Guild Wars 2

Hello guys, lately I’ve been seeing a lot of posts concearning the state of the class and people crying for nerfs or buffs all over the place. After reading many, if not all, of these posts I found myself disagreeing with most of them.

Who am I? I am a casual player, I play for 3 hours a day top. I don’t do tournaments PvP, only hot joins. I love PvE, my fractal level is currently 26. And I am about to complete my map 100% for the first time! (curses wvw) So I guess I can consider myself an ordinary player, probably the most common kind of player in this game.

I have 4 level 80 characters with full exotics, but only 3 pink pieces of jewerly spread across them. The classes are: Warrior (cookie cutter zerker), Elementalist (d/d jack of all trades), Engineer (boring grenade spammer) and my necro, which is by far the most powerful class I have.

I made this post to clarify to the major part of the player base that necros are NOT, BY ANY MEANS as kitten as people cry in these forums, actually, they are not weak at all. If you are thinking about rolling a necro, ignore those whiners, they want their class to be turned into the fotm so they can win serious tournaments and such.

What I see here is people usually complaining about necro’s skills from one of two points of view: “Power/crit necro” or “Conditionmancer”

Do you really need to pick between these two? I look at the necromancer skill set and I am amazed how A.net made this class. I think they -never- made necromancers to be pure condition, neither to be a burst class. All our weapons benefit from power as much as they benefit from condition, so why “ kitten #8221; yourself by picking one of them and then coming on the forums to say skill X should change because it doesn’t benefit X build? A classic example is the scepter 3, or DS on pure condition builds.

I’m not saying the class is perfect, there are tweaks to be made here and there, but reading these forums for a couple weeks it sounded like necro as almost unplayable. So before most of you guys who complains about A.Net post, you should first consider that -most- necro players are actually HAPPY with the class while a few dozen guys flame these forums. The happy ones rarely make posts about it, so there it is.

Good job Arena.net, thanks for this amazingly fun and challenging class to play!

The Kay.6539:

Hello guys, lately I’ve been seeing a lot of posts concearning the state of the class and people crying for nerfs or buffs all over the place. After reading many, if not all, of these posts I found myself disagreeing with most of them.

Who am I? I am a casual player, I play for 3 hours a day top. I don’t do tournaments PvP, only hot joins. I love PvE, my fractal level is currently 26. And I am about to complete my map 100% for the first time! (curses wvw) So I guess I can consider myself an ordinary player, probably the most common kind of player in this game.

I have 4 level 80 characters with full exotics, but only 3 pink pieces of jewerly spread across them. The classes are: Warrior (cookie cutter zerker), Elementalist (d/d jack of all trades), Engineer (boring grenade spammer) and my necro, which is by far the most powerful class I have.

I made this post to clarify to the major part of the player base that necros are NOT, BY ANY MEANS as kitten as people cry in these forums, actually, they are not weak at all. If you are thinking about rolling a necro, ignore those whiners, they want their class to be turned into the fotm so they can win serious tournaments and such.

What I see here is people usually complaining about necro’s skills from one of two points of view: “Power/crit necro” or “Conditionmancer”

Do you really need to pick between these two? I look at the necromancer skill set and I am amazed how A.net made this class. I think they -never- made necromancers to be pure condition, neither to be a burst class. All our weapons benefit from power as much as they benefit from condition, so why kitten yourself by picking one of them and then coming on the forums to say skill X should change because it doesn’t benefit X build? A classic example is the scepter 3, or DS on pure condition builds.

I’m not saying the class is perfect, there are tweaks to be made here and there, but reading these forums for a couple weeks it sounded like necro as almost unplayable. So before most of you guys who complains about A.Net post, you should first consider that -most- necro players are actually HAPPY with the class while a few dozen guys flame these forums. The happy ones rarely make posts about it, so there it is.

Good job Arena.net, thanks for this amazingly fun and challenging class to play!

Actually, almost everyone I met agree that Necromancer is one of the most useless profession in the game, both in PvE and in PvP.

In PvE, because he lacks the damage and the support any team need to run a dungeon.
Nobody is going to take a Necromancer over, let’s say, a Warrior, a Guardian, a Mesmer or an Elementalist.

In PvP, they are worth bringing in a team only for 2 skills: Epidemic and Signet of Undeath. Remove those skills from your bar and nobody wants you.

Rampager/carrion with 2 rabid pieces is a nice necro combo, problem with it is, for a necro you end up highly glassy, power necros got nice LF generation, Condis can rely on the higher toughness from rabid, hybrids get neither of the defensive advantages. Its a lot like a D/D thief, works ok, dungeons aint such a big pain, just pretty annoying that specialization would let you do more risky fun stuff than stand there spamming 1,2,5 then swap to axe/focus 2,4, swap back to scepter/dagger
Also by going the superior damage route (that you should since hybrid setups are glassy by stat destribution), you miss out on the best necro weapon, staff.

sorrow.2364:

Nobody is going to take a Necromancer over, let’s say, a Warrior, a Guardian, a Mesmer or an Elementalist.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me go crazy.
So far in fractals up to my level, I never got kicked because I am a necromancer.

Casual players don’t kick people because they are X or Y class, come on, be realistic here. Also, don’t you have friends? I run stuff with my friends often too, never had issues either with me being a necro, and actually, my dungeon group has TWO necros.

People don’t mind finishing the instance in 25min instead of 17min. You are being completely unrealistic when you say: “NOBODY WILL EVER TAKE A NECRO OVER X or Y”, that implies that no necromancer, ever will do any kind of group stuff.

And you can be hybrid and get some defense, of course, you won’t do as much damage, and might be slightly more squishy than specialized builds, yeah, but it’s fun. I can stack 25 stacks of vulnerability in less than 8 seconds by myself, and keep it 100% uptime above 12-14 stacks, how is that not helping the team? Necros can perma poison too, and keep almost 100% uptime on weakness as well. We are natural debuffers, we are not supposed to buff the team.

