Guild Wars 2

I’ve just recently given Necromancer a go in sPvP. I’d tried Necromancer previously in sPvP, but had always gotten frustrated with the both the playstyle and trying to find a build that could stand up to others.

I’ve seen a lot of posts about how Necromancers don’t have any sPvP potential and that they really aren’t any good, but from my experience they’re one of the strongest classes, with the potential to turn round an entire fight.

I just wanted to find out other people’s opinions. Do you find Necromancer to be strong or weak in sPvP?

Strong in both Spvp and Tpvp

s/tPvP is all about high mobility, high damage or high defensive capability.
In all the cases, Necromancer perform subpar compared to other professions.

The mobility is almost non-existent, the damage is way too low and we have almost no damage mitigation.

Eh depends on what you define as mobility, Necromancer has the potential to have excellent burst mobility through spectral walk and flesh wurm utilization. Heck flesh wurm is basically a must have to counter trebuchet mesmers as I support mid.

RhysSebastian.7651:

Eh depends on what you define as mobility, Necromancer has the potential to have excellent burst mobility through spectral walk and flesh wurm utilization. Heck flesh wurm is basically a must have to counter trebuchet mesmers as I support mid.

Well, they have quite weak mobility.
Flesh Wurm relies on… Flash Wurm. If you get the wurm killed, you can say bye to your teleport.
Spectral Walk can’t grant you perma swiftness.

With mobility, I mean skills like Infiltrator’s Arrow, Ride the Lightning, Shadowstep, Blink, Burning Speed or everything which repositions you into the field faster than walking.

That is true that we cannot move into an unplanned direction quickly, but we can move to a previously visited place quite quickly. Intelligent use can make this an offensive tool, providing a terrain advantage. (and no spectral walk is not perma swiftness, but its a sizable amount) I mean you can run from one edge of any spvp map to the other before it vanishing.

So while everyone else is quick at getting to points they havent been too yet, we are good at getting to points we have been. Which sort of gives us more of a defensive/roamer role.

RhysSebastian.7651:

That is true that we cannot move into an unplanned direction quickly, but we can move to a previously visited place quite quickly. Intelligent use can make this an offensive tool, providing a terrain advantage. (and no spectral walk is not perma swiftness, but its a sizable amount) I mean you can run from one edge of any spvp map to the other before it vanishing.

So while everyone else is quick at getting to points they havent been too yet, we are good at getting to points we have been. Which sort of gives us more of a defensive/roamer role.

Actually, Spectral Walk is quite weak as a “comeback” skill, because its trail lasts only few seconds (6 if I’m not wrong), which is anyway too low to have any decent use excluding the swiftness.

Necrotic Traversal, on the other hand, relies on a physical entity which can be killed quite easily if spotted, so it is anyway subpar compared to portal.

I enjoy necro in pvp. He is more of a support in most formats, but when it comes to 1v1, you can do a lot of cool stuff. You kinda out last opponents by eating there boons and using conditions they inflict. I use corrupt boon in any pvp build just to get rid of those guys i call ‘boon gods’ that stack tons of boons to keep them alive. It is when they just go normal damage with no conditions is when things get a little iffy, like thieves and engineers warriors. I do agree with the movement though. You do not have as much speed as other players consistently. They easily outrun you, but again, throwing conditions is your only hope of outmaneuvering a guy. Say axe/focus combo to cripple and freeze for a sec.

More often than not, you are the guy who takes out the big tank’s boons, using fear and other things to distract eles from casting, or securing kills with marks and wells.
That is what I kinda have out of it. Hope it helps

sorrow.2364:

RhysSebastian.7651:

That is true that we cannot move into an unplanned direction quickly, but we can move to a previously visited place quite quickly. Intelligent use can make this an offensive tool, providing a terrain advantage. (and no spectral walk is not perma swiftness, but its a sizable amount) I mean you can run from one edge of any spvp map to the other before it vanishing.

