of? (Need to go test things…)

The power/healing power scaling is there, it’s just so bad it might as well not be and it would make no difference. Vuln doesn’t affect it since it bypasses basically everything.

bearshaman.3421:

I was under the impression that life steal damage and healing was affected by power and healing power, which would mean that might would affect it. Vulnerability should also affect it. Is this some weird glitch I was unaware of? (Need to go test things…)

As I have said, most of it. It does scale with Power. But it doesn’t scale with Precision, Ferocity, doesn’t interact with some other damage boosts (Vulnerability, Close to Death, etc.). It’s just the problem of Power Reapers that is coming nearly from everywhere: poor (or negative) synergy.

Just because Dev don’t respond doesn’t mean they don’t care. Players love to complain whenever there is a nerf sometimes extremely valid, most times simply hyperbole. I suspect most developers simply learn to tune out the noise.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Just because Dev don’t respond doesn’t mean they don’t care. Players love to complain whenever there is a nerf sometimes extremely valid, most times simply hyperbole. I suspect most developers simply learn to tune out the noise.

^^^^^^^^^this

My complaints are more fundamental. I’m still holding the memory of how totally Anet ignored Necros at release. Skills and trait layout seemed to be patched together by interns working an overtime weekend.

I get that Anet is warrior-centric, a majority of players seem to initially roll Warriors (less in GW2 than GW1). So we don’t have monks and everyone is equal except we still have 3 class weights. Yet as a Necro I’m given mele weapons while wearing Light armor. Yes, yes mobility and survivability….truth is my image of Necro is a char that is a caster. I’d rather cast thank you. Getting a Great Sword in HoT pretty much killed the game for me.

Add to that my overall disappointment with Anet’s decision to make GW2 a new game that could hardly be called a sequel. I didn’t want a new game just like the old game, but I expected the dev’s of the new game to at least bring some of the strengths that GW1 offered. They obviously didn’t.

So yeah it’ll take a lot to change my mind. I bought and tried BDO and I’m back. I’ll see what the future holds.

To be fair, the elite trait line and even some of the core trait changes violate the original, and nonsensical, design rules for Necromancer – rules like “no mobility”, “no cleave”, “no stab”, “selfish” and such.

There was no reason to impose functional restrictions for thematic reasons and we have seen Arenanet gradually remove them for Necromancer and other professions.

Anchoku.8142:

To be fair, the elite trait line and even some of the core trait changes violate the original, and nonsensical, design rules for Necromancer – rules like “no mobility”, “no cleave”, “no stab”, “selfish” and such.

There was no reason to impose functional restrictions for thematic reasons and we have seen Arenanet gradually remove them for Necromancer and other professions.

Well we were never thematically accurate anyway. The hard to get away from part was never true.

They were headed in the right direction with Reaper initially, with GS having a pull, chill being our specialty, power having a place due to added sustain via blighter’s boon, etc.. But they never buffed GS enough to be competitive in PvP. And they absolutely butchered chill & blighter’s boon.

This whole movie monster theme, I’d say warriors perform that best atm.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Just because Dev don’t respond doesn’t mean they don’t care. Players love to complain whenever there is a nerf sometimes extremely valid, most times simply hyperbole. I suspect most developers simply learn to tune out the noise.

They don’t care in a way that they have their vision of necro in mind. The result of this vision was fun but unviable state of necro pre-HoT, when you got instantly booted out of every group for picking this class. Reaper made necros awesome again, but then proceeded to get slowly nerfed into class initial state. We aren’t there yet, but it’s pretty one-sided road. Hence the whining.

gavyne.6847:

Part of the problems within the past year is that the dev’s visions of necromancers got changed and do not match reality. For awhile it did, back during HoT beta weekends when Robert Gee showed us how promising Reapers were. We had access to chill to keep enemies close, we had added sustain via blighter’s boon to compensate for our lack of active defense, and we finally got some personal stab so we aren’t tossed around like a ragdoll as much. Remember those Robert Gee appreciation threads on both necro & mesmer forums? I praised our savior Robert Gee for giving us an elite spec that I thought was fun, action filled, engaging, and competitive. And I was running mostly power reaper builds back then.

