Guild Wars 2

I notice in fractals my necro must be the worst defensive & utility class.

No immune
No block
No stability (elite form doesn’t count)
No reflect
No projectile block/destruction
No vigor
Stunbreakers on super long cooldown and not worth taking

I’m starting to feel very selfish being there. Running a glass cannon power build my dmg is still behind others(massively in aoe) yet im not assisting the group at all in utility. People say we stack vulnerability. Well other classes can do that. Warrior for example has it on GS autoattack which hits 3x as much dmg as axe autoattack.

Having 5-10k more base hp than others doesnt mean anything when the damage is just increasing per level and agony is hp based anyway. Avoidance is the only survivability that matters and we have none to offer the group. DS can take 1 hit but it doesnt work with bundles and is my only cleaving damage. If i play well i dont get downed, but others can do more things in the group and stay alive the same.

We do have a stability… We just need to trait 30 points into Soul Reaping XI: Foot in the Grave. So ya, 3 second stability every 10 seconds.

I guess thats all death shroud would be good for in fractals anyway considering you take double agony damage in death shroud form.

spectral wall blocks projectiles? with spectral walk you get 2 stun breaks on a 48s cooldown traited. also spectral armor on a 72s cool down traited, how many stun breaks do you need?

Spectral Wall doesn’t block anything…?

Bull Zooker.1672:

spectral wall blocks projectiles? with spectral walk you get 2 stun breaks on a 48s cooldown traited. also spectral armor on a 72s cool down traited, how many stun breaks do you need?

I hope this is a joke…. you realize other classes get their stun breaks on abilities that do something useful other than provide speed or just break the stun right?

A 72 second cooldown is not a reliable or useful stun break at all, and spectral walk basically does nothing in the scenarios he is talking about above (fractals). In PVP our stun breaks are fine, because swiftness goes well with a stun break, but he said PVE.

In fractals you feel inclined to take something that helps the team, which would be wells, epidemic, CPC, spectral wall. The problem with fractals in general, is that projectile block/reflect is not only king, but darn near required at the very high end. You could make the argument you don’t need a guardian to do fractals at 40+, but it is way WAY easier with one.

His complaint, which is a valid one, is that we really bring nothing to the table other than conditions that tend to have little to no effect on the fractal boss mobs (chill, cripple, weakness), and comparable damage. People take guardians because they know how much better the run will go, even with two guardians. What exactly does two necros get you? Not a complaint, an honest question.

Say there was some meteor boss thats hit for 50k and split the damage across all targets in range. Maybe then people would swoon over a minion necro…

Again the big problem here is how insanely powerful projectile reflect (and group buffs to a lesser degree) is in fractals right now. As the mob damage scales up, so does your reflect damage. I ran a party recently with me and two mesmers (running reflect traits) and two guardians. It was pretty comical on the fire fractal, since we all just stood in one place the entire fight while the boss killed himself.

Necro is rather lacking in Dungeons in PVE. Best you can bring to the party is AOE Blind with Plague and Well of Darkness along with the chill trait, besides this everything else is not up to par.

You have the 4 minions which are no help then except for some static single target encounters.

Signets are a joke with their cooldown specially signet of power and the speed signet, Plague signet is ok and undeath signet is situational.

The spectral skills are bad, you use them AND have to get hit to gain a benefit from it towards your LF, Spectral pull is terrible at pulling at times and spectral wall is too situational, in most groups vulnerability is stacked quite easy.

Finally corruption skills – Epidemic is probably the most useful group skill for conditions, Corrupt boon is too situational, blood is power is not worth it in my opinion and poison cloud is meh.

In my opinion the problem is that as a power necro, you don’t have burst AOE damage and with not useful utilities besides well of vulnerability for a Power Necro you feel rather helpless.

As a condition necro you can do AOE cripple every 10 seconds and AOE weakness every 20 with scepter/dagger. You can also do Chill and bleed/regeneration+Condition removal with staff #4

I say the best utility you can bring to a dungeon is as a condition necro traited with chill on blind. Bring Well of Darkness, epidemic and either Plague signet or Signet of Undeath switching utilities as it seems fit. For example on dredge fractal bring Corrupt boon and Wells that removes enemy boons. You won’t be as useful as a Guardian or Mesmer but at least you’ll bring something to the table.

