Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

I’ve leveled up an Engineer and Mesmer to 80. Now I would like to work on another character. I’m torn between the Necromancer and Elementalist. Although, to be fair I’ve always favored Necromancer sort of classes in other games and especially in GW1. So I’m leaning towards Necromancer. That being said, I do have a few concerns and would like to see what sort of advice I get.

It would appear that the Necromancer has a lot of DOOM AND GLOOM surrounding it on this forum. It really has shocked me at the amount of negativity the class has. Then again I’m not an idiot and I do know that the majority of people posts on forums because they have something negative to say. I can’t remember where I read this, but it’s something like 3% of an MMO’s population ever post on the forums or something. So I’m not expecting a whole lot One can hope though!

1) The amount of negativity the profession has, has for a bit swayed me away from the profession. (Which is why I started looking into the Elementalist.) Is the Necromancer really THAT bad and should I stay away from it? Or do I take my own advice and just ignore everyone here, since people are just merely complaining for the sake of complaining? Honestly, would like to get some constructive feedback on this. The oddest part is the Elementalist forums doesn’t seem to be as bad, and I see a whole heap of them in WvW. Where I barely see Necromancers, this could be because of the lack of burst. Not entirely sure…. (scratches head)

2) Switching around on the Elementalist attunements seems daunting and I don’t want to get cramps from playing a profession. Yet there is A LOT of flexibility and control once you get it down. Does the Necromancer have mobility and skill synergy with the rest of the skillsets? Will I get bored at a certain level and only use one build because that’s the only one available? I’ve leveled a Necromancer up to 17 and thus far it seems like a lot of fun. Yet, I don’t want to get bored halfway or even endgame because the class is lacking.

3) Damage, now I normally don’t care about this but reading some threads it seems the Necro suffers from dps issues. Primarily, because it’s an attrition profession (or so it appears to be). This is fine, I’m used to this because Necromancers are usually like this in other MMO’s. However, lots of people are saying that even for an attrition class the dps is still lacking. Is it because of the bugs?

4) Pets…… it seems for a class that utilize pets you would see more people use it. In fact I barely seem Necromancers use pets. Are they completely useless or broken? I don’t understand it, leveling up I’m doing okay with them. Seems that going higher up I may get frustrated and not use them at all. Again, some feedback would be nice

5) WvW, is the Necromancer class feasible in WvW and sPVP? Do they least bring something to the table or should I look at the Elementalist instead, since everyone and their mother has one? (No joke I see Elementalist in WvW so much it’s like roaches!) There has to be a reason why I’m not seeing many Necromancers.

6) Finally Survivability. Hands down the Necromancer has more Survivability then my Elementalist. It seems my Elementalist takes 2 or 3 hits and dies. I expect as much from a burst profession, but it does get aggrevating. Does the Necromancer survivability continue to be as good higher up and into endgame? Should I expect it to eventually flat out and be just as bad as the Elementalist?

Thanks for taking the time to read this! Hopefully, I get some polite and positive constructive responses I can use to make my final decision.

I look forward to the responses!

I am pretty disappointed with my necro (in primarily PvE and WvW play). Think of Ele attunements as 4 weapon swaps instead of the standard 2, and you get buffs when you swap, and all of a sudden it doesn’t sound so bad does it. I don’t think the Necro does much dmg; to do the most you stack bleeds, which is already a crowded condition due to the 25 cap (so many classes bleed), and to stack bleeds you basically have to stand within 900 and auto attack with scepter. Think about it, in most any encounter that you can stand within 900 and AA, is that a hard encounter? Many skills are bugged (e.g. Spectral Grasp is spectral, but it sure as hell never grasps anything (“out of range” “obstructed” “blocked” “evaded” or just plain fails)). Minions are like having three year old children with you at all times, if they see something interesting then off they go (small caveat – the flesh wurm teleport is sweet) and they also die to random aoe any and everywhere. WvW, necros don’t tag especially well (only staff is 1200 and the marks except for 4 don’t hit very hard). Condition removal is everywhere so you can stack your stuff and it will gone quickly. Now this is from more of a zerg or large group fight, 1v1 they are quite good. Survivability – wrong, Ele is better. Why? Ride the LIghtning. If the ele doesn’t like the fight it just leaves. Ele d/d is spectacular survivability. The problem is that Necros have no real escapes and no source of vigor. I would much rather my Necro be an ele, no matter how hard I try to like him.

Encounters are simply not based on attrition. Example – Lava eles on legendary grawl shaman fractal. You don’t have a chance to stack conditions and then Epidemic and even if you did you’d be dead anyways because they just shoot you for 1-2k, so you die then they die. Yay.

Things that I think would really help Necro:
1. They need MUCH BETTER self-healing. You cannot win an attrition fight when your self heals are for 40-50hp. No I am not joking; that is what our Blood Magic 15 and V heal for AFTER being traited with Blood Magic II.

2. Scepter needs to be 1200. Even if you are a condition necro, you will be stuck using staff in many big fights. I do LOVE scepter’s current 3 skills (aside from bleed being main condition).

3. Staff marks need to be improved. 4 is excellent, the others could use some help, even if it is just cd reduction. Marks need to be useful v downed players because at the moment I think only 1 mark can damage a downed player.

4. Having Bleed as our main condition is bad in many ways.

5. Epidemic is spectacular, leave it alone.

6. Dagger should be 600.

7. Axe should be 900.

8. Minions…I’ll just leave it at that.

9. DS just isn’t good enough besides 1v1. It’s not a “second life bar” because it drains on it’s own and you can’t heal your actual health nor use your utility or weapon skills.

I’ll just stop there because that’s already far more than will ever be fixed anyways.

PS – I’m not hatin! I REALLY want to love the necro class. I really really do. It’s just not there yet though.

