Guild Wars 2

What’s the survivability of the Necromancer like compared to the other caster professions (Elementalist and Mesmer)? Pertaining to both WvW and PvE.

Elias.3204:

What’s the survivability of the Necromancer like compared to the other caster professions (Elementalist and Mesmer)? Pertaining to both WvW and PvE.

Not very good, Elementalist and Mesmer can run, while necromancers cannot.

Necros have only 2 stun breakers and mobility like a one legged elephant. Only lasting stability comes from elite transformations that scream “Cripple and range me to death”. Spectral walk gives good swiftness duration but you can only use the return for 8 seconds and doesnt cure cripple/chill. Also DS isn’t as helpful as intended considering the the limited skillset and we currently still cant see boons/conditions while in DS. And necros have no way of getting vigor except maybe one skill with an axe.

Eles have amazing self heals, condition removal, mobility, vigor, stability, and invulnerability skills. With the right build you can get away from nearly anything.

Mesmers also have good survivability. Stealth, clones, all boons, distortion, teleporting, plus many more tricksy ways of fighting in a jam and surviving to tell the tale.

If you want to learn the strengths of a Necro, you have to read all forums except this one. It sounds dumb, but all you will find here are bad players who whine.

I think the issue that cripples Necros the most is that they don’t have access to Vigor, while essentially every other class does. Which is kinda silly given how necros are supposed to be a boon/condition puppetmaster yet they only get access to a handful of boons.

Talentless.5708:

If you want to learn the strengths of a Necro, you have to read all forums except this one. It sounds dumb, but all you will find here are bad players who whine.

Listen to him, he’s wise.

Between the huge HP pool, additional HP buffers ( death shroud, Plague form ), decent healing ( Blood Well, Consume Corruptions and Siphoning – every little bit helps ) and the ease of working some substantial toughness into most popular builds Necros’ baseline survivability is argueably the best in the game.

The lack of tools to disengage means that if things don’t go your way you’ll be toast eventually though, while Mesmers and ( Daggerx2 ) Eles can just swoosh away and try again at a more opportune time.

we have great survival tools, but when overwhelmed we do not have great “get out of dodge skills”

In PvP, a necro has practically no escape mechanics. You have to be on your toes more then other professions like mesmer or elementalist. You are durable statwise, yes but disengaging from a battle that doesn’t go in your favour is practically not always possible.

On the other side, Elementalist and Mesmer are more forgiving to play, since they have great escape mechanics.

In PvE it doesn’t matter at all. You may spec to be unkillable on all of the professions.

Azgarn.2145:

Necros have only 2 stun breakers and mobility like a one legged elephant. Only lasting stability comes from elite transformations that scream “Cripple and range me to death”. Spectral walk gives good swiftness duration but you can only use the return for 8 seconds and doesnt cure cripple/chill. Also DS isn’t as helpful as intended considering the the limited skillset and we currently still cant see boons/conditions while in DS. And necros have no way of getting vigor except maybe one skill with an axe.

Eles have amazing self heals, condition removal, mobility, vigor, stability, and invulnerability skills. With the right build you can get away from nearly anything.

Mesmers also have good survivability. Stealth, clones, all boons, distortion, teleporting, plus many more tricksy ways of fighting in a jam and surviving to tell the tale.

Am I the only one who know how the skills of necromancer works? First Necromancer have 4 break stun skills like any other cast : two spectral skill, one signet and the wurm minion. if you trait for it spectral skills last 20% longer and recharge 20% faster. There is many way to remove conditions (healin skill, dagger 4th skill, signet – the one that break stun, staff 4th skill and you can use also runes or Sigils for it, Lich form 5th skill)
DS is the most usefull. You ppl just don’t know how to use it. If you in great danger press f1 then fear maybe life transfer then go out, try to collect some more life force than again go in so you dont lose your HP. the last trait line give a 4.5 second rechage for it (number 12) and the spectral skills can fill you up with life force really fast. The axe skill don’t give you vigor but retaliation.

yea, you don’t have escape skills, but you have mad survivability. in WvW, the best i can do when i want to flee an enemy zerg is to kite and tank them while inching towards the nearest friendly structure. with all the chill and fear, consume conditions being the best heal in the game + locust signet’s massive heal, it’s not uncommon to lead 5+ people on a wild goose chase all the way to a tower or keep.

Animi.4617:

Azgarn.2145:

Necros have only 2 stun breakers and mobility like a one legged elephant. Only lasting stability comes from elite transformations that scream “Cripple and range me to death”. Spectral walk gives good swiftness duration but you can only use the return for 8 seconds and doesnt cure cripple/chill. Also DS isn’t as helpful as intended considering the the limited skillset and we currently still cant see boons/conditions while in DS. And necros have no way of getting vigor except maybe one skill with an axe.

Eles have amazing self heals, condition removal, mobility, vigor, stability, and invulnerability skills. With the right build you can get away from nearly anything.

Mesmers also have good survivability. Stealth, clones, all boons, distortion, teleporting, plus many more tricksy ways of fighting in a jam and surviving to tell the tale.