Yes, I also find corruption boon rather sad in fractals. It has such a long cooldown even traited, and the mobs you flip boons on get them back almost immediately. Corruption well is much better in dredge because they tend to pulse their buffs.

The sad part is, that even if they did a “consume ecto” style boss, that had huge boons with huge durations, a mesmer would get rid of them just as easily. So much for requesting a necro in your group.

But I have recently warmed up tp CPC. It isn’t really that good, but the weakness is nice in aoe fights, and I have at least convinced myself it is doing more for me than anything else in that third slot for dredge where I cannot blind. Spectral wall is nice for the mobile fights too… since you can get by without a movement skill in your third slot.

In my current build I can solo lvl 77 champion mobs without even have to worry about dodging or fancy tricks.

I have an 80 Ranger, Elementalist, and guardian, and out of them all the Necro has the most survivability, easily. And I mean like 10x the survivability even. I haven’t tried an all out tank build on my guardian, so its possible that the guardian can match my Necro, but right now Necro is just too much fun.

I was taking on 4 to 5 people in Wvw at once and holding my own (at least untl their friends showed up and put me in the ground hehe)

How many classes can have 32k HP, the ability to regenerate 25k HP every 25 seconds with decent aoe dmg and 3.5k power 3.1k armor, and a second health pool that I can refill within seconds.

You did not read a word i put.
This is not about pvp or open world.
This is about grouping. In fractal as the level rises enemies do increased damage.
Necro is given no defensive utility as it is designed to be able to take a few more hits than other classes than avoid them and i guess ‘outlast its opponents’.
The problem is this doesnt fit into the way fractals work as you reach a point where you can no longer take any hits from enemys. So therefore you are of little benefit to your group when you give no utility and are just as squishy due to increased vitality and deathshroud being worthless.
Where other classes can dodge more, block attacks & destroy/reflect projectiles to negate incoming damage you have nothing at all.

Your right. I read the title, which said PVE (not dungeons, not fractals) and then formulated a response based on the title. Now that I read your post fully, I find that I have nothing to add. Didnt mean to de-rail your post.

no rennoko I wasnt joking.
protection from spectral wall is utility, and a projectile block is better than nothing. not to mention the vulnerability, 25% more damage to those hard bose fights. that wouldn’t be appreciated? or 1 player responsible for stacking 22 stacks of bleed (ticking for 150 in a group with might stacking maybe more) on target while everyone else focuses on DPS. thats not valuable? or aoe conditions removal? aoe heals? I could go on…
no these arent all things 1 spec can achieve but theres always room for a necro in a party.

I have an 80 guardian myself and ran a fractal run with 5 guardians. all using the reflection skills etc was the easiest run ive ever done, also the most boring. I prefer necro because it offers something different. and has a more fun challenging play style.

I know you all agree as you wouldn’t be here in the forums otherwise. other than the OP of course ;-)

Spectral wall doesn’t block projectiles though.

ok that was a misunderstanding of the skill on my part, why I put a ? when I said it up there ^^ and OP I was joking at the end of my last post. no offense intended

Bull Zooker.1672:

ok that was a misunderstanding of the skill on my part, why I put a ? when I said it up there ^^ and OP I was joking at the end of my last post. no offense intended

You have lost all credibility for thinking spectral wall blocks projectiles, what’s your main anyway?

necromancer is my main. I have an 80 guard, thief and warrior. iff your gonna try be a smart kitten cos I got 1 skills tool tip wrong (when I was asking the question anyway) then I wont be wasting anymore of my time on this post.

Bull Zooker.1672:

no rennoko I wasnt joking.
protection from spectral wall is utility, and a projectile block is better than nothing. not to mention the vulnerability, 25% more damage to those hard bose fights. that wouldn’t be appreciated? or 1 player responsible for stacking 22 stacks of bleed (ticking for 150 in a group with might stacking maybe more) on target while everyone else focuses on DPS. thats not valuable? or aoe conditions removal? aoe heals? I could go on…
no these arent all things 1 spec can achieve but theres always room for a necro in a party.