1. It’s mostly justified
2. It’s worth the effort and more fun when you’ll learn where each attunement exceeds
3. The necro can deal quiet a big deal of damage, over a long time..
4. Minions not pets, for now pretend they don’t exist.
5. You’re either 2 things in WvW, a condition dealing turret or the favourite pick to a chasing opposing mob cause simply you’re the least likely to get away.
6. Not bad if specced well

1) Much of the doom and gloom is exaggerated, but there are some very valid complaints which I’ll address further down.
2) The necromancer has nowhere near the versatility or mobility of the elementalist. Elementalists are perhaps the most mobile profession aside from thieves, and necromancers are arguably the least mobile profession. In order to be a good elementalist you will have to attunement switch a lot though. However, the payoff for this is far ahead of what a well played necromancer can produce.
3) The necromancer does not put out as much damage as other professions. Granted, elementalist doesn’t top DPS charts either though. Currently the necromancer has 3 basic viable choices for builds. Power, Conditions, or Hybrid. The only one of those which the necro does better than any other class is conditions. Power and hybrid necros are outshined in the damage department by most other classes’ power builds.
4) Minions are horrifically buggy and generally a waste of a utility slot. You could be using wells, or BiP, or Epidemic instead and choosing minions over any of those is simply a waste. With minions, many times you’ll have either killed an enemy or died before the minions even initiate combat.
5) I rarely WvW so I’ll leave that to others. Necros and eles both have their spots in sPvP. One of the best team setups currently is necro, ele, ele, mesmer, guardian.
6) Elementalist, hands down beats necro in survivability. Not even a close argument there. A D/D ele running 0-10-0-30-30 will survive far longer than anything a necro can come up with. Furthermore, this build can cleanse conditions like a charm and dole out boons to teammates. Elementalists are widely considered the second best bunker profession next to guardians.

Hope this helps.

1. There is a LOT of negativity surrounding the Necro right now, and most but not all of it is warranted. No, its not quite as bad as people are making it out to be. For the most part people were holding out, trying to help the rest of the players find the good in the profession but lately even those of us who remained positive have been feeling sour. The lack of attention from A-Net is actually really surprising. Our main profession mechanic, Death Shroud and its talent tree to boost it was bugged from beta, and left that way all the way up till… November? December? I can’t remember which. There isn’t much synergy between the traits, there’s a lot of useless traits and of course some bugged ones as well.

However, we are still a very fun class and can put out some serious hurt, although as a Necro, you will always be behind players of similar skill from other professions. The players who actually do really good know the class inside and out, and more likely than not are playing against a lot of players who aren’t very good.

2. We do have swiftness, and its very possible to have it permanently with either one utility (Spectral Walk) and traited, or the utility and Warhorn offhand weapon. Right now we’re lacking in build variety, mostly because minions are currently broken. There are a lot of different builds out there, but most are just slight changes of Condition builds, and Power/Crit builds. The build I find most fun though is a Power/Crit build that focuses not on using our best power weapon (dagger), but Death Shroud for damage. Its a ton of fun.

We have some abilities that work well with traits, and others with no synergy at all. Right now Wells and Corruption abilities are working the best, and least bugged. Of course Wells are mostly for Power builds and Corruption are mostly for Condition builds (generally speaking).

3. I don’t know much about condition builds, having never played one but from my understanding we do really well with them. Mostly because of the utility Epidemic, which spreads all conditions to nearby targets. I believe our condition builds have a hard time applying conditions quickly compared to others, but we can maintain around 15 stacks of bleed fairly easily.

Power builds can pump out serious damage, just take a look at Nemesis’ Glass Cannon build

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-definition-of-glass-cannon-tutorial/first#post1256920

The problem with our Power builds though is to do damage you either have to use the Dagger or Death Shroud. Being a cloth profession we are pretty squishy, even with Death Shroud. Yes, it helps a lot, but it can be burned through very quickly. Death Shroud’s damage comes from its auto attack which only does good damage when above 50% Life Force. This is a problem in PvP, because at the start of every match we start with 0% LF, meaning if you build around it you are at a serious disadvantage, damage and survivability wise.

4. I personally used pets up until level 30 when I got the Flesh Golem elite, and realized how broken they are. 1/4 of the time they just sit there while you fight, doing nothing and the other 3/4 of the time they run off attacking things you aren’t close enough to be drawing aggro from. They also suffer from some pathing issues. The Flesh Golem dies when you touch water deep enough to swim, putting it on cooldown. Its possibly using a Minion build in PvE, especially when you get the Death Nova trait, but personally I think you would be better off using Wells.

5. As I said, you will always be outclassed by similar skill level players in sPvP. Yes, you can kill players your skill level, but only if conditions are perfect, I.E. you have 100% LF before the fight starts, all abilities are off cooldown and some of theirs are on cooldown.

In WvW we can do fairly well, but don’t offer anything that any other class can. We can have good mobility if you take the abilities for it, but I find we work best in Seige settings. The staff has 1200 range on its marks, and you can trait to make wells ground target-able, as well as the use of Epidemic if you are a Cond build. Necros may seem to be better in WvW than they are in other settings, but mostly because a lot of players are under leveled, and under geared.

6. In PvE the Necro is the God of survivability. We have a fair number of AoE abilities, so you can literally gather up 10 or more enemies, veterans included and kill all of them and still come out near full health. As long as none are ranged. I had a very hard time in Orr, but I wasn’t geared and wasn’t very well traited either at the time, and since then haven’t been back to see how it is. Its a huge difference though going from every other area in the game then going to Orr, its insane.

We can have pretty good survivability in WvW and probably sPvP if you trait for Toughness and a bit of Vitality, but your damage will seriously suffer. I found the best trick for survival is to use Spectral Walk. It returns you to the spot you first cast it when you activate it again, and you can trick your enemies and escape sometimes. We have zero stability though, except for one trait that gives it to you in Death Shroud for a couple seconds. I’ve literally been at full health and full LF before, and been knocked down while in DS, had my LF fully bursted down, then killed, all the while still being on the ground. Very annoying.

The Ele doesn’t have as much survivability at low levels, but when you get higher do what everyone else does and go for a bunker build with Earth, Water, Arcana, gearing for toughness and healing power. A D/D build has so much escapability that even without toughness and Regen, they can just run away when things go wrong that their survivability hardly matters.