So while everyone else is quick at getting to points they havent been too yet, we are good at getting to points we have been. Which sort of gives us more of a defensive/roamer role.

Actually, Spectral Walk is quite weak as a “comeback” skill, because its trail lasts only few seconds (6 if I’m not wrong), which is anyway too low to have any decent use excluding the swiftness.

Necrotic Traversal, on the other hand, relies on a physical entity which can be killed quite easily if spotted, so it is anyway subpar compared to portal.

Well yeah it can be killed unlike a portal, but Id still say our mobility isnt poor. Its just backwards. You can easily keep a group of people chasing you utilizing flesh wurm and spectral walk properly. Additionally, it still can help you get to point A to point B fairly quickly. Not as quickly as a mesmer no, but i’d argue I have more tricks I can pull with my mobility than say an elementalist warrior, guardian, engineer, and ranger.

Most people when they go to a point usually fight the defender and not the random flesh wurm stationed by, I mean they CAN but it would be sacrificing time (and if they can even hit it from the point)

An example: (and one of my favorite things to do). I am moving offensively towards the henge against a defender. The defender is a warrior. I start fighting him have him almost dead, a thief jumps me. POOOOOF im up the cliff out of view. Warrior and thief are looking around like (wtf). I start to harass them from the cliff, they move up and around to attack me. I jump down focus on decapping the point to neutral as they charge me. I utilize spectral walk before I jump down the cliff. I try to hang below towards the end of my CD, once things start to get hairy I pop back up the cliff again.

Now I can continue to harass.

Or sometimes before I go into a hairy situation Ill drop fleshwurm, and use it as an evac tele. Towards the enemies point. Most people ignore the flesh wurm. During combat I almost die, boom I tele to the flesh wurm and run towards the opposing point (wasting their time, and prolly that of the chasers)

(smart thiefs will use a shortbow to get up there etc, but this was an example that works frequently for me)

The point is that it is always subpar compared to other professions mobility.

The bad thing about Necromancers is that they have low mobility but it isn’t compensated by high damage mitigation.

Warriors and Guardians have so-so mobility, but they have great damage mitigation and toughness.

Thieves are the best at mobility, Rangers are full of evades, leap and so on.
Engineers have quite meh mobility, but they have heavy control and great defendive capability.

Elementalists have great mobility while retaining great damage mitigation and heals.
Mesmers have quite good mobility and lots of invulnerability and visual confusion for enemies.

What about Necromancers? The defensive capability is subpar compared to other low mobility professions (almost no protection, no stability, no invulnerability, cloth armor, no damage reduction, low healing etc), so it isn’t compensated in any form.
It is true that we have high health pool and Death Shroud, but with no damage mitigation and no damage cancelling skills, it doesn’t help in any form. The only way to get some extra toughness or damage mitigation is to spec into minions, putting trait points into Death Magic, and we all know how broken Death Magic and minions are.

er wut, we have spectral wall for protection while proving vuln to the enemy if they are chasing you around. We additionally have spectral armor. Also you can trait protection for wells?.. and DS has 3 seconds of stability every 10 seconds. We have one of the best healing spells in the game, Consume Conditions. lol

sorrow.2364:

The point is that it is always subpar compared to other professions mobility.

The bad thing about Necromancers is that they have low mobility but it isn’t compensated by high damage mitigation.

Warriors and Guardians have so-so mobility, but they have great damage mitigation and toughness.

Thieves are the best at mobility, Rangers are full of evades, leap and so on.
Engineers have quite meh mobility, but they have heavy control and great defendive capability.

Elementalists have great mobility while retaining great damage mitigation and heals.
Mesmers have quite good mobility and lots of invulnerability and visual confusion for enemies.

What about Necromancers? The defensive capability is subpar compared to other low mobility professions (almost no protection, no stability, no invulnerability, cloth armor, no damage reduction, low healing etc), so it isn’t compensated in any form.
It is true that we have high health pool and Death Shroud, but with no damage mitigation and no damage cancelling skills, it doesn’t help in any form. The only way to get some extra toughness or damage mitigation is to spec into minions, putting trait points into Death Magic, and we all know how broken Death Magic and minions are.

