Guild Wars 2

How is the necromancer status these days.
I always loved and had Necro in GW1, and it stayed pretty similar, which i LOVE … and has cool weapons and styles.
I Love the concept of Black and Blood Magic …and darkness
I Love the Wells and Minions ^^

So how is he today in Open World PvE, Dungeons and lastly, WvW ?
Are minions still more of a problem then a solution, or have they been fixed ?

There have been over 10 major updates, and I really lost track of all Necromancers fixes.
Just Loving a profession doesn’t help, out of Love I mained Ele for months, but was never truly happy

They gave us visibility of our boons/conditions/states in Death Shroud which was a big thing people have been wanting for awhile.

Outside of that, I feel that knowledge of what necromancers are here for and what we do as a class is continuously evolving. We aren’t the red-headed stepchild we were when the game released but we have a long ways to go still. Those of us who have learned how to utilize functions of our class and integrate them in to our builds, without being of the mindset that we should be doing the insane damage of a pure zerker warrior or something, are always finding new tricks and things we can do with necros.

I love and am very happy with my necro and I know a lot of others who are as well. I think the people that are unhappy have just not found the ways to play the class that work well and expect something else.

Minions work fine now (99% of the time) if you know how they work…. to trigger them to attack you have to start with auto attack and they trigger on the second cycle of your auto attack. Golem still gets a little funky sometimes, but overall they work fine.

I agree with Takarazuka.
Necromancer is a class that’s incredibly overlooked by many people.
We have great access to many conditions and a pretty good line of support skills too.
While we don’t make a great Zerker class, it’s fine, it’s not where Necros really belong.

Necros instead can consistently apply conditions and sustain them, while giving allies condition removal and support directly and indirectly through wells and marks.
In PvE Necros have to ability to apply AoE conditions with Epidemic, something no other class can beat the Necromancer at.
Apply bleed to one target (which Necros can easily stack 15 bleeds pretty fast) and Epidemic, boom! AoE 15 stacks bleed, and it recharges in 10 sec if traited.
This works wonders with bosses that spawns lots of adds, like the Shaman in Lava Fractal or Dredge in Dredge Fractal.

Minions are now a solid utility, and is great for levelling! Better AI means they aggro less, and provide lots of tanking and damage when traited. However, I wouldn’t use Minions when I’m running in higher level Fractals, as they die too quickly before doing much damage. And I believe Agony strikes them pretty hard.

Death Shroud is a free life bar that fills up relatively quickly, even if untraited. Can provide easy Fury and Might boons when traited. Also provides good AoE heal when traited.

Overall, I’d say the necros (and Engineers) are often the most looked down class in the entire game, just because their lack of quick direct damage (burst) is less compared to other classes, which is mostly true. People also don’t know how necros work, so in a group they often move outside of wells or marks, despite the great support it gives.
I hope they do get more popular though, I love my Necro too, and it’s my favorite class in the game!

Zul.1506:

I agree with Takarazuka.
Necromancer is a class that’s incredibly overlooked by many people.
We have great access to many conditions and a pretty good line of support skills too.
While we don’t make a great Zerker class, it’s fine, it’s not where Necros really belong.

Necros instead can consistently apply conditions and sustain them, while giving allies condition removal and support directly and indirectly through wells and marks.
In PvE Necros have to ability to apply AoE conditions with Epidemic, something no other class can beat the Necromancer at.
Apply bleed to one target (which Necros can easily stack 15 bleeds pretty fast) and Epidemic, boom! AoE 15 stacks bleed, and it recharges in 10 sec if traited.
This works wonders with bosses that spawns lots of adds, like the Shaman in Lava Fractal or Dredge in Dredge Fractal.

Minions are now a solid utility, and is great for levelling! Better AI means they aggro less, and provide lots of tanking and damage when traited. However, I wouldn’t use Minions when I’m running in higher level Fractals, as they die too quickly before doing much damage. And I believe Agony strikes them pretty hard.

Death Shroud is a free life bar that fills up relatively quickly, even if untraited. Can provide easy Fury and Might boons when traited. Also provides good AoE heal when traited.

Overall, I’d say the necros (and Engineers) are often the most looked down class in the entire game, just because their lack of quick direct damage (burst) is less compared to other classes, which is mostly true. People also don’t know how necros work, so in a group they often move outside of wells or marks, despite the great support it gives.
I hope they do get more popular though, I love my Necro too, and it’s my favorite class in the game!

Second this. Our biggest problem in PvE grouping is that people don’t really know that our marks, wells, and AoE effects provide a lot of support. I can’t count the number of times I’ve dropped a well on some dungeon mob that’s been instantly knocked out of it, or dropped a mark on the party just to have people dodge away from it. People expect their support to give them boons. If they don’t get loads of boons (e.g. Guardian) then they assume you’re just doing bad damage.

@PinCushion: Yeah, one of the best and most common example I get is during the fight with the Legendary Imbued Shaman in the Volcanic Fractal.
In that fight, you need to constantly kite to avoid the brun condition from the floor. However, the skill ‘Well of Power’ actually converts that ‘Burn’ into ‘Aegis’, which is amazing! Free blocks are always nice.
But no one stands on the Well when I cast it! It’s pretty annoying at times, since at high fractals, it’s easy to get wiped by this boss :P

We just had a thread about this a few days ago. It pretty much outlines the pros and cons of this class.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/New-player-what-s-wrong-with-Necro/first

Things to consider before you dive head long into necromancer game play is that no one actively seeks out necromancers for anything. We are not part of the top meta, but we’re not at the bottom either. We’re a very middle of the road class. If you don’t care about being the best at any one thing or not being able to squeeze that last 2% out of this class, then you’ll enjoy playing a necromancer. If you have a problem with mechanical limitation and issues with glitchy abilities, then you should save yourself the frustration and look else where. With that said, only you can decide if the play style of this class is right for you. You can only do that by actually playing the class.