The thread name says that you are a casual player. What exactly do you mean by that? My post is going to be based on the thought that you just prefer to play and enjoy the game without putting much thought into class design(our class kit as a whole) and class comparison.

Most of the discussions about necro being bad are based on sPVP. The points are usually made by analyzing the class, it’s kit, mechanics and making suggestions or concluding all that analysis with something. It’s also usually made by class comparison from the kit point of view and suggestions or conclusions are made based on that. A lot of people actually have a lot of strong points that they state and then point out the problem of the class that are actually there. It is quite disrespectful to call them all whiners. So I’m trying to say that there indeed are a lot of flaws in the class(for the current state of the game) and if you do not see them then it’s best for you to just enjoy the game. Stating that the class is in an amazing spot when it’s not brings misinformation to the devs which is not a very good thing. Then again those people bring out reasoning and analysis while you just say “they’re all wrong and whiners, it’s totally fine”.

I personally am a relatively new player and only have my necro right now. I recently hit 80 and started doing tPVP and plan to stick exclusively to it. I don’t do any PVE so my point of view is built strictly based on sPVP. I do personally see the class having a lot of problems design wise and being quite a mess. At the same time I am not going to let that fact stop me from playing tPVP. I theorycraft and try different builds, I enjoy playing tPVP, I do not care about the rating, I am trying to find people to play with so I can go a healing spec and hold a point with someone who can provide me with a water field and other fields so we can combo them. But in the end the problems are still there. Play for fun but do not be blind.=)

Necromancers are only bad at the highest levels of play in PvE (and arguably fine in fractals) and tPvP. PvE, except fractals and very few dungeons, is faceroll easy. You could bash your face against the keyboard repeatedly and come out of the dungeon fine. In these cases, DPS > everything. So you get the 4 warrior 1 mesmer (or in super hard dungeons, 3 warriors, 1 mesmer, 1 guardian) “meta”. It doesn’t mean necros are bad, just that it will take a little bit longer to finish a path. Fractals we can arguably do a lot of help. There are multiple people around the forums that have made great posts as to how they can bring something unique to Fractals. At the end of the day though, you don’t need a Necro in your party like you need a class with projectile reflect. Again, Necromancers can run higher fractals, just not quite as fast.

In tPvP it has to do with the fact that Necromancer builds require you to build your team around them in some respect. This means we don’t make good “puggers”, and it means that you actually need 4 people who are okay with having the team in some way built around you. We also can’t handle focus like other classes can, which means you need your team to be able to peel for you, especially if they CC you. Other than that, every complaint is based around very specific builds that people run, and not what the class is in general (for PvP).

We definitely need some fixes for PvP, and PvE just needs to have content introduced that is actually difficult and isn’t based on mechanics we don’t have access to (or they need to give us those mechanics). That said, people come on to the forums to complain, and what you see here are the most annoyed, angry, vindictive Necromancers in the game, by no means are the forums representative of the real population.

3 hours a day casual :/

Most necro players are happy? based on what? your ingame survey?

I could say most necro players are unhappy with the class because most i know stopped playing(untill better times) or rerolled.

So what your saying about power vs condition is that people shouldnt pick one they should pick the one and only HYBRID (nemesis one?).

Cant you back up your claims abit better.

Why is your necro so powerfull?
If your necro is so powerfull why do an instance take 25min – 17min = 8min longer?
Do vulnerability stacking justify the tiny dmg output while doing it?
If your stacking poision your not stacking vulnerability.
weakness isnt that great.
BOONS > DEBUFFS

Big question could you help your team better on another class ?

Yeah I would question the casual claim. I consider casual to be someone who plays a few hours a week. If you are playing 3 hours a day, and that is casual, then I, by the claim, am casual (which could get a few laughs around here).

I never claim to have lots of information about necro in SPVP, but when I do what people refer to as, hot-joins, I do very well, and it actually makes me feel good about myself. I hardly think the skill of my opponents is up to the task though. Most people seem to be playing with builds… randomly joining and leaving the games etc. Even random que tourneys did not seem all the difficult.

I take it from your post, that you don’t spend a lot of time playing WvW. Making sweeping claims such as hybrid is the way to go, and how crazy are these people who want the “pure” builds to play better, are a little off-base. Hybrid in the very sense of how it is in this game either means you have sacked damage in one area or another, or you have sacked defense. Sacking defense in WvW can often mean you get stomped on repeatedly (especially with an immobile class with no easy to use escapes), and sacking damage just means you are less effective compared to everyone else.

If I can take a damage class, roll damage traits, and survive based on my class mechanics; that is a good formula for success. (See thief who can take full valk armor, and 100% crit from stealth, 30 points in sub – Tanky and high DPS).

D/D eles have this option, trap rangers, engineer builds (gasp), any guardian build, etc etc….

Conditions are in a bad place right now for everyone because of how the downed state works, and how zerg on zerg fights have been going in recent weeks. I won’t get into that discussion.

Most of us in general don’t feel the class is in an awful place. If the mechanics suggest we have to be X, and there is not chaning that, then I can deal with that because I enjoy the class, playstyle, weapons. But I would be crazy not to push for simple quality of life improvements that would not severely overpower the class.

If necro is really as comfortable and powerful as you say, why are there so few in WvW? Outside of mass zergs, designed to exploit the power of full zerker wells where defense is meaningless, how often do you run into a necro?

I refuse to believe that the WvW environment is un-friendly to the necro by design, and if it is, they need to adjust builds/available traits to allow it to be less unpleasant.