Am I the only one who know how the skills of necromancer works? First Necromancer have 4 break stun skills like any other cast : two spectral skill, one signet and the wurm minion. if you trait for it spectral skills last 20% longer and recharge 20% faster. There is many way to remove conditions (healin skill, dagger 4th skill, signet – the one that break stun, staff 4th skill and you can use also runes or Sigils for it, Lich form 5th skill)
DS is the most usefull. You ppl just don’t know how to use it. If you in great danger press f1 then fear maybe life transfer then go out, try to collect some more life force than again go in so you dont lose your HP. the last trait line give a 4.5 second rechage for it (number 12) and the spectral skills can fill you up with life force really fast. The axe skill don’t give you vigor but retaliation.

spectral traits rock

Animi.4617:

Am I the only one who know how the skills of necromancer works? First Necromancer have 4 break stun skills like any other cast : two spectral skill, one signet and the wurm minion. if you trait for it spectral skills last 20% longer and recharge 20% faster. There is many way to remove conditions (healin skill, dagger 4th skill, signet – the one that break stun, staff 4th skill and you can use also runes or Sigils for it, Lich form 5th skill)
DS is the most usefull. You ppl just don’t know how to use it. If you in great danger press f1 then fear maybe life transfer then go out, try to collect some more life force than again go in so you dont lose your HP. the last trait line give a 4.5 second rechage for it (number 12) and the spectral skills can fill you up with life force really fast. The axe skill don’t give you vigor but retaliation.

Ok I was wrong about the stun breakers. Never even looked at the wurm skill since I hate the necro minions. Even with 4 possible stun breakers you’d be forced into traiting certain ways to even be benefited by them. Most obviously traiting into spectral skills. Even with quick life force regen from spectral skills, if a even just a few good players are on your kitten and really want you to die and know how to avoid your fears/slows you don’t stand a chance. That DS health bar will only give you a few extra seconds. A player can time a stun/daze for when a necro starts the DS leech and ruin that plan.

The necro is good at surviving certain fights and even surviving lots of random unfocused AoE, but when focused by players that are competent I don’t see them surviving that long. If we are just talking about going against the typical WvW raidbaby zergbots that don’t know how to exploit profession’s weaknesses then just ignore me. If you want to talk about well rounded survivability going up against any situation, necros aren’t as great as you propose. Maybe they would be if leeching was more potent, and had another source of stability.

Survivability wise we are the strongest as far as living the longest. However our mobility is pretty bad without traiting for it and devoting too many skills for it, and our stun breaks aren’t that good; we have them, just they aren’t that great as only stun breaks. We also have the strongest condition control in the game (I don’t say removal because we don’t simply remove conditions, we transfer them, turn them into boons, or nibble on them for HP instead of just taking them off).

Basically, necros have some issues moving (if you consider that survivability), but have very little issue living a lot longer than other classes.

when it comes to pve , necros are gods among insects . when it comes to pvp/wvw they are dead in the water like engineers .

In PVE I regularly see Mesmers, Elementalists, and Warriors die in a few seconds, while my Necro stays up for hours and does a ton of damage. Perhaps only the Guardian comes close, to survivability. But the damage of them is much lower.
We Necromancers have death shroud, we can stun break, by far best condition damage, doing lots of nasty things with that.
Only bad thing is light armor, just like Mesmers (but they have clones), and Elementalists. So, if you know your profession well, its great fun.

If you play necros right, we have the highest survivability per whatever damage output we are at. Whether its bunker, glass cannon, or in between, we will have similar damage output, but with more survivability.

Azgarn.2145:

Animi.4617:

Am I the only one who know how the skills of necromancer works? First Necromancer have 4 break stun skills like any other cast : two spectral skill, one signet and the wurm minion. if you trait for it spectral skills last 20% longer and recharge 20% faster. There is many way to remove conditions (healin skill, dagger 4th skill, signet – the one that break stun, staff 4th skill and you can use also runes or Sigils for it, Lich form 5th skill)
DS is the most usefull. You ppl just don’t know how to use it. If you in great danger press f1 then fear maybe life transfer then go out, try to collect some more life force than again go in so you dont lose your HP. the last trait line give a 4.5 second rechage for it (number 12) and the spectral skills can fill you up with life force really fast. The axe skill don’t give you vigor but retaliation.

Ok I was wrong about the stun breakers. Never even looked at the wurm skill since I hate the necro minions. Even with 4 possible stun breakers you’d be forced into traiting certain ways to even be benefited by them. Most obviously traiting into spectral skills. Even with quick life force regen from spectral skills, if a even just a few good players are on your kitten and really want you to die and know how to avoid your fears/slows you don’t stand a chance. That DS health bar will only give you a few extra seconds. A player can time a stun/daze for when a necro starts the DS leech and ruin that plan.

The necro is good at surviving certain fights and even surviving lots of random unfocused AoE, but when focused by players that are competent I don’t see them surviving that long. If we are just talking about going against the typical WvW raidbaby zergbots that don’t know how to exploit profession’s weaknesses then just ignore me. If you want to talk about well rounded survivability going up against any situation, necros aren’t as great as you propose. Maybe they would be if leeching was more potent, and had another source of stability.

I never liked run with the zerg I see myself as a duelist. I like a 1v1 – 2v1 – 2v2 or maybe larger group battles like 5v5 but zerg is not my style. Maybe it’s because my config isn’t that good and when more then 20 ppl are on the screen I get Lag. So when I say that necromancer has a really great survivability I mean during these kind of battles. Also only thief and elementalists can escape from a 30 zerg. Necromancer can’t so you need to act fast if you see a really larg group at a distance.

edit: grammar

I just wonder whether these necro players who blame the class for their short-comings also blame their mothers when they run out of Cheetos.

In zerg vs zerg, necros got decent survivability. If you want to roam however, necro has the worst survivability in the game. Necros got a ton of hp with DS but that’s all they got.

