Guild Wars 2

I played guild wars 2 a long time ago and want to start playing again, so i made a new acc since my old one is gone..

But i used to play a warrior and i kinda want to play a necromancer now for both pvp and pve and i wonder if it’s viable?

My friends tell me necros cant do anything else that other classes can do 10x better so i’m not sure if i want to try it :L but i always loved playing “dark” classes so i might play it for the cool factor but i dont want to be thrown out of stuff because i play as a necro..

Also do anyone know if GS Necro is more spell focused in HOT? or is it actually melee?

Necromancer is a great class for PvP.

There are two builds that are commonly used in sPvP atm; Power Necro and Terrormancer.

Power necro is a very useful build for beginners because there are lots of traits and skills you can choose from to “fine-tune” the build to your playstyle.

You are pretty squishy, but depending on how well you are doing you can add/remove aspects of the build to make you more resilient or do more damage.

Search Power Necro or Terrormancer in google and you will probably find builds.

Necromancers are also great in WvW.

As far as pve goes, the Necromancer is great at applying conditions, but does not really excel in other areas. Sure you can run a build where you are glass cannon so that you can pump out decent damage, but you will always be in the shadow of the elementalist and warrior when it comes to burst/sustained dps.

You can still participate in dungeons on a necromancer, but you will find that most experienced groups would prefer a class that is best at what the team needs.

While a necromancer will be able to provide some utility such as blinds and do decent AoE damage, a thief for example, brings blindness, damage, and stealth to the table….. so it is not hard to see which profession the team would rather have.

Don’t be discouraged. Arenanet is working on changes to pve and hopefully condition damage will have a place in future dungeon rosters, but for the time being Necros are “good” at some things but not excellent…. and the one thing they are excellent at, really doesn’t have a use yet for PvE.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Necromancer is a great class for PvP.

There are two builds that are commonly used in sPvP atm; Power Necro and Terrormancer.

Power necro is a very useful build for beginners because there are lots of traits and skills you can choose from to “fine-tune” the build to your playstyle.

You are pretty squishy, but depending on how well you are doing you can add/remove aspects of the build to make you more resilient or do more damage.

Search Power Necro or Terrormancer in google and you will probably find builds.

Necromancers are also great in WvW.

Agreed, Necro is pretty good and fun to play in sPvP solo queue (not so much if you are up against organized teams though =P), decent at WvW roaming and vital in zerg fighting, if you are into that.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

As far as pve goes, the Necromancer is great at applying conditions, …

Hmm sadly, not really. Warriors, Engineers and probably even Rangers are far better at applying conditions fast, while simultaneously doing OKish direct damage and bringing utility etc..
The only unique thing condi Necros have is chain-fears, which do more harm then good most of the times and Epidemic, which is rather useless in a lot of situations because trash mobs die very quickly anyways.

DS Necro is pretty fun for general PvE though and also decent in PuG dungeon runs, assuming you don´t get kicked on sight
However, if you really want to run Necro in dungeons/fractals regularly my advise would be to find a group/guild of people to play with that doesn´t mind you play Necro and can adapt to it a bit if needed.

As far as HoT, Necro GS and the specialization go, we still don´t know anything about these things for sure unfortunately. People are speculating that GS will be a cleaving melee weapon, possibly with chill on auto attack (which would be great imo), but we´ll have to wait and see I guess.

EDIT: Oh and you should definitely check out the Necromancer subforum if you have more specific questions about the class McPanda =)

I’ll echo what the previous posters said about PvP and WvW – very popular class. I don’t run my necro in dungeons, but I absolutely loved playing necro in open world PvE. I alternate between a minion-focused build (oh, how I miss my MM from GW1!) and a power/might based Death Shroud build mostly. Terrormancer doesn’t really translate to PvE well, but it can be hilarious in certain areas – if ANet would let us knock/fear/pull enemies off ledges like we can other players, it would be one of my favorite PvE builds, lol.

Condition heavy builds also work great in PvE – if I switch to my condition damage/duration gear, no other class can touch the insane variety of badness I put on enemy mobs.

I prefer to run all PvE on my Power/Death Shroud necro. She seems to kill faster than even my ele and usually is the last one standing in all situations. Necro can be a very fun class. And I honestly never got kicked out of a party in dungeons or fractals, but then I don’t do speed runs.

Necromancers have absolutely no problem in mid-high tier ranked soloQ. I’ve maintained a 65%+ win rate with 150+ games now and I leveled my Necro 1-80 in PvP because I didn’t like my mesmer’s playstyle. At lower levels you’ll even carry your team as the entire enemy team will stand in your wells and die.

Necromancer can get bags in PvE and WvW through its tagging ability. It can tank as well as a Warrior. In 1v1, it is competitive with other professions.

In organized groups it is sub-par for its lack of doing anything of value for the team. Conditions are low value, team cleanses are poor, and there are no boons to speak of, no leaps or any other mobility skills, pretty close to nothing of use to a group.