I will agree on one point though. Hybrid necro is fine, and a good fit for PVE. It bothers me that the “pure” builds don’t match up in that environment, but I am okay living with lack of defense in rampagers gear when I can dodge telegraphed moves from loot pinatas.

lol summed up perfectly guys, i think you pwn’d this guys oblivious post, why would you talk about the state of a class if your casual and have no facts/numbers to back your kitten up. since you have other 80’s you really should l2p them more if the necro is your most powerful class oO

I have 450 hours on my necro, 30 hours on my engi and i regret every second on my necro atm, i dont even think ds#5 will make up for it, the class needs a rework on useless traits/skills before it can even think of being viable.

again this game is getting into esports, expect classes to be balanced around 5v5 tourny, currently necros suck hard. no escapes, stunbreaks sucks, pigeon holed into certain utilities, poor mobility outside of perm swiftness requiring certain weapons/specwalk or locust sig which the use effect isnt worth using over the speed buff.

k, not typing more. you say you read other posts, pls re read them and look at the points and comparisons.

Thank you for the note of positivity. It is sorely needed around here.

Oh my, I’m being owned on my post. Sarcasm
Also thanks Blaine.

I just noticed one thing I did wrong on my post, I couldn’t cover stuff with math, facts, date and whatever else.

Sorry guys, I -play- the game, I don’t compare my character damage output and how much % fast I can kill a mob. I play for fun, I don’t theorycraft and engineer out my “kit”. And many people, if not most (sorry, no data here), just want to get home from their jobs, click on play and ENJOY the class.

People like these guys who wants buffs and nerfs are INDEED whiners, because I’ve played several MMOs before, and they are NEVER happy, because true balance is impossible. Since one class will outperform the other by 0,0001%, and they’ll keep crying about that minimal difference.

You have date?
You have math?
You have theory?

Well, I have something you guys don’t!

I have FUN!

And now back to the game, time is short and I’m gonna have fun with my friends on fractals, yes, probably 16,7% (made up!) slower fractals, but with about 300% more fun and laughs!

I don’t overly analyze the profession and don’t have fun with Necromancer though.

sorrow.2364:

In PvE, because he lacks the damage and the support any team need to run a dungeon.
Nobody is going to take a Necromancer over, let’s say, a Warrior, a Guardian, a Mesmer or an Elementalist.

Says who? Have you played one? A power/well build can keep on par with a zerker warrior’s dps. As an example, I have finished off the gate controller in CoF p1 faster then some decent warriors. We don’t have a 100b equivalent, so we can’t brag about a 30k hit from a single skill, except maybe the auto-attack in Lich Form, but that’s an elite skill. Our damaging wells can hit around 20k over their duration while stacking vulnerability and corrupting boons, which is on top of the other attacks we do while the well is active.

You also might assume that most of the vulnerability stacks and weakness debuffs come from the warriors or thieves when a good necro can continually apply these debuffs that improve group dps.

I’ve really had it with people complaining about necro because it’s an incredibly powerful and versatile class.

Unpredictability.4086:

I don’t overly analyze the profession and don’t have fun with Necromancer though.

What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t overly analyze any profession and I don’t have fun with engineer.

Playstyle is personal. Doesn’t mean engineer is broken in anyway though.

Casual PVE any class is fine, because there is no competition. They could make a new class only 80% as powerful as any existing one, and it would be fine for casual PVE if enough players liked the asethetic. No one is really racing each other to complete world dynamic events, or in a casual dungeon runs if one player is doing 10% less DPS or whatever. Some people wear all Magic Find and are contributing way less.

But when you get into competitive PVP, or even PVE, speed run dungeons and such, suddenly no one wants Necros and their flaws stand out.

It’s true that it seems Necro was designed as a hybrid type class, the problem is that this doesn’t pay in GW2 because of that stat distribution. Necro needs all stats, since so many of his abilities and just general design are split in half between direct and condition damage.

While other clasess that can just max straight power or straight conditions builds and take all stats that benefit those builds and exponentially increase their effectiveness. Necro can’t do this because max condition damage still isn’t helping his direct damage portion of abilities, especially death shroud, and max power/crit/crit damage is still not helping his many conditions be more powerful or last longer.

You can sort of avoid conditions more than avoiding direct damage, if you build just around your melee weapons, but the problem with that is that the devs see the class as defensive attrition via facetank, they expected us to rely on our conditions to some degree, and drag fights out, and thus pure damage builds lack the mobility and evasiveness in their utilities and other defenses to actually survive in heavy focus situations, or to escape out of them when things go bad.

Pendragon.8735:

But when you get into competitive PVP, or even PVE, speed run dungeons and such, suddenly no one wants Necros and their flaws stand out.

No one wanted Eles for the first few months either. I tend to be skeptical of what the current Groupthink is.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Pendragon.8735:

But when you get into competitive PVP, or even PVE, speed run dungeons and such, suddenly no one wants Necros and their flaws stand out.

No one wanted Eles for the first few months either. I tend to be skeptical of what the current Groupthink is.

If you think there are secret builds out there that are awesome – that somehow the top players in the game obviously haven’t discovered (look at the teams with no necros) – then bring it forward. The burden of proof is on such a claim.

Until such as a time as that would be proved, all evidence now points to the class needing positive tweaks and revision.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck…

The difference is just there. If you want to play for an hour when you come home, do some hotjoin pvp or dungeons with friends or your guild, the necromancer is just fine.
When i think about tournaments i expect more balance. But you’re right.. even in warcraft 3 were a lot of people crying about imbalance.. and this game was really balanced.
But there are just some things i don’t get. When you compare skills like mirror blade and reapers touch: why is mirror blade a 100% finisher and reapers touch not even a 20% finisher? There are more of those examples. Play with combos is realy fun and i miss that on my necromancer.. and can’t really see why those skills are no finisher..
If you know that pls enlighten me :P

Pendragon.8735:

If you think there are secret builds out there that are awesome – that somehow the top players in the game obviously haven’t discovered (look at the teams with no necros) – then bring it forward. The burden of proof is on such a claim.