First off, what makes a profession have good survivability?
I think that what gives survivability to someone is:

• Stability: being immune to control skills is a great thing consider that you are capable to cast skill if you’re not CCed. Necros lack of an easy access to stability.
• Protection: it is one of the best way to mitigate direct damage. It is important to be capable to mantain this boon for a considerable amount of time to be effective. Necro has access to 6s protection on a 90s cooldown and a quite unreliable protection from Spectral Wall.
• Vigor (and dodges): the ability to do more dodges via boon or trait is great to mitigate the damage. Thieves and Rangers have the best traits to increase the dodge amounts, Elementalists have easy access to vigor. Necromancers have none of them.
• Evades: it is easily one of the best way to avoid damages when we’re out of endurance. Most evades are also coupled with stunbreakers, giving great potential to them. Necros have none.
• Mobility: the ability to leave a fight when it turns unfavorable is great for survivability purposes, giving you the time to restore health and reengage the fight when the enemy does not expect you or run away for your life. With mobility I’m obviously not talking about Swiftness, anyone knows that it doesn’t help to leave a fight, but real mobility skills like RtL or Infiltrator’s Arrow. Necro has none.
• HP: obviously, if you have nothing to be hit at, you can’t survive that long. This is quite a controversial defensive method, because it doesn’t help that much to survive, because doesn’t mitigate the overall damage input, but only gives you the ability to take more hits, so if you have a large pool of HP without the ability to mitigate the incoming damage (and so being capable to overheal it), you are going down anyway and actually faster than someone can think. Necromancers have a lot of HP.
• Toughness: since toughness can be raised by any profession, I will consider only the innate toughness level, linked to armor. Obviously heavy armor professions are in a better position. Necromancers have light armor, the weakest one.
• Visual confusion: it is quite helpful in order to survive a fight, despite what someone can think. Tricking the enemy player to move its damage output to another entity or popping in and out of his screen is actually quite helpful against any enemy, extremely effective against the most inexperienced, but it is also quite helpful against the most experienced ones. Mesmers and Thieves are the masters of visual confusion, because of Stealth and the spammable clones/phantasms. Necromancers could have minion from their side, but everyone knows what minions are, so we can easily state that Necromancers have poor access to visual confusion.
• Constant Heals: excluding he standard heals, it is quite useful to have other skills which gives a good amount of heals, like Cleansing Wave or Cone of Cold, coupled maybe with nice traits. This will give another healing output in order to help the main heal to cover the damage output. Keep in mind that you need also good damage mitigation in order to make heals effective. Necro would have good healing option, that’s why blood magic is there, but the healing amount simply isn’t enough compared to his HP pool

Now, with this post, you can have a clear view of what “survivability” mean and probably take your conclusions.

Good initial damage absorption. Absolutely terrible recovery options.

The elementalist and guardian, despite having the lowest base HP, happen to be the best bunkers because of their sheer access to protection boons and health pool restoration in addition to active defences.

Avoidance>>>>>>>>Mitigation.

Think WoW warlock vs. frost mage. People could train the warlock all day, and despite having better tanking ability than a mage, because targets could have so much uptime on the warlock compared to the mage, the warlock was actually a greater liability to the healer.

Most importantly, classes that need to facetank damage instead of avoiding it innately rely on strong sustained healing. Since healers don’t exist in this game, a a class like the necro will see his HP dwindle while his pitiful damage (it is truly pitiful if you actually have played other classes and are aware of their damage potential) is not enough to outmatch the damage he’s taking in.

The necro is a punching bag. It is the priority target of every team because outside Plague they cannot self-peel and end up being the squishiest train target. More importantly, because it’s backloaded damage is subpar, there is no payoff to a protracted battle. You have no burst, and your sustained isn’t better than burst classes to compensate for the fact that your burst is nonexistent.

A couple of regen alone won’t keep you alive. For example, roamer rangers specced for tanking damage survive not only because of high regen uptime, but because they have other sources of regen and several leap finishers to combo off their water field heal plus 2 available evasions and high vigor uptime +increased endurance regen from trait.

In none the the weaponskills does the necro have blocks. There is a blind on deathly swarm, a very slow projectile. My guardian can mitigate burst very well because with a mace/focus he can block 4 attacks in a row, plus his initial aegis and then another aegis from virtue of courage. And long duration protection for -33% damage.

Poison is relatively useless since many classes’ heals, like the thief’s, clear conditions for the heal. So Poison doesn’t affect their heal. Chill is also an overrated attrition condition considering the effectiveness of burst in the game. Glass cannons can burst down people in way shorter time spans than it takes for chill to make a difference.

sorrow.2364:

First off, what makes a profession have good survivability?
I think that what gives survivability to someone is:

Now, with this post, you can have a clear view of what “survivability” mean and probably take your conclusions.

I am very bored this morning, so forgive me for picking apart this post:

1.) Stability – I run with Lich Form, which includes stability, but to the greater point, not every class has stability either, although it is made available to you by others in your group.

2.) Protection – I also run with enough Soul Reaping to receive Spectral Armor automatically after taking damage. While I dont also run with Spectral Armor as a skillset, I do run with Spectral Wall, and I am sorry, but there is nothing “unreliable” about either the protection it gives you and your team, nor the vulnerability stacks it builds for you on the enemy.

3.) Vigor & Evades – Do you really find yourself in need of more? I just disagree with the importance of them with our higher natural HP and life force. I am glad that you only point out Thief, Ranger and Elementalists, because they are all paper and can use any possible held in avoiding damage. Necros are designed to take that hit.

4.) Mobility – I also run with Spectral Walk, and given that you constantly have a haste buff from others, I save it for fights. Contrary to your point, we have what I would argue to be a very good escape tool. However, to the bigger point,again you compare escape tools on a class designed and capable of taking in more damage to classes like Thieves that dont have half our damage intake capability. That doesnt make us better than Thieves, it makes us different, so the argument that we should have everything they should have is just silly.