So what happened when HoT launched…

-First nerf came in on blighter’s boon, while some say it became better for soloers, it effectively made us worse in team fight situations (where reapers really belong).

-While Power enthusiasts were asking for Greatsword buffs, they buffed Scepter instead, pushing the meta further towards condi. Apparently spamming scepter auto is fun to someone on the class balance team.

-Then the nerf to chill came down hard. Chill damage was overtuned, even necros admit to that. But they didn’t just nerf chill damage, they stripped chill damage completely and replaced it with bleed. They also at the same time nerfed chill duration all around, so we can no longer keep enemies close. I can’t remember the last time anybody complained about chill during this past season, and I wonder why.

-In the same patch where chill got gutted, they nerfed our reaper shroud 3 stab uptime. They reduced our stab uptime and increased the cd on it. This hurt more than you can imagine, because I’m once again tossed around like a ragdoll. Pulled, pushed, knocked down, stunned, dazed, feared, all common occurrence now when you’re in a team fight against worthy, competent opponents.

By now all viable power reaper builds went out of the window, Robert Gee’s vision of Reapers disappeared. Nerfing chill for sake of balancing condi meta directly affected power reaper builds as well

-Of course everybody knows about the latest Rise nerf. While I can understand this same type of nerfs to other classes that have active defense, this nerf on us really hurt. We still have to use it because it’s either this or spectral armor. But let’s not sugar coat this, this was a harsh nerf.

They pretty much sold us a vision of a wonderful elite spec that upgraded baseline necros and made us better. We had viable power & condi reaper builds that were both competitive but not overpowering at HoT launch. Then they chopped it all up and we’ve seen a steady string of nerfs since HoT. All this because Anet is incapable of balancing sPvP and giving each classes multiple viable builds.

Bottom line is right now, condi reaper is still viable in competitive play. But we are easily trained down, easily cc’ed, and we are only dangerous when we are left alone which we almost never are against competent players. In WvW power is still viable in large scale zergs but the boonshare meta has made things more difficult for us; there are more boons than we can corrupt and power damage is reduced by all sorts of protection boons and damage mitigation. In PvE…well who cares, PvE is easy in GW2 no matter what class you play.

So yeah, I guess we’ll have to wait until the next expansion to hear from Robert again, and see what he’s gonna sell us next. If it wasn’t for the new Capricorn map being fun, I doubt I would be playing this game right now.

While I’m no professional necro player, my experience has actually been quite the opposite. I’ve had no issues playing full berserker power reaper since before HoT was released. A lot of the nerfs listed were kind of justified, albeit numerically not to the extent they were, but conceptually, permachill and do much DoT on it was a pretty bad idea. The only one I really disagree with was the stability nerf, but the rest I think were reasonably fair, if not just a little bit much, but the class has remained very playable still.

You play full zerker power reaper in pvp and solo wvw roam?

There are two abilities which stand out in GW2:

• Healing oneself with waters/blast combo
• Stealthing away to heal up (choosing your battles)

Classes with these abilities are dreaded in WvW and with good reason. Self-sustain and/or invisibility are incredibly powerful.

Unless I’m mistaken the Necro has neither of these things, making it simply a bag of HPs to these apex classes.

BattleRattle.5420:

it still seems like the devs never really do anything to change or alleviate the problems in some way the players find useful.
It’s like they make a lot of changes, which never really address what the players want changed.

This is the way since the release of GW2. Anet has one of the worst balancing i´ve ever seen, they do not balance at all. What they do is they shift the meta with each bigger patch and the result is that every 6 months a few classes are ridiculous strong while others ridiculous weak. Plus, they do it around their failed pvp wannabe esports bubble which means players who pve or wvw are even more kittened because the outcome may be even stronger or weaker through gear, food etc. .

Svarty.8019:

There are two abilities which stand out in GW2:

• Healing oneself with waters/blast combo
• Stealthing away to heal up (choosing your battles)

Classes with these abilities are dreaded in WvW and with good reason. Self-sustain and/or invisibility are incredibly powerful.