“Burden of proof” is a rule of formal, scored debates that has absolutely no place in discussions where the participants aren’t trying to “win.” If we’re both interested in the truth (and we certainly should be), then we must both be willing to provide evidence for each other’s claims. Sorry, pet peeve of mine.

That aside, I have no intuition of a secret build arising — it wouldn’t very well be secret if it were known. I simply have no respect for the argumentum ad populum , particularly when it comes to gamer fanbases which are so frequently and hilariously wrong. The Necromancer may well be in a poor state but what the masses think would be no proof of that.

There are two ginormous threads detailing Necro shortcomings in both the sPVP forum and this one. I have plenty of posts in both, in addition to the dozens of other contributors. I would suggest starting there.

Blaine isn’t trying to prove that Necromancers have secret builds, he’s putting forth that possibility. The reality is that people at the top are at the top for being great players, not for being great theorists. Think of the difference between athletes and sports scientists.

That isn’t to say that top players aren’t great, and knowledgeable, but their skill at the class does not qualify them as the be all end all of knowledge. The reality is that, as Blaine said, top players often have no idea about the new “big thing”. Look at LoL, there are more people taking that game more seriously than anyone takes GW2, and there are still “sleeper” champions that rise up from absolutely nowhere because someone found out they were underappreciated.

Bhawb.7408:

Blaine isn’t trying to prove that Necromancers have secret builds, he’s putting forth that possibility. The reality is that people at the top are at the top for being great players, not for being great theorists. Think of the difference between athletes and sports scientists.

That isn’t to say that top players aren’t great, and knowledgeable, but their skill at the class does not qualify them as the be all end all of knowledge. The reality is that, as Blaine said, top players often have no idea about the new “big thing”. Look at LoL, there are more people taking that game more seriously than anyone takes GW2, and there are still “sleeper” champions that rise up from absolutely nowhere because someone found out they were underappreciated.

The top players often are the best theorists though, because they devote the most time and thinking to exploring new builds, since winning is their end objective, and not just finding something ‘fun’ such as a casual player might do. They are also the most likely to be able to take any existing build ever thought up by other players, great or small, and quickly put them through their paces to see if they have merit as being effective.

Regardless of this possibility though, of secret builds, it’s not a reason for Anet to hold up on active balancing, especially when such things have yet to be discovered in 9 months, and when one class is not stacking up in certain parts of the game. If Anet were to use that logic, then there would not have been a single balance tweak made to any profession since release, since any flaw could be explained away by simply pretending players haven’t figured out how to get balance out of them yet.

If any player is happy with their playstyle or performance of the class in the parts of the game they play, that’s fine, but don’t troll down the concerns of others, if you haven’t walked in their shoes. And/or if someone is going to continually argue a position that works to hold back enjoyment and an even playing field from their fellow players in the profession, the least they could do is offer up some solutions or counters to the very legitimate arguments being made. Rather than very vapid hand waving comments, based on the idea of, ’I’m sure there is something everyone is missing to make all their complaints invalid, but I have no clue what that something is’.

I don’t think ANet should hold back balance, nor do I think the class is balanced as is, don’t get me wrong. They need to look at having every class in a realistic state of balance (with the realization that balance should not be based solely on meta), and this is true of the Necromancer as well.

I’m merely debating the idea that “I am rank X on charts and I play Necro for this awesome team, that means I am the most knowledgeable about Necro”, when that isn’t accurate. To be a great Necromancer player, the absolute only requirement is that you are good at playing Necromancer. Everything else is secondary and independent. They might be great theorists, they might explore builds, they might perfect existing builds, that is all true. But that is all secondary things that they are; on top of being great players. You can be a great theorist and not so great of a player, and vice versa, they are independent (although related).

To explore this idea of theorist vs pro then, as it relates to the topic, it seems obvious the profession is either lacking these great theorists or more likely lacking the great theories to be discovered. Otherwise, they would be getting plastered on this board, with others going, ‘woah I never thought of that, I’m going to go try it out’. But there are only so many combinations, this game isn’t rocket science, and most any build posted is a deviation of something already existing, and can quickly be broken down at a glance where its strengths and weaknesses lie. There are certain hard truths about the Necro, about lack of mobility, stability, deception in combat, the strength of cleansing vs condition application, that simply cannot be discovered into irrelevance, because all their avenues are well known and why they do not solve the problems they are associated with. Some of these things are game mechanics issues, far beyond being easily fixed with a simple rearranging of gear or traits.

Flowerpower.6795:

When you compare skills like mirror blade and reapers touch: why is mirror blade a 100% finisher and reapers touch not even a 20% finisher?

This sums up pretty well why many of us think our class is lacking / broken in some regards. There are quite a few weird things about our weapons / skills / traits, there are plenty of threads about these on the forums.

I still love my necro quite a lot, though. The people I run with in WvW all agree that more necros are needed, the people I run dungeons with have never complained about my damage or anything (though skipping stuff in Arah without other people’s help is a pain). Yes, it is true we will probably never have a spot in optimal speed clear parties, but I don’t really care about that.

They don’t want us to have finishers, especially on weapons, since we are in the contending for most combo fields possible.

The Kay.6539:

Hello guys, lately I’ve ….

I have 4 level 80 characters with full exotics, but only 3 pink pieces of jewerly spread across them. The classes are: Warrior (cookie cutter zerker), Elementalist (d/d jack of all trades), Engineer (boring grenade spammer) and my necro, which is by far the most powerful class I have.

The Kay, whilst I applaud your enthusiasm for the class, stating the necro to be by far your most powerful class seems strange if not disingenuous, and as much of a troll post as those claiming we are brokenly underpowered.

Many of us here love the concept and play-style of the Necro, but it’s hard not to see and feel the need to discuss shortcomings when you play the class on a daily basis (the same applies to all classes).

The Necro is very strong in many facets of the game, but there are issues that should be discussed.