5.) HP – I think you miss the point of the large Necro HP pool. The point isnt that HP is a defensive ability by itself. The point is on your gear and items you can ignore the need for Vitality. Since you naturally have plenty of HP, and you have life force that doesnt make use of HP, you are in perfect position to focus on getting at least 1800 toughness even in a power build.

6.) Visual Confusion – You’re right, we dont have clones like Mesmers and we dont have stealth. I’m sorry, but how many other classes have this, and again, are they also paper like Mesmers and Thieves? Your mistake here isnt making a good point of the usefulness of your described “visual confusion”, but on your insinuation that Necro should have access to it.

7.) Constant Heals – This one left me confused. We have a heal that also does more healing per condition on us. We have blood trait for people who go that where where you are siphoning health from your attacks. We have regeneration from at least staff and focus, maybe more… not going to check. We have more than one HP pool, which is more important because no one else can pop DS when you’re low on health and just used your heal to give you free time to take damage until your heal is up again.

In short… If your Necro is built and played right, you can kill and “out-live” any class in the game. The only class you would not be able to solo is a P/D Thief, because all they will do is stealth and run away.

In WvW, Necromancers make good siege weapons. Even though mobility is crap compared to other professions, we can take a few hits and not need to run back to safety while we wait for CD timers to clear. Whether firing down from a wall, or up at one, a Necro with a staff can make the other team unhappy and give your own team’s high dps player a chance to close ranks. Do not expect to get a lot of badges doing support work but also remember that work is critical for the team. A few necromancers on a wall are like light siege weapons that can be moved around to fill in gaps before the gaps turn into holes.

If you prefer making the kills yourself, then Necromancer is not the best job for that. It does not have a nuke button or an escape button. All Necromancer has is a second health bar so that it can take a beating just a bit longer before dying. Our best weapons in a zerg are staff marks (AoE) for conditions and to set up combo fields, wells which also set up combo fields but are very good at converting conditions, and epidemic (the closest skill to a nuke) which spreads conditions on one target to up to 5? others.

Badges may come slowly and Necromancer is one of the easy prey when singled out but in a zerg the job is like mobile artilery, not for direct damage, but for its ability to send opponents back for CD after blowing a good heal just to remove a bleed or poison and get their speed bonus back.

Necromancers can take a bunch of damage but that’s about as far as our survivability goes. We don’t get mobility, reflects, stealth, clones, healing, etc. So if you’re standing in a bunch of arrow cart AOE’s we are really survivable, but if you’re on the front lines and need to break away we aren’t.

Talentless.5708:

cut

I did not wanted to point out what Necro should have access to or not. I wanted just to point out what are the factors which make a profession tougher and which factors does the Necro have full access to.
If you take any profession and give a point on a scale from 1 to 10 to each factor I’ve listed according its accessibility, you’ll see that Necros score the least.

I think people aren’t considering life force generation as “healing” because it doesn’t increase your actual HP level. The thing is, for a necro, life force gain is indeed healing. By constantly swapping health bars and building them both up, you can maintain an extremely large health pool.

With Gluttony, your Focus 4 alone effectively heals you for 17.325% of your maximum HP before counting the regen boon or anything more than the minimum trait points in Soul Reaping. For a health pool of 20k, that is a heal of 3465 off of a weapon skill, not counting regen (which may have gone to an ally instead). Keep in mind you just threw vulnerability and damage foes, so you did more than just heal.

Sometimes I wonder if people that post in this forum have actually spent time playing around on necros and actually understand the class.

We have unique mechanics, so do other classes, you can’t simply say “necros have no boons, therefore they can’t live, gg necro sucks”.

Lets talk about necro survivability, because ours doesn’t come from “standard” sources like boons or high healing. Ours comes from using death shroud to mitigate damage, using our huge access to condition removal/transfer to render using conditions a liability, use our own access to debilitating conditions to reduce incoming damage, and finally our actual heals/life steal to heal up the damage we’ve taken.

I don’t know the exact amount of HP given by DS, but lets just assume for this example that a full, untraited DS pool (0% extra life force pool) has the same HP value as your current HP. Let’s also assume you have 20k HP (our base hp is 18k, so this is hardly any investment, and makes it easier to show with math). So for each 1% of life force you gain from an ability, that is 200hp “healed” to your secondary life bar. I’ll list just the weapon abilities below (post would be huge otherwise, and you should get the point by then), along with how much effective hp you are healed for by the life force gain.

Now, lets look at what skills give life force, and how much from weapon skills + the one DS skill:
DS 4: gives 3% LF per tick per person – 600hp per tick per person (note: I’m not 100% sure if it is per tick or overall, however more people hit does stack LF gains)
Staff 1: 3% LF per hit, up to 3 hit – 600hp per person up to 1800
Axe 2: 4% LF if all hit, up to 800hp
Scepter 2: reads to give 2% LF per condition, not sure if this works as intended – 400hp, up to 22% LF gain (only in completely ideal situations: ie never going to happen) if this works as it reads.
Dagger 1, part 3 of chain: 4% LF, 800hp
Focus 4, 3% LF per enemy bounce (not sure if it applies for allies too), 600hp per bounce

So just looking at weapon skills, many of our auto attacks, 2nd abilities, or offhand abilities effectively give us upwards of 400hp per hit. This doesn’t include traits, or utility skills that can also give LF, also effectively giving you HP. And this doesn’t include the damage reduction/survivability reduction we afflict enemies with in battle.