Unless I’m mistaken the Necro has neither of these things, making it simply a bag of HPs to these apex classes.

No one’s liked us from the start. Its like anet is trying to whittle down the necro population to the dust again…i want beta reaper back.

Is there any class where the scepter isnt visually awful? I can’t stand the thing.

Cecilia.5179:

Personally, the reason I find Necro weak is because it is trash tier in the part of the game I play the most of. Small scale WvW. Why? Necro is brought down by too many high sustain builds that can’t be killed by Necro’s meh damage anymore, inability to avoid being run over, lack of good stability.
The last two can be overcome, but going into WvW and immediately getting killed by an immortal Druid that wins by pressing 1 and kiting away whenever you get close or a Warrior with 30k hp, 2600 armor, and the ability to hit for 10k like it’s nothing while regenerating more hp than weak bleeds can dish out is more than disheartening. It’s simply unplayable.

I find necros pretty useful if you are encountering a lot of tough builds while roaming; there’s lots of ways to corrupt boons with minor alterations to all my builds and that goes a long way.

Wintermute.5408:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Just because Dev don’t respond doesn’t mean they don’t care. Players love to complain whenever there is a nerf sometimes extremely valid, most times simply hyperbole. I suspect most developers simply learn to tune out the noise.

They don’t care in a way that they have their vision of necro in mind. The result of this vision was fun but unviable state of necro pre-HoT, when you got instantly booted out of every group for picking this class. Reaper made necros awesome again, but then proceeded to get slowly nerfed into class initial state. We aren’t there yet, but it’s pretty one-sided road. Hence the whining.

That is just such a childish mentality to have, just because they don’t do what I want means they don’t care. If you believe that, that is perfectly fine but it doesn’t mean they don’t care. All it mean is they have a difference of opinion on the class.

Also whining exist because people want their class to dominate others. That is why no matter what game it is, nerfing leads to a lot of whining.

The problems with necro is and has always been our shroud. As it doesn’t scale it’s hard to balance. In pvp this is quite clear. They can’t have us too tanky in a 1v1 as that would make us low tier pvp gods(as 2 people that don’t know how to dodge fight each other the one that can facetank the most wins) but at the same time if it’s too weak we’ll melt instantly in teamfights as we don’t have many other defences. And as we have seen this tankyness scale terribly with the skill of players.

Because of this they can’t have us do too much dmg(yes I totally blame pvp for this). I love shroud but it’s clear Anet can’t balance necro because of it. It really seems like they designed necro before they designed the rest of the game as we have bad support halfdecent dmg in a team based game where support and/or dmg is the most important. While we do have some good condi-dmg now I feel it’s more of an oversight from the devs with the horrors from lichform.

I think it’s time to rework shroud a bit if we ever want to have nice things. Shroud right now takes 50% of incoming dmg and the rest disappears into the mist. If shroud let the remaining 50% dmg go to our health maybe then we could have active defences, support, heal through shroud and possibly even utilities in shroud. Maybe other percentages would be needed but that’s not the point. As I said I really like shroud but I think it’s time to redesign it to actually fit the game it’s supposed to be in.

I don’t think Necros are all that bad. If you read all the profession forums, they all act like their class is a disaster and that every other class is better.

khoryphos.7609:

I don’t think Necros are all that bad. If you read all the profession forums, they all act like their class is a disaster and that every other class is better.

Necros ain’t that bad clearly as we have meta builds in all gamemodes atm. That said, the class still has problems and especially core necro. This is not unique to necro but there is still a reason why necro was on auto kick for quite a while.

Sure that was a bit overblown by people that didn’t check the facts as necro was far from as terrible from what most people thought. But the reasons for it were still valid. We are good at things that up until now was useless like the corruption of boons, while also being bad/mediocre at the things that mattered.

Don’t forget that there was a time where it they nerfed necro for what no reason every other patch even when we were at the bottom. Which also kind of turned into a meme. It’s hard to forget all those “Ele is to strong, nerf necro” jokes
Edit: format

DTATL.9641:

The problems with necro is and has always been our shroud. As it doesn’t scale it’s hard to balance.