Bull Zooker.1672:

necromancer is my main. I have an 80 guard, thief and warrior. iff your gonna try be a smart kitten cos I got 1 skills tool tip wrong (when I was asking the question anyway) then I wont be wasting anymore of my time on this post.

I think the issue isn’t that you had the tooltip wrong, but that you were praising the skill without even understanding what it does. Also posting things like “I will refuse to read this post again or respond to it” just give power to people who are flaming you. They make it look like in fact you really didn’t know what you were talking about. Not saying that is the case, just pointing out what that tends to say about the conversation.

We don’t effectively stack 25 vuln by ourselves… unless you are spamming axe 1, which would be a terrible way to get that done. The easiest way to get to 25 vuln, is to have a group that can apply it without ruining their dps, like axe 1 will do. A combo of engineer/mesmer/GS warrior or even necro with focus does it much better than an axe based all on necro. But in that comparison we are just one of the many that can apply vuln… not important.

Our AOE heals are not amazing compared to an ele or a guardian, so we are at best third place in that. Bleed stacking at 22 is actually a negative, because if anyone else in the party maintains around 5-10 bleeds, they are going to push ours off constantly.

AOE condition removal is very nice with putrid mark, but it is pretty lack luster compared to warrior shouts and guardian shouts for aoe removal.

But that takes us back to the crux of the matter. Short of Epidemic in large group fights, there is nothing AMAZING that we do as a necro. If there were large fights were spreading around 25 bleeds saved the day, then I am sure we would have a place at the table, but that just doesn’t happen. Wells are great but only last 5 seconds and have fairly long cooldowns. The PVE environment is about sustained damage/group buffs/reflect. We do fine with sustained damage in a hybrid build, but lack on the other two fronts.

I was stating what I knew the skill did, and I asked if it blocked projectiles. I wasnt praising it imo but I appreciate your comments rennoko. and yes while I agree with what your saying I would still rather take my necro than my other toons, I guess its personal preference.
I posted again because ^^ the above post was constructive.
maybe im love drunk with necro at the moment after 500 hours of play time with him, but I still think we can achieve a wide range of utility that is very fun to play and not hampering the group in any way.
QQ about necro imo is unnecessary.

I don’t agree that we have to drop damage to bring utility, especially considering how easily we can play full glass necros without dying. You can pretty easily keep up permanent weakness and poison without losing any DPS, and close to permanent chill; just by bringing staff and scepter/dagger.

+1. Necro is lacking in groups. They offer very poor group utility compared to guardian or mesmers. Things might have been a little different if Well of Blood was still a water field, don’t understand why they changed it to light field instead. As of right now, the only useful thing I feel like I can bring to my group is condition manipulation/transfer (which is situational and guardian/mes do better), weakness, (which is only kind of helpful for trash), and a res signet.

Personally, I think it’s more of an issue of fractals being poorly designed rather than any specific class weaknesses, though obviously certain classes can handle it far better. It is perhaps a lack of flexibility and choices.

For example, agony automatically makes all pets useless which means they really didn’t even take that in account when balancing it. This not only invalidates certain skills, but entire builds.

When the damage ramps up so much that you can’t even defend against it, it’s only natural that the game will shift towards people that contribute the most dps possible. Well of blood, power, and darkness with ritual of protection are awesome boons in regular situations , but they simply can’t hold a candle up to the high spike damage dealt.

ArchonWing.9480:

Personally, I think it’s more of an issue of fractals being poorly designed rather than any specific class weaknesses, though obviously certain classes can handle it far better. It is perhaps a lack of flexibility and choices.

Bingo.

But you have to ask yourself if the way the game has been designed without Tank/Healer/DPS, can the game actually get more “challenging”. How do you add depth of play when you cannot plan on the group having any specific classes?

More complicated mechanics by design have to account for ANY class in the group. With this mentality, the design will always favor the better group oriented buffing classes. There are currently no dungeons where you will get owned without any specific class, because they don’t want you to feel required to take that class.

Problem is while you are not required to take guardians/warriors/mesmers into PVE, they make it much easier, enjoyable, and mitigate flubs. The only way you fix this is to level out the classes, and make them more similar, which is boring, or restrict powerful mechanics to certain classes. (I am looking at you projectile reflect).