Necros look bad on paper because of the unique mechanics that we use to live longer, but saying that necros can’t survive is only out of ignorance of our mechanics.

Axe 2 gives 1% life force per hit and has 8 hits.
Scepter 3 does indeed give 2% life force base and 2% per condition.
Dagger 1 (#2 in chain) is 2% life force, #3 in chain is 4%.
Focus is 3% per bounce, whether enemy or ally.
Locust Swarm is 1% per hit (AoE, lasts 10 seconds base, more traited)

Survival only matters if you can take out your opponent with the extra time surviving gives you.

Necromancers suffer from clunky, annoying, or simply ineffective damage sources (beyond simply “hitting stuff” with weapons). Conditions are cleanseable. Minions are killable, and have moronic AI. Wells can be avoided easily. Our direct damage potential is mediocre at best.

Most of the time I have no trouble lasting for a long time. Most of the time I have trouble lasting long enough to actually kill my opponent before he runs away or his friends arrive and overwhelm me.

1. No class can out condition necros. No one has the condition removal necessary to stop us from easily maintaining 10 stacks of bleeds and perma poison in a condition build.

2. Killing minions, except passively with AoE, is bad, and will get you killed by any competent MM.

3. Wells require support, you can’t just throw down a well and expect anything, you need to use your condition-based CC to keep them in the well (its only 5 seconds).

4. Direct damage via power builds is fine. We can get 2-3k crits from DS, 1k from dagger autos, huge hits from Well of Suffering, and easy access to vulnerability.

Its all teamwork once you leave sPvP hotjoin, especially as a necro. It doesn’t matter how much better than them you are, if they out teamwork you, you will lose 11 times out of 10.

Bhawb.7408:

Sometimes I wonder if people that post in this forum have actually spent time playing around on necros and actually understand the class.

We have unique mechanics, so do other classes, you can’t simply say “necros have no boons, therefore they can’t live, gg necro sucks”.

Lets talk about necro survivability, because ours doesn’t come from “standard” sources like boons or high healing. Ours comes from using death shroud to mitigate damage, using our huge access to condition removal/transfer to render using conditions a liability, use our own access to debilitating conditions to reduce incoming damage, and finally our actual heals/life steal to heal up the damage we’ve taken.

I don’t know the exact amount of HP given by DS, but lets just assume for this example that a full, untraited DS pool (0% extra life force pool) has the same HP value as your current HP. Let’s also assume you have 20k HP (our base hp is 18k, so this is hardly any investment, and makes it easier to show with math). So for each 1% of life force you gain from an ability, that is 200hp “healed” to your secondary life bar. I’ll list just the weapon abilities below (post would be huge otherwise, and you should get the point by then), along with how much effective hp you are healed for by the life force gain.

Now, lets look at what skills give life force, and how much from weapon skills + the one DS skill:
DS 4: gives 3% LF per tick per person – 600hp per tick per person (note: I’m not 100% sure if it is per tick or overall, however more people hit does stack LF gains)
Staff 1: 3% LF per hit, up to 3 hit – 600hp per person up to 1800
Axe 2: 4% LF if all hit, up to 800hp
Scepter 2: reads to give 2% LF per condition, not sure if this works as intended – 400hp, up to 22% LF gain (only in completely ideal situations: ie never going to happen) if this works as it reads.
Dagger 1, part 3 of chain: 4% LF, 800hp
Focus 4, 3% LF per enemy bounce (not sure if it applies for allies too), 600hp per bounce

So just looking at weapon skills, many of our auto attacks, 2nd abilities, or offhand abilities effectively give us upwards of 400hp per hit. This doesn’t include traits, or utility skills that can also give LF, also effectively giving you HP. And this doesn’t include the damage reduction/survivability reduction we afflict enemies with in battle.

Necros look bad on paper because of the unique mechanics that we use to live longer, but saying that necros can’t survive is only out of ignorance of our mechanics.

Seriously? How can you treat Life Force as normal health bar?
So it doesn’t matter that you can enter in Death Shroud on a 10s cooldown? It doesn’t matter that when you are in Death Shroud you have access to only 4 skills and none of them are stunbreaker/defensive skills? It doesn’t matter that Death Shroud drains 3% of LF per seconds, so it is like having 6 stacks of bleed constantly on? It doesn’t matter that LF is actually hard to build excluding some specs?
Looks like that the one who hasn’t played the Necro here is you, or you probably played it only in PvE, or you haven’t tried any other profession.
Oh, but yeah, LF = HP, sounds logic.

You don’t replace your HP with death shroud, you use them together. Good play means niether one goes down to zero unless you are hopelessly overwhelmed (in number of opponents, not “OMG, he hit HB”).

Don’t enter death shroud and stay in it until it’s depleted. Use it to absorb some hits (and hit hard, Life Blast is quite good) and jump back out. Likewise, don’t enter it if you don’t need to. If you’re not getting attacked, stay in your normal state and conserve your life force and HP both. Also, don’t be afraid to enter death shroud even if you’re low on life force. Even with condition builds, it’s fairly easy to build it back up to a point where it will greatly increase your survivability. That 2%+2% per condition nets you a lot of effective health.

For anyone besides condition builds, they shouldn’t have any issues at all maintaining a high amount of life force between death shrouds.

Let’s not confuse “survivability” with the ability to “escape”. Necromancers have good survivability but they aren’t very good at escaping fights when it heats up.