Replace “shroud” with “our class mechanic” and this is true for every profession. Just how the game is.

bearshaman.3421:

DTATL.9641:

The problems with necro is and has always been our shroud. As it doesn’t scale it’s hard to balance.

Replace “shroud” with “our class mechanic” and this is true for every profession. Just how the game is.

And? I never claimed that it wasn’t. I just pointed out what for me is the reason behind why necro never got the things the “necro community” asked for. Reaper got some of it and now that’s been nerfed because it was too strong, maybe not in the way we wanted but still nerfed. All I was trying to say that because of how shroud works we can’t have the things we’re been asking for. So if we want to have those things we have to give up something in return. Which in my opinion would be better for the class. And just because this is “how the game is”, it shouldn’t stop us from trying to make it better, even if it’s pointless in the end.

gavyne.6847:

You play full zerker power reaper in pvp and solo wvw roam?

Sort of on sPvP (I don’t really play it much because I generally dislike how bunker-heavy sPvP is), but I absolutely run/ran it in WvW roaming. It straight-up slaughters most things, boons or not.

The only thing I struggle against is condi mesmer or the crazy-mobile celestial druid build that’s running around since I do not run excessive condition transfer and druid’s sustained mobility and ranged pressure on staff (which can’t be negated by charge) whittles me down eventually since they have pretty close to permanent stability on the build as well and thus can’t be locked down.

Otherwise, it works wonders, and imho, functions better than my thief.

DTATL.9641:

bearshaman.3421:

DTATL.9641:

The problems with necro is and has always been our shroud. As it doesn’t scale it’s hard to balance.

Replace “shroud” with “our class mechanic” and this is true for every profession. Just how the game is.

And? I never claimed that it wasn’t. I just pointed out what for me is the reason behind why necro never got the things the “necro community” asked for. Reaper got some of it and now that’s been nerfed because it was too strong, maybe not in the way we wanted but still nerfed. All I was trying to say that because of how shroud works we can’t have the things we’re been asking for. So if we want to have those things we have to give up something in return. Which in my opinion would be better for the class. And just because this is “how the game is”, it shouldn’t stop us from trying to make it better, even if it’s pointless in the end.

I get that, but the thing is, there isn’t a unified opinion on what the necro needs or what it should give up to get it. “The necro community” is divided along quite a few lines as to what is to be done. The issue of balancing the classes against each other is universal (pvp it’s against one another, in pve its to make sure they all bring something useful for group content), but the class mechanic only proves to be an issue in pvp, when one mechanic against another has to be considered. So when discussing what we need and what we are willing to give up, you won’t get consensus because what is good for one game type usually hurts the other. (Thankfully it looks like they are starting to do skill splits, and hopefully this will continue.)

In any case, that’s what I meant by “how the game is”.

Katunix.7809:

Svarty.8019:

There are two abilities which stand out in GW2:

• Healing oneself with waters/blast combo
• Stealthing away to heal up (choosing your battles)

Classes with these abilities are dreaded in WvW and with good reason. Self-sustain and/or invisibility are incredibly powerful.

Unless I’m mistaken the Necro has neither of these things, making it simply a bag of HPs to these apex classes.

No one’s liked us from the start. Its like anet is trying to whittle down the necro population to the dust again…i want beta reaper back.

+1. For a while there during beta I actually felt we had a Dev on our side and was working to make us to feel wanted. Yes condi is meta currently in many game modes, but it would be nice to play a power necro outside of PvE (anything works there) or a zerg in WvW again. Sure there are some that can pull it off, but the inability to get away when an errant zerg comes by can be a game breaker for most.

Blighters boon, the stab changes and IMO, Rise, were all needed unchanged if they were to make roaming small group to even be considered. Changing one might have been acceptable (although not needed IMO), but changing all three have basically cut the legs out from under us.

I would say they don’t see the class like we do.

Since OP is kinda new to the game…FYI necro was trash tier in everything but WvW zergs for three solid years. Only HoT really changed things. So, infer from that what you will.

I never thought I’d see the day we had a meta build for pve and spvp.