All in all, I still find the Necro to be the most fun profession even if it is the under dog. I’m expecting (more hoping, really) for some good changes either this month, or next month (although thats what I said about Nov and Dec too). Hope this helps!

“In PvE the Necro is the God of survivability”
—> No. If your measuring stick is random mobs in Orr, and you are running say Dagger and 20 blood magic, sure you will be fine; as will almost every other single class (sorry Mesmer unless you want to blow good cooldowns). On any actually difficult content, the lack of Vigor/escapes/meaningful heals/blocks vastly overwhelms the Necro’s abilities. A Necro is like a Mesmer without clones or Vigor or Distortion. If there is damage, the Necro is going to take that damage and then will have to heal it. It’s extremely sad that the “attrition based” profession’s heal abilities are about 10x worse than Omnomberry Ghost, which costs 5s and can be used by any profession in the game.

“Currently the necromancer has 3 basic viable choices for builds. Power, Conditions, or Hybrid. The only one of those which the necro does better than any other class is conditions.”
—> My bleed warrior stacks bleeds better AND is auto attacking for 2k while doing it. Sword and Rifle base bleed are longer than Scepter’s, and the warrior trait is +50% bleed duration not +20%. The Curses XI trait is needed to make the durations comparable.

“Power builds can pump out serious damage, just take a look at Nemesis’ Glass Cannon build”
—> If you are willing to glass cannon, an axe warrior’s damage will absolutely destroy anything a necro can do…even only using auto attacks. My survival warrior (0 power, 0 precision) auto attacks for 2k and axes attack quickly. Yes if you use Axe 2 and have full power and crit you might see a big number. Then what, wait 6-8 seconds? Other professions do far more damage.

“All in all, I still find the Necro to be the most fun profession even if it is the under dog. I’m expecting (more hoping, really) for some good changes either this month, or next month (although thats what I said about Nov and Dec too). Hope this helps!”
—> This is pretty much my opinion too. Fingers crossed

1) There are bugs, but I think there is too much “complaining for the sake of complaining” on this forum.

2) I don’t think you’ll get bored. To me, the necro definitely improves with levels. Necro is definitely not a simple-minded button-mashing profession. As for synergy, well, in some ways yes, some ways no. I’m sure you’ll get mixed opinions on that.

However, there is also no lack of build variety on the forum, which I think speaks to the flexibility of the necro concept and the breadth of skills available.

3) Yes, we generally kill slower, but I seem to do fine at tagging mobs, soloing, and killing en masse.

4) I gave up pets around 20, mostly because it fit my personal style better, and its worked well for me. But I do see MMs around at level 80.

6) Survivability improves greatly, IMO, as one levels up. As you can see from some of the builds on the forum, they have a “last man standing” quality to them.

Xruptor.3965:

It would appear that the Necromancer has a lot of DOOM AND GLOOM surrounding it on this forum. It really has shocked me at the amount of negativity the class has. Then again I’m not an idiot and I do know that the majority of people posts on forums because they have something negative to say. I can’t remember where I read this, but it’s something like 3% of an MMO’s population ever post on the forums or something. So I’m not expecting a whole lot One can hope though!

Complaining ad nauseum is the norm for MMO forums. If forum goers aren’t complaining about their class it’s probably because it needs to get nerfed. Which nicely segues into your first question.

1) There’s a reason the ele forums are so bloody pleased with themselves all the time, it’s because they only talk about dagger/dagger builds. Go try to find topics about focus or staff builds and you’ll see the same sort of things you see here on the necro forums, though perhaps not as much pessimism.

Pessimism that is well earned by the necro community I feel. An entire line of premiere class skills are utterly worthless due to mechanics issues. The vaunted class gimmick is a) buggy, b) varies wildly in usefulness according to build, and c) has an extremely obnoxious UI. Developers have routinely ignored necromancer issues even while they post on other class forums to tell them what fixes they’re working on. Then you have good old Jonny Sharp posting stuff that is both weirdly incongruent with common experience and is sort of insulting flippant as well, like the well known “master death shroud” line or the balance philosophy screed from the December patch notes.

Of course, there’s always sour grapes and plain old idiocy as well. Which is fully in accordance with Niven’s 16th law: There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it. You’ll just have to decide what to filter out yourself. The class does have limitations, but so long as you understand and accept them it’s a viable and competitive class in (nearly*) every part of the game

*I make no claims about tPvP ‘cause I don’t play it.

2) Eles, along with thieves, are one of the only classes in the game that get a lot of use out of their class mechanic without any heavy investment and can get even more bonuses with said heavy investment.

Necros are not in the same boat. Death Shroud is greatly limited by two major things: Life Force generation and stat distribution. LF generation is heavily dependent on what weapon you use, with main hand dagger being far and away the best and scepter being abysmal. Additionally, the abilities you get in DS are very biased towards power heavy builds. Leaving condition speced necros out in the cold.

On the mobility front necros fall squarely into the ‘ok’ tier. You can easily get to where you’re going in a hurry, but getting out of a sticky situation… not so much. Pretty much the opposite of the mesmer, which has terrible mobility but great escapability

As for build variety, take a look around the forums and you’ll see plenty of them.

3) First I’ve ever heard about necros doing poor damage. Though it is true that most necro builds tend to do better pressure than burst. But I’ve still killed many thieves and even eles and mesmers who don’t respect the power of my wells when backed up with over 3k attack and vulnerability stacking.

4) There’s no denying it, pets blow. In many cases they are actually a detriment instead of a boon. If you want to play with pets go play a ranger. Their pets are awful too, but less so.

5) Necromancers are a great class to have in WvW. Power builds are good roamers, condition builds are a solid addition to any team, and more specialized builds like Mr. Freeze can do wonders in large fights. The biggest weakness of the class in WvW low escapability. If your team breaks and tries to run away you’ll often find that you’ll get caught by the myriad of thieves and d/d eles and die horribly.