Bhawb.7408:

They don’t want us to have finishers, especially on weapons, since we are in the contending for most combo fields possible.

I think they should remove one or two fields and add one or two finishers so that we have more diversity of play. I really enjoy the added dimension combos add to the game and it’s a pity to be so restricted when solo.

I’ve played my necro since release with a few months pause but, having gone through all the game modes and having done all the dungeons, I can honestly say that he problem with the necromancer is a classic case of what looks good on paper doesn’t mean it will perform good in practice. People seem to love concrete examples so I’m going to compare my necro to my guard to demonstrate that fact:

necro high HP <→ guard low HP
necro light armor <→ guard heavy armor
necro spreads conditions <→ guard cleanses conditons
necro can turn boons into conditions <→ guard can turn conditions into boons
necro is good at range and sucky in melee (MH dagger) <→ guard is great in melee and sucky in range
etc

The comparison can continue and they seem to be polar opposite classes that look good on paper and perform opposite tasks. But in reality guards are heavily favored.

Conditions are easy to apply and easy to remove. For a necro this is a big problem since your CC (except for the golem charge) and a big chunk of your damage (except for pure power necro) can be nullified frequently.
Boons are almost as cheap to apply but removal is hard to come by. Every class and many mobs can cleanse conditions while few classes are actually good at removing boons and very few mobs can remove boons.
Some enemies are immune to certain conditions while your allies will never “resist” your boons. So in practice, a boon spamming guard will outperform a condition spamming necro.

A big problem with the necro is its inconsistency: you may start a fight with a full LF bar and your elite ready and that makes the necro quite strong. Most of the times however you will start with a depleted or partially filled up LF bar and 180s cds on elites makes having them in a fight inconsistent as well. LF is refilled partially by skills and partially by stuff dying around you. This makes LF unreliable since the “stuff dying around you” part is out of the player’s control. On my guard I only have to worry about internal cooldowns which is something I can fully manage. On a necro even your profession mechanic is unreliable.

Problematic for necro is access to stability. On lich form or plauge, you have godlike permastability but out of your elites you have almost none (except for crap uptime on a 30 point investment). And with 180s between elites, stability is rare on a necro. You turn from unstoppable to ragdoll in an instant once the elite expires. Again, a big inconsistency.

In pvp, mobility if very important. Poor access to cheap sources of swiftness and no access to vigor puts necro at a disadvantage in a game where everyone else hops around like flees on a hot pan.

Your main source of boons is well of power but that converts conditions to boons meaning that the boon you get is controlled by the enemy in its choice of conditions. And if you face a foe that doesn’t deliver conditions, you get no boons.

Another problem is the fact that you don’t have anything unique that you can bring to a team that can’t be done by another profession that doesn’t have your drawbacks.

On top of all of this, it’s a complex and hard to master class. This means that a necro player is more likely to make mistakes than someone playing one of the noob professions.

Unreliability and inconsistency are the biggest problems with the necromancer. Part of your performance is out of your own control and dependent on the encounters you face, sometimes even at the control of your enemy (see the well of power sentence). Other professions perform their tasks without being hindered so much by external influences whilst necro’s performance fluctuates immensely, many times out of your control. In PvP this makes necros vey easy to counter. Unless Anet makes necro play more consistent, I doubt the class will ever be fixed.

wtf lol @ Bas, yes i don’t have the most hours played but why does that mean my opinion means nothing mr “1000 hour necro without lich form” …

I raided heroics in wow, my guild was server 2nd/1st most of the time, I kittening live for min maxing so i apply it to everything i do on here, pvping in wow i took the most optimal set up, raiding as a dps warrior – if fury was crap compared to arms I played arms and i rocked it hard. Why should someone take a necro when it’s so kitten compared to other classes, and pls don’t reply with “its fun” do me a favour lmao.

I used to think Necro was awesome too, and I didn’t understand what the criticizers were on about. I started to do dungeons on my Guardian and felt much more useful, and it made me question the purpose of my Necro. I started to do tournaments, and again didn’t see what the problem was with the class. Suddenly the team is doing well and we start facing better teams, and I can’t get from point to point, I get focused immediately, I cant dodge more than twice in a row, my skills are always on CD and I feel overwhelmed. Sure I can kill the odd bunker Guardian, Thief, and Engi, but I felt something was off. Then I bring my Guardian to tournaments and suddenly I have a purpose. I still use my Necro for tournaments, but it’s not easy and you have to be on your game to perform well for your team.

Hey The Kay.6539, let me rephrase your whole argument with what I have, since it is quite close. I have 4 80s, Necromancer, Warrior, Guardian, and Thief. I do play around 3-5 hours daily, and consider myself as casual because I don’t like farming or camping, but instead doing different stuff.

Now to the classes:

My Warrior has by far the best damage, especially in AOE situations, I use 2 axes, and I’ve seen 15k one hits. However, when things get tough, my warrior is squishy as heck because of berserker build.

My Guardian got by far the best support. I can AOE heal, while taking damage. I run with 3 shouts or reflection wall, depending on the situation, and find myself quite helpful for the group.

My thief got by far the best single damage with a lot of fun in WvW. Took me a while to get used to, but was worthwhile. Being slippery in WvW is something exclusive to thieves. I’m currently enjoying playing him a lot.

Eventhough, all of the classes mentioned above excel in one field, I still consider my Necromancer as a main. I just love the class without knowing why. It was with my Necromancer that I got 100% map completion, Dungeon Master, all seasonal achievements, and jumping puzzles achievements. I tried MM, conditionmaster, and power build. Ended up sticking with 30/20/0/0/20 dagger/warhorn/wells build. My autoattacks can crit up to 4k, so I don’t find myself dragging the rest of the group down with damage. When things get tough, I can still take a little beating while backing it up with DS. I even farmed Arah for the set, so I don’t find myself squishy at all. In WvW, I can jump into a group of people, throw wells, and come out alive.