Necromancers could use some additional defensive abilities which could go well with what is already established with the class. For example, I seriously don’t understand why Spectral Armor is left as it is. It could be given stability or vigor or something that the necro is really lacking in a skill that is no longer used to any good extent. There are other skills and traits that require some love, but all in all, necro is not bad on the defensive side of the spectrum.

I read that in an earlier incarnation dark path was a teleport skill, similar to the thief shortbow skill, rather than the targetted gap closer it is now. That’s a change they should definitely roll back, it would put necroes more on the level of other classes in terms of being able to disengage.

Burjis.3087:

Let’s not confuse “survivability” with the ability to “escape”. Necromancers have good survivability but they aren’t very good at escaping fights when it heats up.

Necromancers could use some additional defensive abilities which could go well with what is already established with the class. For example, I seriously don’t understand why Spectral Armor is left as it is. It could be given stability or vigor or something that the necro is really lacking in a skill that is no longer used to any good extent. There are other skills and traits that require some love, but all in all, necro is not bad on the defensive side of the spectrum.

Escaping is part of survivability. I’ll give you an example! On my thief if we engage in a WvW brawl and I’m getting focused I can pop into stealth and dodge away. That gives me time to heal up and re-engage. Being able to break combat(escape) and re-engage drastically adds to your survivability.

Personally, I don’t think the necro is in a good place. The class just doesn’t feel cohesive at all. The Ranger and Engineer are in the same place we are. Trait lines that are incredibly bad. Weapon skills that aren’t great and damage on some of them that are sub-par. With other classes I can look at traits and have trouble picking because they are all so good. On the necro I look at traits and have trouble picking because they are all so terrible.

Distaste.4801:

Escaping is part of survivability. I’ll give you an example! On my thief if we engage in a WvW brawl and I’m getting focused I can pop into stealth and dodge away. That gives me time to heal up and re-engage. Being able to break combat(escape) and re-engage drastically adds to your survivability.

Is it really? If you escape and heal-up, your opponent’s healing up too and you’re back to square one, and if you had to run away because your opponent forced you away it’s likely going to happen again, or you die.

Escaping happens because you can no longer take the heat and have to bug out. Time spent escaping is time spent not doing damage.

Anchoku.8142:

Badges may come slowly

I get a fair amount of badges on my wells Necro, even running solo in a Zerg actually, which is certainly not advised for bag farming.

The reason is simple: With the two large HP pools and high toughness even in a power build I can stay in the “hot” zone for a lot longer than most other classes.

Things are probably less peachy using a condition or full defense build though, but that’s more of a problem with how loot is allocated in WvW than the class.

I have little experience with WvW and sPvP, but in PvE, using 4 Wells, the trait effects “Siphoning health is 50% more effective” and “Wells siphon health each time they pulse” and the passive trait abilities for health siphoning I find myself dying very rarely.

So everything I hit gives me health. For example, the famous Magg defense part of path 2 in Citadel of Flame explorable – I never die there while others just keep dropping, and given that I deal some hits using wells I’m kind of center of attention most of the time.

I used to play MM all the time and the 40 Toughness per minion is cool too. In WvW I’d use all minions and Dagger+(something) – folks start attacking the Flesh Golem more often than not and before they figure out what’s what I’m already gone and they’re dead.

I think every class is equally survivable but the means of survival are different – that said, I also think the Necro’s mechanics are WAY different. More stun breakers? Could be (I’ve become very spoiled by them using my Engie) but at the end of the day I don’t even feel the need for it.

Daecollo.9578:

Elias.3204:

What’s the survivability of the Necromancer like compared to the other caster professions (Elementalist and Mesmer)? Pertaining to both WvW and PvE.

Not very good, Elementalist and Mesmer can run, while necromancers cannot.

Never mind the elementalist heal on dodge, that actually get a 1:1 payout from healing power (same heal as they have on off hand dagger, meaning any of them with a off hand dagger can drop some serious heal down quickly while avoiding).

Talentless.5708:

sorrow.2364:

First off, what makes a profession have good survivability?
I think that what gives survivability to someone is:

Now, with this post, you can have a clear view of what “survivability” mean and probably take your conclusions.

I am very bored this morning, so forgive me for picking apart this post:

1.) Stability – I run with Lich Form, which includes stability, but to the greater point, not every class has stability either, although it is made available to you by others in your group.

2.) Protection – I also run with enough Soul Reaping to receive Spectral Armor automatically after taking damage. While I dont also run with Spectral Armor as a skillset, I do run with Spectral Wall, and I am sorry, but there is nothing “unreliable” about either the protection it gives you and your team, nor the vulnerability stacks it builds for you on the enemy.

3.) Vigor & Evades – Do you really find yourself in need of more? I just disagree with the importance of them with our higher natural HP and life force. I am glad that you only point out Thief, Ranger and Elementalists, because they are all paper and can use any possible held in avoiding damage. Necros are designed to take that hit.

4.) Mobility – I also run with Spectral Walk, and given that you constantly have a haste buff from others, I save it for fights. Contrary to your point, we have what I would argue to be a very good escape tool. However, to the bigger point,again you compare escape tools on a class designed and capable of taking in more damage to classes like Thieves that dont have half our damage intake capability. That doesnt make us better than Thieves, it makes us different, so the argument that we should have everything they should have is just silly.

5.) HP – I think you miss the point of the large Necro HP pool. The point isnt that HP is a defensive ability by itself. The point is on your gear and items you can ignore the need for Vitality. Since you naturally have plenty of HP, and you have life force that doesnt make use of HP, you are in perfect position to focus on getting at least 1800 toughness even in a power build.