Which, coincidentally, is why you see so many bloody thieves and d/d eles. Nobody else can pick and choose their engagements like them. Nobody else can run away and live to tell about it like they can. And nobody else can chase people like they can.

As for sPvP, I personally do well. But pug sPvP is full of idiots who have no idea how to play and spazz out when they encounter a build they aren’t prepared to face. A lot of eles in pug sPvP deal with boon striping very poorly for instance. Again, I won’t talk about tPvP because I don’t play it.

(continued next post)

6) Necromancers have higher base survivability than eles, true. But it’s not absolute. Ele survivability depends on putting a variety of pieces together. CD management, attunment recharge reduction, boon management, spec, gear. All things that can’t come together until level 80. But once they have everything put together their survivability easily surpasses necromancers.

Necros have great soaking abilities with their high base HP pool and regenerating ablative HP pool in DS, but that’s really about it. We don’t have Vigor. We don’t have blocks, evades, or Aegis. We don’t have great access to Stability or Protection. We don’t have the ability to run away if the fight goes poorly. Our healing is mediocre at best. Trying to build around things like high Weakness or Poison up time or HP leeching effects have large opportunity costs.

Well played d/d elementalists have vastly better healing, vastly better avoidance, better condition removal, and the ability to run away and reset the fight if they’re in danger of losing. They don’t have many opportunity costs, which is one of the reasons you see them bloody everywhere. They can have their cake, eat it too, and light it on fire for good measure.

All that being said, I do love my necromancer. I’m certainly a lot happier with it than I am with my warrior, phantasm mesmer, or staff ele.

I think I can respond to a few of these:

2) I don’t think many, if any professions can match the flexibility available to an Elementalist. Having 20 weapon skills in 4 different styles of play is very strong. So I would honestly say that an Elementalist is more flexible than a Necromancer.

4) Despite what you would expect, Necromancer isn’t really a pet class. They’re about only slightly more of a pet class than Guardians are with spirit weapons. You have a minion option for your healing and elite skill, but you won’t find minions in any of your weapon slots, and can easily make builds that have nothing to do with them and don’t suffer for it in the slightest. (Unlike what happens if someone tries to ignore pets on a Ranger or clones/Phantasms on a Mesmer.)

5) WvW I would say yes. I’ve heard some great tricks for Necro-on-zerg combat including abuse of Plague Form + Chilling Darkness, and Epidemic is an amazing skill. The last time I did a search for people’s rankings of various professions in the sPvP forum, I got a fairly positive response regarding Necromancers (I think overall ranking them as the third most necessary profession for a team?) so to my knowledge they’re still utilized there as well.

6) Survivability with an Elementalist and with a Necromancer are very different. Elementalist will rely on things like vigor giving more dodges, bonus heals from water attunement and periodic invulnerability. A Necromancer has a much larger health pool, and has a lot of ways to just laugh at people throwing conditions at them. For exceptional Necromancer survivability, you’ll end up soaking a lot of damage with death shroud, which means generating a lot of life force for death shroud.

@All Whom Posted:

First off, I would like to deeply thank everyone for taking the time to write such wonderful, constructive and at times motivating responses to my questions. It’s posts responses like those which is the reason I value the GW2 community so much. You will find very passionate and mature people willing to share their opinions and suggestions. Yes, you do have your occasional idiots but all in all I find people are willing to share what they’ve learned. Once again thank you!

I would like to take this time to point out a few things that some have said thus far. Although, a few of the posts have been motivating, I did find it a bit discomforting that everyone almost unanimously agreed with question #1. Yet, a few of you have suggested that even though this is the case; the profession as a whole isn’t that terribly flawed. It also has been suggested to work around the issues currently plaguing the profession. I will admit I do like a challenge, but it can only last so long if these so called bugs are rampant in the profession.

While reviewing what has been posted thus far, it has come to my attention that the Necromancers selection of viable weapons are very few indeed. There was mention of Dagger a few times as being one if not the only useful weapon (Staff aside of course.). I’m not entirely sure why this is the case other then falling under the category of nerfed/bug or just plain needs a complete rework/rehaul. Still I find this very concerning.

I also find it disheartening that the minions are completely and utterly useless. You would think a class with such an ability would be able to properly use the minions to their advantage. If anything some synergy with the minions they summon. Yet, as unbecoming as it seems, many of you have suggest to pretend they don’t exist. I do hope that A-Net comes to their senses and fix this, as it was one of the reasons I was drawn to the profession.

In the department of Elementalist a few of you have mentioned differences and similarities. Though, at times provided positive feedback on the Elementalist playstyle. This includes my issue with the attunement mechanic.

My general assessment and vibe of the responses I’ve gotten about Elementalists thus far in this post, I’ve translated in to this: (Please correct me if I’m wrong, which I may be. Yet this is the impression I got..)

“Elementalist are flavor of the month. There are a lot of them because they don’t suffer from much opportunity/negative skill costs. They can deal crazy damage and provide a ridiculous amount of support. If played well they can destroy mountains and part water in two.”

Of course I’m exaggerating and I did add a bit of humor, though I’m sure you got my point. I’m not for jumping on bandwagons and I do tend to play the underdog professions anyways. So I’m leaning ever so more towards the Necromancer.

In terms of the DPS I’ve gotten conflicting responses. Those that did sound like the planets have to align and the sky turn purple before a Necromancer can deal decent damage. I really hope I misinterpreted these responses.

I will admit I’m still a bit hesitate and undecided, but a few of you have restored my faith in the Necromancer.

I’ve gotten such fantastic responses thus far. I do hope this thread continues to get more suggestions and or opinions on the questions I’ve posted.

Several things.

Xruptor.3965:

I would like to take this time to point out a few things that some have said thus far. Although, a few of the posts have been motivating, I did find it a bit discomforting that everyone almost unanimously agreed with question #1. Yet, a few of you have suggested that even though this is the case; the profession as a whole isn’t that terribly flawed. It also has been suggested to work around the issues currently plaguing the profession. I will admit I do like a challenge, but it can only last so long if these so called bugs are rampant in the profession.