TL/DR: Although all other classes are great at specific things, I still love my Necromancer.

As a casual necro I really likethe class more then any other, I also have a mesmer I love but the necro stole my heart, I don’t think we’re weak against any class except if we run a minion build, that part of the necromancer still needs an update, but all the rest is very very good imo

Casual player here by your standard, 3 hours a day max, I even got kids meddling through cutting on that “precious” playtime ( Joke, my kids come first ). My main is my hybrid necro, around 800 hours on my +-1000 hours played. I don’t know why, but I always come back to him, I love the playstyle. Call it a love/hate relationship.

I would agree that in PvE, necro shouldn’t gives you problem. In all those dungeons/fractals runs, I’ve been shunned only once. I do play mainly with my guilds though. Only big problem I had should be fixed “soon”, the 1/3 downed health.

I love WvW, and even if I love my necro, I can still state that there are problems with the profession, regarding how Guild Wars 2 favors Power over Condition, Boon over Condition, Mobility, and DS bugs and strange mechanic that doesn’t allow us to shine to our full potential. In PvP you won’t see the same problems, even less in PvE.

I don’t think whining is the key to be heard, but saying everybody that discuss and bring “bad” points are whiners is not the way to go.

I want this profession to shine, and I will voice my problems with it if I find them legit enough. We would never have our 1/3 downed health problem even looked at if we didn’t push the issue to light like we did, and we did it (I think) in a very constructive manner.

Are all the posts about our issues constructive? Of course not. But I find the majority is. I’m smart enough to filter the good from the bad, and I have faith that new players can do the same.

Pendragon.8735:

There are two ginormous threads detailing Necro shortcomings in both the sPVP forum and this one. I have plenty of posts in both, in addition to the dozens of other contributors. I would suggest starting there.

And that’s all a valid way to proceed in a balance discussion. What’s not is the statement, “well, everybody says they suck,” because “everybody” is frequently wrong. That’s my point.

Pendragon.8735:

Regardless of this possibility though, of secret builds, it’s not a reason for Anet to hold up on active balancing, especially when such things have yet to be discovered in 9 months, and when one class is not stacking up in certain parts of the game.

Pfft, 9 months is nothing. League of Legends has been around for three and a half years and we’re still discovering and rediscovering new OP builds. There was this one OP build called AP Tryndamere that was made possible in July 2011 and wasn’t fixed until March 2013.

I’m not trying to make the point that the Necro is “sleeper OP.” I’m certainly not trying to say the Necro doesn’t need various bug fixes, tweaks, adjustments, and additions; I have to take Reanimator to get Greater Marks just like you. I’m saying simply… stay positive. Don’t despair. Things are rarely as bad as they seem when you focus on the negatives. Another example from LoL: Lux, the Lady of Luminosity, and my favorite champion in the game. She was disregarded by the community and the professional teams for years because her DPS is literally the lowest of any mage in that game, but then the meta shifted and people realized that she could apply her DPS more easily than most (if you can hit your skillshots) and her utility and safety more than make up for her low burst.

GW2 is still in its infancy, as far as the metagame goes. Nine months is barely enough for us to figure out which buttons do what. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the meta shifted and suddenly everyone’s crying about how Deathshroud is OP (Elementalists in particular are already jealous of the second health bar and high base health) and how Necros need a nerf, even if ANet makes no changes to them between then and now.

And I’m not saying this because I have special advanced knowledge. It’s just been my experience for games to play out this way. Gamers are a surprisingly conservative lot. We only want to play proven builds and rarely stray from our comfort zones. If we’re used to playing a profession a certain way, the only way we’re going to change our playstyle is if someone releases an extremely impressive video or does something amazing in a steamed tournament, and then we’ll switch to that. You know how bunker Rangers are one of the new cool things in PvP? Less than a month ago the Ranger was thought to be worthless in PvP (if not everywhere).

All I’m saying is, don’t lose heart, stop despairing, get off the forums every so often and try stuff out. If I weren’t being prevented from playing this week due to life, that’s where I’d be right now I assure you. Don’t be afraid to try to blaze a new metagame. There be dragons in the unknown waters, but I gaurantee you there’s also treasure out there in one form or another and you’ll never find it by focusing on how much Reanimator sucks.

Elvahaduken.3609:

I have 450 hours on my necro, 30 hours on my engi and i regret every second on my necro atm, i dont even think ds#5 will make up for it, the class needs a rework on useless traits/skills before it can even think of being viable.

I spend most of my time in WvW, and I also have a 80 necro and an 80 engi.

I play power wells on necro, and power grenades on the engi. My experience is that the engi has a damage advantage (and obviously a range advantage, which is nice), but requires significant amounts of micromanagement. The necro is far, far more durable. Overall I think necro is stronger, hands down. Not to say that the devs couldn’t improve some things, but really, necro is more than viable, whatever that means…

I use condys on my engi, dont use condys on my necro because they are so subpar to my engi, had a duel with bunker ranger with my engineer, with water fields combo our duel lasted a good 30 mins before someone else came in and killed me (in wvw) so i thought i’d try against him on my necro, tried condys (pet takes all condys so was kitten power and even an odd type of bunker, i just didnt have the sustain no matter what build i used, i couldnt dodge as much as he could to avoid my key skills. I had NOTHING on him, yet my engineer could hold his own against most i go against.

im not saying that game should be balanced around 1v1’s in wvw or pvp, but its clear to so many that the necro is lacking alot more than any other class in mostly every area.

Blaine Tog.8304:

I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the meta shifted and suddenly everyone’s crying about how Deathshroud is OP

Blaine I understand where you’re coming from with most of this post and appreciate that you want necros to stay positive, but this sort of statement really isn’t helpful. Why would you say that? Give me any supportable, rational reason to believe it might be the case.