I honestly don’t see how the holy trinity really made things more difficult in an engaging way. Of course you can make things difficult for the sake of difficulty, but if you want to make things difficult in a fun way (like interesting mechanics that you need to master) you don’t need to restrict yourself to the old trinity.

Everybody is lacking compared to mesmers, warriors and guardians when it comes to PvE.

Necromancers don’t fit in the current PvE meta but neither do engineers, rangers or elementalists. In the end we’re still stuck with the holy trinity. It’s just three classes this time around rather than class roles.

Its the Holy Duo, DPS (warriors)/Support (mesmer time warp).

I would say it can diff on your build. Granted I’ve never done a FoTM past level 30 Fractals, but I seem to do quite well. I use a power/toughness build with Toughness/Precision/Power gear and ascended, and I can keep up my DPS with most warriors I’ve ran with. For my I switch between Axe/Warhorn and staff and will run through some axe skills, use my staff signets on big group, hit epidemic, then repeat and i can generally get through a full few axe cycles before my staff stuff isn’t back. And I’m traited in a way that my death shroud lasts a long time even through agony and Life Tap really is an underrated skill if you have a high enough power and precision because you can crit your signets and life tap like no other. Other than Epidemic I tend to run blindndess/weakness wells that ill hit those then epidemic it onto everyone, and if I run with a Mesmer I have the mesmer hit confusion on one of two mobs and I spread it. I think thats the biggest skill for Necro’s: epidemic, because we’re really the only close able to really really spread a few conditions on 1 mob to a whole ton.

@Coinin -

How do you know what your DPS is and what the warriors DPS is that you’ve run with?

ahh no, not the numbers, but i know I can solo some of the groups faster than they tend to, I haven’t run any parsers on it yet, been meaning to hah

There is no way you can be doing damage close to a warriors unless they are running full soldiers with a mace/shield or something very defensive.

The only good aoe we have is dropping 2 wells combined with DS autoattack cleave. But this is not constant due to very long cooldowns so isnt good ‘DPS’ at all. Only alittle aoe burst for few sec. Afaik epidemic is based on your condi damage so with knights gear that is unlikely to be worth taking over a well either.

The only good DPS a necro can do is autoattack with a dagger which is single target and risky against some bosses. Its very easy to compare classes/weapons on dummys. You may be surprised how bad axe sustained dmg is, only worth using as vulnerability stacker.

I agree with the above, specially with a prec/power/toughness build. You’ll be lucky to achieve a third of a hundred blades damage with your axe channeling skill.

Coinin.2590:

ahh no, not the numbers, but i know I can solo some of the groups faster than they tend to, I haven’t run any parsers on it yet, been meaning to hah

Does this game actually have a parsing program? That would be great…. if it did…. but I am pretty sure it doesn’t. As a mechanics guy, I can tell you I have been in perpetual sad panda mode not being able to determine how swapping certain stats around REALLY effects my DPS.

On a related note, I did some fun basic testing with a 30/30/10/0/0 build against the same mob type. What I found out (which was pretty odd), was that rampagers gear with condition duration runes, and rabid gear with undead runes, killed the mobs in about the same amount of time. Presuming you could devote all 25 stacks of bleeding to you, I would be willing to bet that rabid gear with undead runes and the right trait setup would be almost = in damage to a hybrid build with rampagers in dungeons.

Too bad you can’t get that stack devoted to you the way it works right now. And when you sub in vuln from other classes rampagers starts to pull ahead with its 3.5k crits on feast of corruption. I will continue to run rampagers in PVE.

I have no idea what parsing is, but this game does have a combat log that will give you how much damage you dealt with X ability.

Bhawb.7408:

I have no idea what parsing is, but this game does have a combat log that will give you how much damage you dealt with X ability.

Parsing is like what World of Warcraft and other games that are really focused on min/max have that puts the combat log through a program that shows your actual damage per second, overall ability damage by numbers, and a lot of other info… it’s useful in theorycrafting to try and perfect builds.

Bhawb.7408:

I have no idea what parsing is, but this game does have a combat log that will give you how much damage you dealt with X ability.

Except conditions