Every class has bugs. Go look at the stickies at the top of every class forum. If you avoid the pets there are very few that have any real qualitative effect on necro gameplay.

There was mention of Dagger a few times as being one if not the only useful weapon (Staff aside of course.). I’m not entirely sure why this is the case other then falling under the category of nerfed/bug or just plain needs a complete rework/rehaul. Still I find this very concerning.

It’s also plain false. Scepter/dagger is the default combination for any condition damage necromancer build and they work very well at what they do. The problem weapons are mainly axe (pitifully low auto-attack damage even with vuln stacks) and warhorn (because a painfully long casting time on your interrupt skill is bad).

Dagger’s main claim to fame is that it has far greater LF generation than any other weapon, but it’s only useful in melee power-centric builds which also happens to be where DS shines brightest. So it has the best synergy with the class mechanic, but that doesn’t make it the best weapon.

My general assessment and vibe of the responses I’ve gotten about Elementalists thus far in this post, I’ve translated in to this: (Please correct me if I’m wrong, which I may be. Yet this is the impression I got..)

“Elementalist are flavor of the month. There are a lot of them because they don’t suffer from much opportunity/negative skill costs. They can deal crazy damage and provide a ridiculous amount of support. If played well they can destroy mountains and part water in two.”

Of course I’m exaggerating and I did add a bit of humor, though I’m sure you got my point. I’m not for jumping on bandwagons and I do tend to play the underdog professions anyways. So I’m leaning ever so more towards the Necromancer.

There’s one thing wrong with your assessment, d/d eles do not, for the most part, do huge damage. They don’t burst people down like thieves, shatter mesmers, or even scepter/dagger eles do. Hell their biggest burst attack has a 3 and a half second cast time.

Their main advantage comes from being able to do good sustained damage while also being extremely hard to pin down and kill. It is an extremely forgiving spec and can easily compensate for multiple mistakes while being very able to capitalize on opponents mistakes. It is very noob friendly in other words. And it gets worse when you fight a competent one.

In terms of the DPS I’ve gotten conflicting responses. Those that did sound like the planets have to align and the sky turn purple before a Necromancer can deal decent damage. I really hope I misinterpreted these responses.

There are really only three things that can significantly hurt a necromancers ability to do damage, and two of them are directly under the players control. 1) Gearing poorly, 2) playing poorly, and 3) the bleed cap.

The 25 stack bleed cap is the only thing you cannot control that can seriously hamper your ability to dps. It will mostly hinder you in large scale PvE in Orr/dragon events. Its effects on dungeons, WvW, and sPvP are negligible unless you’ve grouped up with several other condition damage speced people.

@TS,

Seriously, DO NOT go to the forums to look for validations. If you are serious about making a necro, you are gonna make it anyway. If you are not, these peeps are going to turn you away faster than you can say necro, so it won’t matter.

Necro is a beautiful class, it’s the only character I play to 80, I played all other classes just got bored of it after awhile.

Yes this class is really buggy at the moment, and probably alot of stuffs need fixing. The satisfaction is there though that while we are now at arguably our weakest – I am still playing my necro on par with those supposedly flushed-out classes.

And necro survivability is awesome. Don’t listen to them above. What necro lacks in escape, avoids, blocks and all those nonsense (which will be covered by your team anyway since you should usually play harder/hardest stuffs in teams, and if you’re alone it don’t matter a necro can’t die on PVE content) , they more than make up for it with their vast amount of hp (double that up with DS).

Seriously, I’ve played together with bunkers, dps, or whatever other classes. Most of them are this – either they tank well but end up not getting too much aggro coz their dps fail, or they hit kittening hard but take one two hits and kittened out – ended you have to share the aggro. THIS is what makes necro good, while we don’t dish out the best dps in game, or tank the best, we can do both at the same kitten time.

It sounds like you want to make a necro and you are looking for a bunch of people to reassure you. Ele is a better class; the end.

“And necro survivability is awesome. Don’t listen to them above. What necro lacks in escape, avoids, blocks and all those nonsense (which will be covered by your team anyway since you should usually play harder/hardest stuffs in teams, and if you’re alone it don’t matter a necro can’t die on PVE content) , they more than make up for it with their vast amount of hp (double that up with DS).”

This is laughably false. Try legendary grawl shaman at 40+ where if you are out of endurance when he shoots at you, you have no other avoidance/blocks – let’s see how DS handles that one. The necro’s only real way of avoiding a boss move is dodge, and it has no natural way to accelerate endurance regen.

At any rate, there’s no reason to continue helping out in this thread.

“Ele is a better class; the end.

I don’t understand how people can compare. They are both meant to play differently. It could be a better class to many people, but to certain people, Necro could be a better class simply because they think it is. Comparison by nature, is subjective.

Lol.

I was reading a thread in the Guardian forum titled “Armor is Useless” and it had this post in there talking about eles.

“Because water 30 is too overpowered in ele, but nerfing it makes the offensive trees even more horrendous for survival than they are now. (imagine thief squishiness with necro damage… bleh!)”

It was just so hilariously on point that I had to post it.

Ele, end of story.

I have an 80 necro, it fun to play and everything, but so UP it kitten Show me a necro who can kitten around with 4-5 enemies without getting killed? Who can get away when he wants? Who clears conditions when he wants? Stacks boons? Fears?

Most skills are in shambles..take dagger. Ele, thief daggers both have gap closers, mobility and targeted skills ( cast heartseeker on somebody behind you your thief jumps towards them, cast 2,3 on necro it does nothing if the enemy is even slightly to your side)

Sure you can go for full survival build, but its still underwhelming cause we have 0 skills that block, reflect or make you invoul, and you are in most cases just proloinging the unavoidable… I tried the jugg build for roaming and small party fights…meh…still got hit 7k backstabs on a regular basis.