Elvahaduken.3609:

I raided heroics in wow, my guild was server 2nd/1st most of the time

Going off topic here, but unless you show me how you managed to get pre patch cthun or pre fix illidan, that wont be of much help since the only thing that wasnt fixed by healing in wow is the healers mana bar...

Blaine Tog.8304:

Pfft, 9 months is nothing. League of Legends has been around for three and a half years and we’re still discovering and rediscovering new OP builds. There was this one OP build called AP Tryndamere that was made possible in July 2011 and wasn’t fixed until March 2013.

I’m not trying to make the point that the Necro is "sleeper OP." I’m certainly not trying to say the Necro doesn’t need various bug fixes, tweaks, adjustments, and additions; I have to take Reanimator to get Greater Marks just like you. I’m saying simply... stay positive. Don’t despair. Things are rarely as bad as they seem when you focus on the negatives. Another example from LoL: Lux, the Lady of Luminosity, and my favorite champion in the game. She was disregarded by the community and the professional teams for years because her DPS is literally the lowest of any mage in that game, but then the meta shifted and people realized that she could apply her DPS more easily than most (if you can hit your skillshots) and her utility and safety more than make up for her low burst.

GW2 is still in its infancy, as far as the metagame goes. Nine months is barely enough for us to figure out which buttons do what. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the meta shifted and suddenly everyone’s crying about how Deathshroud is OP (Elementalists in particular are already jealous of the second health bar and high base health) and how Necros need a nerf, even if ANet makes no changes to them between then and now.

Lux was never shunned for low burst nor dps (since she had both), she is/was/will be despite short popularity spike because all her skills are skillshots what wasnt good in the mobility era but is nice now in the age of assassins and was ok in bruiser beatown times. Just as amumu/morg/kennen in aoe spam fests, etc
Also ap tryn/ap yi, ad malza, jungle karth/cass, etc are/were never really op, it are just pubstomp/one trick pony builds, same reason why you dont see veigar in tournaments, its a one trick pony that loses around 9/10 its value if played against correctly or plain countered (like condi cleanse guardian gets derped over by power necro).

And its also not like some stong builds *cough X/D valkyre arcane ele, survival axe/torch & greatsword ranger, hammer charrior physical cc machine, mantra chain heal mesmer* aint known, its just that they dont fit the current meta. Just because mobility is what all the cool kids do in pvp doesnt mean something doesnt work. On the other hand if the design of said thing is broken, it doesnt work *like post stun removal pre rework eve*

Execrable.1064:

Blaine Tog.8304:

I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the meta shifted and suddenly everyone’s crying about how Deathshroud is OP

Blaine I understand where you’re coming from with most of this post and appreciate that you want necros to stay positive, but this sort of statement really isn’t helpful. Why would you say that? Give me any supportable, rational reason to believe it might be the case.

I’m not saying Death Shroud is OP and I’m not saying it will be OP, but here’s the thing: meta shifts happen, especially in the first few years of a game, and when they do, look to the professions that do things a bit differently. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times before and the Necro has all the hallmarks of a profession that’s just waiting for that one innovator to shift the meta a little bit in their favor.

Andele.1306:

Lux was never shunned for low burst nor dps (since she had both), she is/was/will be despite short popularity spike because all her skills are skillshots what wasnt good in the mobility era but is nice now in the age of assassins and was ok in bruiser beatown times. Just as amumu/morg/kennen in aoe spam fests, etc

I’ve played Lux for a long, long time. I can’t tell you how many times I was told not to take her mid because “She’s unreliable and deals no damage.” It’s also a mathematical fact that she has very low burst and DPS compared to other mages, looking strictly at the numbers.

Andele.1306:

Also ap tryn/ap yi, ad malza, jungle karth/cass, etc are/were never really op, it are just pubstomp/one trick pony builds,

AP Tryndamere only got nerfed when he started wreaking havoc in LCS. Voyboy was one of the first professional AP Trynds but then other professionals started kicking kitten with him as well.

AP Tryndamere’s major problem was that he had absolutely no counterplay, in addition to being absurdly good at splitpushing. The former’s not a major game-wide problem until the meta shifted to pushing, which it did. Then he got some of his counterplay returned.

I did not play during TBC sorry Andele

But the meta won’t shift until there’s a patch, because right now I think we (as a community) tested every possible ways to play a necro with the tools we have now.

Until the tools given to us change, the meta will stay the same. Thus until we get a change, we need to voice what we would like those changes to be. At that point we’re just crossing our fingers and hope that those changes will effect us in a positive way.

Panhauramix.2784:

But the meta won’t shift until there’s a patch, because right now I think we (as a community) tested every possible ways to play a necro with the tools we have now.

I’m not just saying we need to figure out new ways to play the Necro (though there’s no way we’ve exhausted the Necro’s possibilities in only 9 months). I’m saying we need to figure out new ways to play the game. Meta shifts are more than just a single build.

Panhauramix.2784:

Until the tools given to us change, the meta will stay the same. Thus until we get a change, we need to voice what we would like those changes to be. At that point we’re just crossing our fingers and hope that those changes will effect us in a positive way.

No, meta shifts can happen just because a new voice arises. League of Legends say a bunch of meta shifts when the European teams showed up at the end of S1 and then again when the Asian teams showed up just because they thought about the game differently.

Again, I’m not saying we should stop pushing for bug fixes and trait improvements, because this is a huge game and isn’t anywhere close to balanced. Every profession needs fixes and it’s up to the players to point towards what those are. It’s the unrelenting despair I take issue with, the constant crying about how worthless and unloved we are.

This is a game. Its purpose is to be fun. Just try to keep that in mind.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Panhauramix.2784:

But the meta won’t shift until there’s a patch, because right now I think we (as a community) tested every possible ways to play a necro with the tools we have now.

I’m not just saying we need to figure out new ways to play the Necro (though there’s no way we’ve exhausted the Necro’s possibilities in only 9 months). I’m saying we need to figure out new ways to play the game. Meta shifts are more than just a single build.