I’m currently specced 30 in to death magic and the only thing I feel I’m missing is a ‘stomp assist’. I do very well in 1v1 situations, as well as in groups. I only recall losing in a 1v1 once and that was to an engineer who used Elixir R to self res and beat me.

Spvp if you want to spend the time on necro you will do fine.

I highly recommend you dont spend the time and try mesmer instead you will do outstanding.

Necro can do well in tpvp but not so much in spvp. The thing is in spvp the teams are bigger and less organized and we simply don’t have the tools to deal with it. We lack the stability and mobility required to avoid getting ganked by 3-5 people at once like a thief or mesmer can.

As far as damage goes spvp is all about the burst, which we also lack. If we can get people by themselves conditions can wreck but they are a lot rarer than in tpvp.

Dante.3754:

Necro can do well in tpvp but not so much in spvp. The thing is in spvp the teams are bigger and less organized and we simply don’t have the tools to deal with it.

What are you talking about? We have the single greatest tool to deal with zergs in the entire game (epidemic). In a giant 8v8 zergfest you simply stack up bleeds and conditions on 1 target and spread to everyone nearby. With good timing – you will be dishing out the most overall damage on your team (not to mention all the other non-damage conditions you’ll be spreading). On top of that you have all your marks, enfeebling blood, grasping dead, poison cloud to counter bunker healers …

So much AOE … I LOVE when the other team zergs.

Dante.3754:

We lack the stability and mobility required to avoid getting ganked by 3-5 people at once like a thief or mesmer can.

After you use Epidemic – just pop plague form elite and tank like a boss while all of them bleed out. There’s your stability plus you get double HP. I can’t even count how many times I’ve held a point 1v2 or 1v3 like this long enough for help to arrive. Yeah mobility sucks – but who cares? I’m not leaving the point anyway.

Not sure how much more you could ask for.

i dont think necros are overpowered, underpowered, strong, or weak in s/tpvp.

a power damage necro can do a lot of burst dps and apply a lot of CC, a condition necro is almost unrivaled in condition damage, and bunker necros (with good DS use ofc) can be as good as the other bunkers.

but like others have said they do have their own short comings (like every class does), which can be xploited by good players (like they can do to any class), which leaves necros on par with the rest, overall.

Dante.3754:

As far as damage goes spvp is all about the burst, which we also lack. If we can get people by themselves conditions can wreck but they are a lot rarer than in tpvp.

condition necros arent the only viable damaging tpvp spec for tourneys ya know lol try a power dagger build, most people shy away cause theyre like “wut nuh critz!?” without realizing or testing it to see its potential for themselves. but it is very good and has decent mobility if you go the warhorn route.

I’d say Necro’s can be mobile if they choose to be. I for one feel I’ve got plenty of mobility. Am I going to catch every thief or Ele who wants to get away? No. But then again I don’t have to. The point isn’t to kill but to keep nodes. Killing is just one solution to that objective. A running foe is just as worthless to their team as a dead foe.

Necro’s are not my favorite bunker though. They lack the quantity of CC needed to push people off a point and keep them off. Worse than that though they are VERY susceptible to CC while they have virtually no stability to speak of outside of a 30pt trait that only lasts 3 sec. So no, not an ideal bunker. Sure they can make assaulters reasonably uncomfortable but as soon as someone shows up with chain CC the Necro is pretty much done for.

Condition and Power specs however can shell out some seriously overwhelming dmg. I have a couple combos I use to drop on a point that will literally down an entire team in a matter of seconds – bunkers included. And that I think is the strongest attribute of the class in PvP atm.

Currently, there are a lot of Necros in tPvP, and are becoming something of a “must-have” in the opinion of some of the more competitive groups.