To anyone saying the class i good just needs bug fixes, lol stop hitting yourselves in the balls and face it, the class sucks no matter how much fun it is to play it. Even the official response was: you have 50k HP, everything else about you gotta suck.
Man, it doesnt matter if you have 500k hp if all you can is throw wet paper towels and are passed around by anyone with a knockback like a pipe in a crack house.

Traits are a mess, you cant even take some into certain dungeons (yes im looking at you jagged horror), utillities are useless for the most part, the best thing are wells but in WvW that doesnt work, as they are easily dodged out off.

Weapons are situtational at best: staff marks dont activate on downed enemies and dragons, dagger spam 1 for 90%, axe dont use 1 EVER, etc. etc.
On top of that everything we do has kitten long cast times making it dodgeable as kitten tho most dont even bother since most skills tickle at best.

You’ll hear players bragging about beating sooo many players 1v1, of course you’re gonna beat someone if you play conditons and he has no condition removal, but for the most part necros are a pushover for anyone with 3 seconds to spare and no more threatning target in sight.

As for PvE: guys come on…its PvE, 95% of stuff works there, thats why its called PvE

There are some builds that are viable, but its not enough bang for your buck, compared to what other classes can dish out.

TL;DR: necro: fun; ele: fun, rewarding, contributing
do the math

Xynn.2748:

“Currently the necromancer has 3 basic viable choices for builds. Power, Conditions, or Hybrid. The only one of those which the necro does better than any other class is conditions.”
—> My bleed warrior stacks bleeds better AND is auto attacking for 2k while doing it. Sword and Rifle base bleed are longer than Scepter’s, and the warrior trait is +50% bleed duration not +20%. The Curses XI trait is needed to make the durations comparable.

That’s just bleed stacking. Yes, if we just look at bleed stacking then other classes do it better than a necromancer. However, the necro condition build can produce huge bleed stacks, infinite poison, chill, weakness, blind, and cripple fairly regularly. Furthermore, it can take all the conditions on one target and spread it to a surrounding group. That’s not something a warrior can do. That makes the necro hands-down the better condition build.

Despite that, the ele is still more worthwhile to the team in PvE content and arguably just as worthwhile (or more) in sPvP/tPvP.

I’m leveling an Ele in WvW right now after playing a melee power necro for a few months. My thoughts are that the two classes are pretty similar in terms of innate defenses, healing (advantage to Ele), condition removal, and sustained damage (advantage to Necro). The primary difference is mobility. Eles are much more mobile and can easily escape a bad situation. With necros you can juke pretty successfully with Spectral Walk or Dark Path but it is nowhere near as effective. However, necros are better at standing their ground and can take far more damage. The problem is that this difference is much more pronounced in WvW, where mobility is needed and large groups of enemies are common. Eles get away and Necros just get pounded into the dust. It can be frustrating at times but it is a natural consequence of the class design.

Personally, after playing both, I still like the Necromancer more. I am one of the positive necro players, so I’ll throw in my answers to your questions from that perspective.

1) Yes, continue with your necro! I have not encountered any issues with any of the common complaints around here that could not be accounted for in a smart build BESIDES minion AI and lack of escapes. Minion AI will get fixed, however lack of escapes is by design. Not a big deal once you get used to it, Ele’s and thieves have their strengths, we have ours.

2) Mobility, not really. Skill synergy, yes, regardless of build (power or condition).

3) I have not had a problem with my necro’s DPS. I will agree that necros have low burst DPS compared to other classes; however, necros have an extremely high combination of sustained DPS and survivability. Whether or not you want that is a playstyle choice. Personally I love it and have tailored my build to take advantage of both those things.

4) Pets are the least common build, yes. The AI problem doesn’t help. I imagine once that is fixed minion builds will be pretty strong. Nothing wrong with playing your necro now so that it’s 80 by the time the problem is fixed imo.

5) I can’t speak for sPvP since I don’t do it much. Though from my understanding most of the top teams run a necro.
Necros are one of the least played classes in WvW because it is not easy to understand their purpose or strength from first glance at the class. Other classes are much more straightforward. Ele, ranged AoE or zip all around – cool! Thieves, stealth and high damage. Warriors, in-your-face damage. Guardians, boons everywhere. And so on. It’s difficult to sum up a necromancer in so few words, and it’s harder to find a build that is as effective as the other classes’ common ones. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I always choose the lesser-played classes or strats in games and try to find a way to make them good. Whether it’s DotA or LoL or whatever I enjoy going where few other people do and finding the hidden thing that is secretly good. GW2’s necromancer has been the most enjoyable and rewarding of these by far.

6) Your survivability will continue to increase with your level, especially if you help it out with your spec. It doesn’t ever suddenly stop working.

Well, that was a wall of text. Hope I helped.

Also, what Attic said. +1

I’m both an 80 necro and 80 ele, and consider necro my main. Both bring a lot to the table and both classes are fun to play. That’s a tough call, as I couldn’t see myself being restricted to only one of those. I’d try to level them both up.

If you like necros play one you won’tknow till you actually experience them. I play a warrior sword/axe and rifle.
Now every one I’ve talks to day sword and axe combo is horrible but it’s fits my style and I do pretty good with it. just about to start a necro in,a couple of days.

@All:

Thanks all!

I’ve gotten some great and positive responses in this thread and I’ve decided to give my Necromancer a go. I deleted him and remade him as a Charr Necromancer, because for some reason they look really wicked….

Hopefully I won’t be disappointed that I picked this over the Elementalist

P.S: Feel free to keep posting here. I would still like to hear opinions and advice from other players.

Alot of peoples complaining is well deserved but necromancer is still a very viable class. I enjoy it alot, just pretend that minions don’t exist and move on. Necromancer is still very strong with out your minions.

Also if you don’t want to be a condition necromancer a Dagger + Deathshroud build has awesome surviability.