6.) Visual Confusion – You’re right, we dont have clones like Mesmers and we dont have stealth. I’m sorry, but how many other classes have this, and again, are they also paper like Mesmers and Thieves? Your mistake here isnt making a good point of the usefulness of your described “visual confusion”, but on your insinuation that Necro should have access to it.

7.) Constant Heals – This one left me confused. We have a heal that also does more healing per condition on us. We have blood trait for people who go that where where you are siphoning health from your attacks. We have regeneration from at least staff and focus, maybe more… not going to check. We have more than one HP pool, which is more important because no one else can pop DS when you’re low on health and just used your heal to give you free time to take damage until your heal is up again.

In short… If your Necro is built and played right, you can kill and “out-live” any class in the game. The only class you would not be able to solo is a P/D Thief, because all they will do is stealth and run away.

Dude no offence, but think about what you just said. So your skills 7 to 9 are all spectral skills. Spectral Armor, Spectral Walk and Spectral Wall. In other words all 3 of your utility skills are defensive, meaning you have no offence at all. To top that off you use Lich Form for your elite, which prevents you from using your healing skills and your “defensive” Spectral skills. In other words, using Lich Form for the purpose of tanking is “counter productive”.

For that kind of sacrifice your defence better be top notch. Nope. Even if you are not in Lich Form, you still cannot tank because you heal so little. You cannot outrun anyone. Your protection lasts 6 seconds. You dodge endurance takes forever to recharge. You have no visual confusion.

The only tanky/survivability thing about the necro its their high hp and Death Shroud (meaning even more hp). However that’s all they got.

The problem with “using” hp as the solo method for defence is that the player cannot improve. How do you “use” your hp better? You can’t. On the other professions you can stealth better, you can clone better, you can Ride the Lightning better. Hp? Nope you cannot learn to “use” your hp better.

Conclusion: You cannot point to one or two skills. You have to look at the feasibility of the whole build as a whole. Sure Spectral Armor gives you 6 seconds of protection. But that 72 second cool down make it un-feasible for the purpose of defence. Sure Lich Form gives you stability. But you cannot use healing or any utility (Spectral) skills with it, making it un-feasible for the purpose of defence.

Bhawb.7408:

Sometimes I wonder if people that post in this forum have actually spent time playing around on necros and actually understand the class.

We have unique mechanics, so do other classes, you can’t simply say “necros have no boons, therefore they can’t live, gg necro sucks”.

Lets talk about necro survivability, because ours doesn’t come from “standard” sources like boons or high healing. Ours comes from using death shroud to mitigate damage, using our huge access to condition removal/transfer to render using conditions a liability, use our own access to debilitating conditions to reduce incoming damage, and finally our actual heals/life steal to heal up the damage we’ve taken.

I don’t know the exact amount of HP given by DS, but lets just assume for this example that a full, untraited DS pool (0% extra life force pool) has the same HP value as your current HP. Let’s also assume you have 20k HP (our base hp is 18k, so this is hardly any investment, and makes it easier to show with math). So for each 1% of life force you gain from an ability, that is 200hp “healed” to your secondary life bar. I’ll list just the weapon abilities below (post would be huge otherwise, and you should get the point by then), along with how much effective hp you are healed for by the life force gain.

Now, lets look at what skills give life force, and how much from weapon skills + the one DS skill:
DS 4: gives 3% LF per tick per person – 600hp per tick per person (note: I’m not 100% sure if it is per tick or overall, however more people hit does stack LF gains)
Staff 1: 3% LF per hit, up to 3 hit – 600hp per person up to 1800
Axe 2: 4% LF if all hit, up to 800hp
Scepter 2: reads to give 2% LF per condition, not sure if this works as intended – 400hp, up to 22% LF gain (only in completely ideal situations: ie never going to happen) if this works as it reads.
Dagger 1, part 3 of chain: 4% LF, 800hp
Focus 4, 3% LF per enemy bounce (not sure if it applies for allies too), 600hp per bounce

So just looking at weapon skills, many of our auto attacks, 2nd abilities, or offhand abilities effectively give us upwards of 400hp per hit. This doesn’t include traits, or utility skills that can also give LF, also effectively giving you HP. And this doesn’t include the damage reduction/survivability reduction we afflict enemies with in battle.

Necros look bad on paper because of the unique mechanics that we use to live longer, but saying that necros can’t survive is only out of ignorance of our mechanics.

DS replaces your whole skill bar. You are not yourself when you are in DS. And DS drains naturally. Of course LF gives you extra hp. But a 100% full LF bar would be worth maybe 50% of your regular hp bar at best.

CHIPS.6018:

DS replaces your whole skill bar. You are not yourself when you are in DS. And DS drains naturally. Of course LF gives you extra hp. But a 100% full LF bar would be worth maybe 50% of your regular hp bar at best.

Its up to you to utilize your DS skills properly. Any build you make has the potential to have strong use for DS. And lets say you have 0% offensive use for DS (impossible, but lets say), then you can just use it the second someone is about to burst you, and BAM, you’ve negated a full burst from someone, without losing any “real” HP. DS isn’t meant to be a long-term thing, you jump in, do your stuff, and jump out, usually within 1-2 skills at most.

Slan.5496:

I read that in an earlier incarnation dark path was a teleport skill, similar to the thief shortbow skill, rather than the targetted gap closer it is now. That’s a change they should definitely roll back, it would put necroes more on the level of other classes in terms of being able to disengage.

It was, this was back in closed beta (I believe, it might have made its way to open beta). At the time I remember watching some live matches they put on, and it looked a lot like a staff mark, except you would teleport to wherever you clicked.