Panhauramix.2784:

Until the tools given to us change, the meta will stay the same. Thus until we get a change, we need to voice what we would like those changes to be. At that point we’re just crossing our fingers and hope that those changes will effect us in a positive way.

No, meta shifts can happen just because a new voice arises. League of Legends say a bunch of meta shifts when the European teams showed up at the end of S1 and then again when the Asian teams showed up just because they thought about the game differently.

Again, I’m not saying we should stop pushing for bug fixes and trait improvements, because this is a huge game and isn’t anywhere close to balanced. Every profession needs fixes and it’s up to the players to point towards what those are. It’s the unrelenting despair I take issue with, the constant crying about how worthless and unloved we are.

This is a game. Its purpose is to be fun. Just try to keep that in mind.

Heh, I play for fun too. Sadly though the purpose of a game from nearly any company is to earn money first of all. It is actually just a service in the form of a game.

Panhauramix.2784:

But the meta won’t shift until there’s a patch, because right now I think we (as a community) tested every possible ways to play a necro with the tools we have now.

Until the tools given to us change, the meta will stay the same. Thus until we get a change, we need to voice what we would like those changes to be. At that point we’re just crossing our fingers and hope that those changes will effect us in a positive way.

The meta knows the weakness of the Necro class, and until those weaknesses are fixed……..

Just looking at the class PvP tournament, the Necros were stomped by CC from the Warriors and the mobility of the Mesmers. Necros had a tough time in larger capture points against the Guardians but succeeded when the points were well sized.

Oh I have a blast playing necro(not a finisher though), don’t worry about it! My play time is limited and I want to have fun when I do play. And I don’t know anything about LoL (lol), sorry I can’t really relate to it.

But I do believe we still managed in 9 months to test the system in and out. We won’t find a new even more tankier build that what we have now, we won’t find a better access to stability than what we have now, etc etc, again with the tools we have.

If Anet gets out a new rune, weapon set, sigil, trait or new map with new objectives, of course the Theorycraft will start from scratch, but right now the game is limited in term of build, professions and mix/match. The only new build I could not foresee would be builds where you don’t use all your Traits points.

IMHO, If Anet promotes power, condition removal and boons over conditions, players will choose that road until Anet promotes something else. Meta aren’t meta for nothing, it’s (normally) what works the best in the sandbox. Each patch has a chance to completely turns the meta around, but we won’t see it until Anet decides to, not the player base. Except if every player choose to kitten themselves by all choosing the lesser path.

I can’t speak for PvE, but as for PvP we have untapped potential. Not going to argue with the general forum assumptions that necro are weak, because even solo necro with skill can work wonders. It is mindset paired with a high skill cap that keep most complaining.

I agree with the OP for the most part.

Necro is fine until you get to high end pve (I don’t care wvw/pvp). I think getting into fotm26 OP should be able to notice what high end pve is. It’s nothing more than dps & reflect and we lack both of them.

The Kay.6539:

This is the kind of stuff that makes me go crazy.
So far in fractals up to my level, I never got kicked because I am a necromancer.

Casual players don’t kick people because they are X or Y class, come on, be realistic here. Also, don’t you have friends? I run stuff with my friends often too, never had issues either with me being a necro, and actually, my dungeon group has TWO necros.

People don’t mind finishing the instance in 25min instead of 17min. You are being completely unrealistic when you say: “NOBODY WILL EVER TAKE A NECRO OVER X or Y”, that implies that no necromancer, ever will do any kind of group stuff.

And you can be hybrid and get some defense, of course, you won’t do as much damage, and might be slightly more squishy than specialized builds, yeah, but it’s fun. I can stack 25 stacks of vulnerability in less than 8 seconds by myself, and keep it 100% uptime above 12-14 stacks, how is that not helping the team? Necros can perma poison too, and keep almost 100% uptime on weakness as well. We are natural debuffers, we are not supposed to buff the team.

You completely misleaded my statement.
Nobody talked about kicks and so on.
What I tried to say is that if you have two lv80 characters, a Necro and a Warrior, your mates will surely ask you to bring the Warrior over the Necromancer and it is true.
This doesn’t mean that Necromancers are kicked as soon as the party realize which profession you’re running, that means that they are subpar compared to other professions, that’s all.

Pazu.8320:

Says who? Have you played one? A power/well build can keep on par with a zerker warrior’s dps. As an example, I have finished off the gate controller in CoF p1 faster then some decent warriors. We don’t have a 100b equivalent, so we can’t brag about a 30k hit from a single skill, except maybe the auto-attack in Lich Form, but that’s an elite skill. Our damaging wells can hit around 20k over their duration while stacking vulnerability and corrupting boons, which is on top of the other attacks we do while the well is active.

You also might assume that most of the vulnerability stacks and weakness debuffs come from the warriors or thieves when a good necro can continually apply these debuffs that improve group dps.

I’ve really had it with people complaining about necro because it’s an incredibly powerful and versatile class.

I’d like to meet the people who said that Necro is an incredibly powerful and versatile class and listen to their reasoning.

Anyway, the math behind the dps calculation of the Necro/Warrior is just wrong.

Warriors can deal 5k damage only with a Greatsword swing while stacking vulnerability or 4k per axe hit, which is actually faster, but without vulnerability.

Assuming that you’re running Dagger MH, you are doing less damage without stacking vulnerability, about 1k for each of the first hits, 1.5k the 3rd and 3k on the 4th, which is 6.5k. So a full dagger chain is one hit and an half of an axe warrior.
If you are using Axe MH, your damage is even lower. You hardly hit 1.5k with a full autoattack and never deal more than 8k damage with Ghastly Claws.
Well of Suffering is just a little unreliable (because it is a PBAoE) damage boost on a 45s cooldown.

Do you really think they are on par damage-wise? Seriously, get real.