Here’s a build that I made if your interested
http://www.gw2db.com/skill-builds/2559-vampire-assassin-tankromancer

Must admit I shelved my necromancer for a while at around 70 and only in the past few weeks have i gone back to it, got to 80 and geared up.
Don’t regret it one single bit.
I use a well bomber build with dagger/focus and staff, mostly berserker exotics (solider’s weapons + shoulders/gloves/boots). Met two gankers outside the spawn today and let’s say they were not expecting what I threw at them, one of them was a d/d ele who ran for hill’s when they realised how much kitten they were in.

Someone said Ele’s are “noob friendly”. Not to derail, but that’s just not true. Warriors are noob friendly, Ele’s require quick thinking, good class understanding and decent reaction speed to level. Things might be a lot easier at 80 but definitely not a noob friendly class on the way.

In WvW d/d eles are very noob friendly.

There are several reasons for this: 1) Safety is, more often than not, just a Ride the Lightning + Lightning Flash away. 2) The healing, mitigation, and avoidance d/d eles can get passively just by sticking to a set rotation of abilities is absurd. If a warrior could get Protection, Fury, Regeneration, 3 stacks of Might, condition cleansing, healing, and Soothing Mist on weapon swap they’d be considered an OP FotM noob class. But you somehow think d/d ele is a pure skill class? I laugh derisively at you.

That’s not to say that a good player won’t take the class above and beyond that into a whole new realm of madness, but let’s not kid ourselves here. There is a reason why d/d eles are so ubiquitous at this point, much more so than any other of the currently strong builds like shatter mesmers and Altruistic Healing guardians, and it’s partially because they’re easy for even really bad players to play decently against the majority of the people they face.

Attic.1562:

In WvW d/d eles are very noob friendly.

There are several reasons for this: 1) Safety is, more often than not, just a Ride the Lightning + Lightning Flash away. 2) The healing, mitigation, and avoidance d/d eles can get passively just by sticking to a set rotation of abilities is absurd. If a warrior could get Protection, Fury, Regeneration, 3 stacks of Might, condition cleansing, healing, and Soothing Mist on weapon swap they’d be considered an OP FotM noob class. But you somehow think d/d ele is a pure skill class? I laugh derisively at you.

That’s not to say that a good player won’t take the class above and beyond that into a whole new realm of madness, but let’s not kid ourselves here. There is a reason why d/d eles are so ubiquitous at this point, much more so than any other of the currently strong builds like shatter mesmers and Altruistic Healing guardians, and it’s partially because they’re easy for even really bad players to play decently against the majority of the people they face.

To be fair, I rotate through 20+ skills as a D/D ele, I dont know why you would say noob friendly at all. Timing is precise, you need to always be moving and attacking, if you get stuck you die. If you stick to a rotation you’re going to get tripped up and die, you need to know every permutation.

Safety maybe a flash and rtl away but since you’re always in danger you always need to know when to use it. Health is innately very low in the class and you need to be in the thick of it. If you just “rtl + flash away” what have you accomplished exactly?

On my necro, safety is always a necrotic transferal away, much easier to use, one click = safe.

I dont think necros are easy either, certainly harder to catch people, but your comment is just way off.

Kilger.5490:

To be fair, I rotate through 20+ skills as a D/D ele, I dont know why you would say noob friendly at all. Timing is precise, you need to always be moving and attacking, if you get stuck you die. If you stick to a rotation you’re going to get tripped up and die, you need to know every permutation.

Except you don’t. It’s quite possible to stick to a rigid attunement swapping pattern dumping everything you can on swap with some rudimentary combos like RTL -> Updraft -> Burning Speed -> Fire Grab thrown in and still do pretty bloody well against the vast majority of people (who tend to be quite bad fyi).

I’ve admitted twice now that actually having some bloody skill makes the class even better, but that doesn’t mean that even bad players can’t do decently regardless. It’s just one of those easy to learn, hard to master specs to pull out the old cliche.

Safety maybe a flash and rtl away but since you’re always in danger you always need to know when to use it. Health is innately very low in the class and you need to be in the thick of it. If you just “rtl + flash away” what have you accomplished exactly?

Always in danger my foot. Name me one other class that routinely has 70%+ uptime on Protection, near 100% uptime on Regeneration, Shocking Aura, a heal on weapon swap that has a 1.0 Healing Power ratio, a teleport, a 3 second invulnerability, ~11 seconds of Protection and Stability, and a movement skill on par with RTL.

Mesmers come closest to that description, but only by using ethereal field combos for extra chaos armor and the norn snow leopard racial elite and they still fail the Stability, heal on weapon swap, & Shocking Aura clauses.

On my necro, safety is always a necrotic transferal away, much easier to use, one click = safe.

So long as it doesn’t bug out due to z-level differences, the fight hasn’t moved too far away from your pet, and nobody kills your fragile little worm. Then it becomes one click = nothing.

Not to mention that the worm can only take you back to a place you’ve already been instead of any direction you choose and has a 40 sec cd to RTL’s 15 secs.

I dont think necros are easy either, certainly harder to catch people, but your comment is just way off.

I really fail to see how.

Attic.1562:

Except you don’t. It’s quite possible to stick to a rigid attunement swapping pattern dumping everything you can on swap with some rudimentary combos like RTL -> Updraft -> Burning Speed -> Fire Grab thrown in and still do pretty bloody well against the vast majority of people (who tend to be quite bad fyi).

It works but it shouldnt. I see an ele coming in with RTL and hit dodge and I can almost see the confusion on their faces for a couple seconds. Anyway are you talking 1-1? because with RTL down and no skill they going to get chopped up.

Attic.1562:

Always in danger my foot. Name me one other class that routinely has 70%+ uptime on Protection, near 100% uptime on Regeneration, Shocking Aura, a heal on weapon swap that has a 1.0 Healing Power ratio, a teleport, a 3 second invulnerability, ~11 seconds of Protection and Stability, and a movement skill on par with RTL.

Seriously man, you are playing a necro and you dont squeal when you see this? Corrupt and watch them fall over, esp. if you wait for water attunement. Pass all their burns back with the dagger offhand too for extra fun. Immob around the 15 second mark, then watch them rtl to nowhere. I’ll admit knowing elementalists inside out makes them candy to me, but we also can keep 100% uptime on bleeds, chills, weakness, regen, so its potato Poe-tat-Oh.