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

DS replaces your whole skill bar. You are not yourself when you are in DS. And DS drains naturally. Of course LF gives you extra hp. But a 100% full LF bar would be worth maybe 50% of your regular hp bar at best.

Its up to you to utilize your DS skills properly. Any build you make has the potential to have strong use for DS. And lets say you have 0% offensive use for DS (impossible, but lets say), then you can just use it the second someone is about to burst you, and BAM, you’ve negated a full burst from someone, without losing any “real” HP. DS isn’t meant to be a long-term thing, you jump in, do your stuff, and jump out, usually within 1-2 skills at most.

Man, this is just what other professions are capable to do with invulnerability, blocks or evades. And they don’t need to build LF back up after they absorbed the damage, which can take a very long time you won’t be able to survive thanks to what we’ve said Necro lacks.

I can only compare Necromancer with Guardian as these are the only 2 classes I’ve fully levelled and equipped.

Both have good and bad points as you’d expect, the biggest difference is that my Necromancer has around 28k hp my Guardian around 18k hp, but with heavy as oppose to Light armour and difference skills & traits Guardian is in PVE far more survivable.

As a Guardian I wander round Orr with little or no fear knowing I can kill anything that aggros me before I get hurt, as a Necromancer I can do the same wander but need to plan my route spotting and killing stuff before it kills me.

Both are however fun to play.

If you want to see how well they do, level on up and play it.

My new lvl 80 necro has a mediocre time against skilled ele’s, and eats the not so very skilled ones that thought they’d hop onto a FoTM class.

Between fear, chill, casting a well that add vuln or takes away their boons, lich form, etc. If you go toe-to-toe with an ele, you’ll find it easy.

Mesmers…I’m still figuring out how to combat their shatters.

I’ve had some success, but this necro is a new 80 so I’m still learning.

CHIPS.6018:

Dude no offence, but think about what you just said. So your skills 7 to 9 are all spectral skills. Spectral Armor, Spectral Walk and Spectral Wall. In other words all 3 of your utility skills are defensive, meaning you have no offence at all. To top that off you use Lich Form for your elite, which prevents you from using your healing skills and your “defensive” Spectral skills. In other words, using Lich Form for the purpose of tanking is “counter productive”.

For that kind of sacrifice your defence better be top notch. Nope. Even if you are not in Lich Form, you still cannot tank because you heal so little. You cannot outrun anyone. Your protection lasts 6 seconds. You dodge endurance takes forever to recharge. You have no visual confusion.

The only tanky/survivability thing about the necro its their high hp and Death Shroud (meaning even more hp). However that’s all they got.

The problem with “using” hp as the solo method for defence is that the player cannot improve. How do you “use” your hp better? You can’t. On the other professions you can stealth better, you can clone better, you can Ride the Lightning better. Hp? Nope you cannot learn to “use” your hp better.

Conclusion: You cannot point to one or two skills. You have to look at the feasibility of the whole build as a whole. Sure Spectral Armor gives you 6 seconds of protection. But that 72 second cool down make it un-feasible for the purpose of defence. Sure Lich Form gives you stability. But you cannot use healing or any utility (Spectral) skills with it, making it un-feasible for the purpose of defence.

No offense, but you need to read better (I’ll leave it to you to find your own mistakes). Furthermore, you need to learn how to play the Necro if you dont think my responses make sense or work. They are proven every day

Talentless.5708:

No offense, but you need to read better (I’ll leave it to you to find your own mistakes). Furthermore, you need to learn how to play the Necro if you dont think my responses make sense or work. They are proven every day

… by some random guys on a forum with no factual statements backing them up.

I like how you guys think that anyone who wants to highlight the class problems should l2p. Jump down from your “I’m better than you” throne and think about the game balancing, seeing the Necromancer among the other 7 professions and stop kittening about how you play the profession, how anyone else should play the profession and how to play effective like we don’t know.

This isn’t a thread started to discuss on how we should improve our skills, this is a thread about how Necromancer performs compared to other professions. If you want to say anyone how good you are at playing this game, go somewhere else.

If you want to know how one of the hardest classes to build/play (because of our mechanics) compares to other classes, first you have to either assume equal skill levels, or each class at its skill cap. If you are comparing a bad necro (because necro is hard) to a good guardian (not as hard) then guess who wins out?

To be able to even start comparing classes, we need to compare them with equal skill levels. At equal skill, necro’s are totally competitive with other classes, ESPECIALLY in survivability, but people will never see that if they refuse to see that they are not playing well, and instead blaming it on the class.

Bhawb.7408:

If you want to know how one of the hardest classes to build/play (because of our mechanics) compares to other classes, first you have to either assume equal skill levels, or each class at its skill cap. If you are comparing a bad necro (because necro is hard) to a good guardian (not as hard) then guess who wins out?

To be able to even start comparing classes, we need to compare them with equal skill levels. At equal skill, necro’s are totally competitive with other classes, ESPECIALLY in survivability, but people will never see that if they refuse to see that they are not playing well, and instead blaming it on the class.

As you say, if we assume equal skill levels, what do you think will win? A medium experienced Necro or a medium experienced Thief/Guardian/Mesmer?
I’d say the latter because I’ve spent 300 hours on my Necro, at the point that I press F1 to enter Death Shroud when I play other professions, and about 50 on my Thief, but still I play waaaay better on the Thief. I should assume that I don’t fit for Necro? Uh? Or probably there are some balance issues?

I can say the same on my Warrior or my Mesmer, which I’ve played way less than Thief, but still perform better compared to my Necro. The only profession I don’t feel as good as I am with my Necro is the Engineer.