Attic.1562:

So long as it doesn’t bug out due to z-level differences, the fight hasn’t moved too far away from your pet, and nobody kills your fragile little worm. Then it becomes one click = nothing.

Not to mention that the worm can only take you back to a place you’ve already been instead of any direction you choose and has a 40 sec cd to RTL’s 15 secs.

Works fine for me, I always work out my exit in advance, same as I did for dd ele. If you are too far away it still works, just takes you 1200 in the direction. I find its much easier and foolproof to use. Usually where I’ve been is the safest place to go anyway. If someone kills my worm, its extra knowledge for me that something is going very wrong.

RTL can mess up if you dont clear your target (can take a few clicks on open space too if there is any lag), and send you straight into the horde instead. Also adjust your facing etc. Not a huge deal in itself but if you are looking for an emergency instant out it can and does get messed up. Also if immob, well it does a whole lot of nothing.

I have lowbie Elementalist and Necro characters. They’re the last two classes I have started.

Subjectively, the Elementalist feels awkward and slow to me, and doesn’t really meet my expectations. Staff is for sure a support weapon, not very good for soloing. D/D doesn’t feel right and isn’t so great for leveling, I find. S/D is a bit better but still, more often than not, I feel like cycling through attunements so I autoattack as little as possible doesn’t quite get me to the killing speed of my other characters — more work for mediocre results. A glass cannon without much of a cannon.

My Necro though… I died once from getting WAY over my head, and once or twice from falling damage. But I’ve been clearing hearts and doing events 3-4 levels above my own level and don’t have a problem with it. Against things my own level it’s hardly any effort at all. I’ve been going with a condition build, S/D and staff.

My only complaints about Necro so far:

— the sounds for staff are pretty hideous. While I use it to open fights at range and in zerg group events, I don’t think I could stand to use it as a main weapon.

— I wish Scepter 2 would just center on your selected target and catch any nearby enemies; I’m kind of lazy about targeting while kiting.

Kilger.5490:

Attic.1562:

Except you don’t. It’s quite possible to stick to a rigid attunement swapping pattern dumping everything you can on swap with some rudimentary combos like RTL -> Updraft -> Burning Speed -> Fire Grab thrown in and still do pretty bloody well against the vast majority of people (who tend to be quite bad fyi).

It works but it shouldnt.

That is the crux of my argument, yes. I’m not trying to sell you short personally man, I’m just saying that because the spec lets average (read: bad) players beat (or at least, not lose to) average (read: bad) opponents a significantly abnormally high percentage of the time that the spec is very friendly to people who are average (read: bad).

That’s literally what I am saying. It’s not a venom-laced diatribe about how only talentless noobs play the spec. It’s not a “NERF THIS NOW ANET OR I AND MY 30,000 MAN GUILD ALL QUIT” rage induced rant.

It is a statement that once the correct traits are chosen, the correct gear acquired, and some basic skill knowledge & muscle memory is learned the spec works very well almost regardless of skill level and despite the fact that the skill cap is quite high.

Any attempts to read anything further into my words is the work of your own feverish mind deluding you.

Foosnark.1784:

I have lowbie Elementalist and Necro characters. They’re the last two classes I have started.

Subjectively, the Elementalist feels awkward and slow to me, and doesn’t really meet my expectations. Staff is for sure a support weapon, not very good for soloing. D/D doesn’t feel right and isn’t so great for leveling, I find. S/D is a bit better but still, more often than not, I feel like cycling through attunements so I autoattack as little as possible doesn’t quite get me to the killing speed of my other characters — more work for mediocre results. A glass cannon without much of a cannon.

My Necro though… I died once from getting WAY over my head, and once or twice from falling damage. But I’ve been clearing hearts and doing events 3-4 levels above my own level and don’t have a problem with it. Against things my own level it’s hardly any effort at all. I’ve been going with a condition build, S/D and staff.

My only complaints about Necro so far:

— the sounds for staff are pretty hideous. While I use it to open fights at range and in zerg group events, I don’t think I could stand to use it as a main weapon.

— I wish Scepter 2 would just center on your selected target and catch any nearby enemies; I’m kind of lazy about targeting while kiting.

True, I found the elementalist to be an absolute chore to level; I remember trying dagger main hand at level 8-ish and a single even level mob killed me because Lightning Whip was so terrible. That’s because almost all good elementalist specs are, as I said further up the page, absolutely reliant on a foundation of several things. Key among them are boon duration, passive boon gain on attunement swap, and attunement cd reduction. You will have a hard time finding a good PvP elementalist spec that a) doesn’t sit up on walls or behind 50 people it’s entire life and b) has less than 20 points in arcana.

Honestly, the best thing you can do with an elementalist is level to the point to where you can’t bloody stand it (for me it was level 10) and then craft all the way to level 40. Then you can use the 20/0/0/10/0 Lightning Hammer tank build and just breeze through every bit of open world PvE left that doesn’t involve Dredge.

Elementalist can be pretty cool to play, but the only thing is that there is a HUGE “learning curve” when starting out with the class. Generally, when you pick a new weapon type to use, you need to learn the 5 weapon skills by killing mobs. With elementalist, you need to do this process 4 TIMES per weapon, as you have a set of 5 weapon skills for each of the 4 elements you can switch to. So, you have a pretty steep balancing system for the class: on one hand you can have a total 25 skills per weapon; on the other hand, it takes the equivalent effort of unlocking and learning 25 different skills for one weapon, and a whopping 45 skills if you plan on switching weapons in combat. So, it’s a long grind (literally) at first, but worth it later down the road.

IMO Elementalists are extremely squishy yet they don’t have the high dmg potential to make up for it. I used to main a D/D Ele, and I truly enjoy the play style the most out of all the GW2 classes, but its output I found to be very subpar.

This is a 7 month old thread, make a new one if you want to discuss it please, all the info here is outdated pretty massively.