Guild Wars 2

None of them.

Congrats, if you are a Necromancer, you are safe from nerfs in the next balance patch.

MMs have never been successful in any coordinated high level play ever, let alone a finals like this, yet they’ve seen at least occasional nerfs. They also just recently nerfed dumbfire in PvE despite conditions still being subpar. You’re never safe, unless you’re a warrior.

They had 1 necro!!! The wellomancer … but that was more wild move to catch them off guard i guess … but surprise surprise … they lost :p. As i see, the warrior, thief and mesmer combo is more anti other prof glass builds (like power necro) + condi necro doesnt have enaugh sustain or movement to survive those fights (my observations).

The main problem with Necro is still the “attrition” and survivability under focus fire. If you’re targeted by some quick bursters like S/P Thief and his friends, you’re very survival depends on your allies.

We don’t have that insane mobility also and from what we’ve seen, the team with most mobility won the tourny.

If we had, let’s say, ability similar to Protective Spirit from GW1 or Shelter (on minion?), damage revert, more teleports and actual attrition/siphoning we would be top tier.

Now our builds work, but they suffer from the slow reconstruction of old Power/Burst meta. We’re very resilient to conditions and that’s why we ruled in condi meta, but very vunerable and defenseless to focused direct damage.

it doesn’t matter if necro sux or is OP as class, it will always be nerfed with any patch

I don’t know that a necro not being in the finals had anything to do with us being weak, EU has had necro hate ever since the anti-condi meta just a bit after launch. As a result there are very, very few good necros in EU coordinated teams.

I think the biggest problem is just the lack of mobility for the profession.

The class is too kitten slow to do anything other than AFK on a point to guard it from thieves. Maybe a stun break on the movement speed signet would help, but the profession is just lapped by the land speed of other classes, especially classes with z-axis teleports.

First move could be reducing the cast of Flesh Wurm to 1/2 seconds and making it an essential teleport, similar to Mesmer’s Portal, just personal and one-way. This way we could quickly teleport to the close point.
Wurm could’ve been destroyed easily. And it attracts more people to Minion CDR, giving a worthy alternative for Staff CDR and couple others.

Rym.1469:

First move could be reducing the cast of Flesh Wurm to 1/2 seconds and making it an essential teleport, similar to Mesmer’s Portal, just personal and one-way. This way we could quickly teleport to the close point.
Wurm could’ve been destroyed easily. And it attracts more people to Minion CDR, giving a worthy alternative for Staff CDR and couple others.

1/2 may be too much, i would go more for 3/4. I made a topic of this in the balance subforum…

I was running Minion Master in ToL with my team that reached round 3. I’m sure many other teams that were never streamed used a necro too more than likely.

It is not whether the class is OP or not, I think with big teams and good teams like you saw in the final. It boils down to strategy as well as competance with the class. The guys you saw don’t usually roll a necro and they’re very competant at the class they use which makes them so good at cohesion and adding their little tweaks to the class.

I still think Necro is a really good class which can output so much damage in the team fight, but I think it has to fit in with the team combination for it to be effective.

Well i was going to be in the NA legends tourney with Caed’s team, but i decided to drop. Also i would of been running a build i kinda discovered off of testing random stuff. Ended up working out against some scrims with Good Fights a few days ago. Had a few of you guys asking me about it so i’m probably going to release it since i dropped out.

And ops if you are just talking about EU’s line up.

2- point strategies: you can slowly win the teamfight (attrition yay), but you are the easiest to down and as such wil always be focused 1st….. and top tourny teams 2-points is not enough

3- point strategies: simple, lowest mobilty and 0 escapes = no rotations

The only role of a necro is a condition class that can pressure and kill bunker guardian, or wining 1v1s against other condi clases (due to condi transfers). This and some hardcounters are the reason. im happy the condispam is losing, but im hoping for a more fluid power/hybrid necro which could compete like against a celestial d/d ele.

@Infect it would be very cool to see your build.

Also if representation/non-representation in the finals of these tournies means balance is required than Warrior/Mes/Guard/Thief are the four best professions… oh wait everyone already knew that…

Mesmer is definitely not the best profession.

Mesmer was there mostly for it’s mobility and utilities like portals.
It can stand focus fire, also.

Bhawb.7408:

MMs have never been successful in any coordinated high level play ever, let alone a finals like this, yet they’ve seen at least occasional nerfs. They also just recently nerfed dumbfire in PvE despite conditions still being subpar. You’re never safe, unless you’re a warrior.

MM’s make me ashamed to be a Necromancer. Every time I run in to one in PvP I feel like asking them why they didn’t roll a Mesmer.

nekretaal.6485:

I think the biggest problem is just the lack of mobility for the profession.

The class is too kitten slow to do anything other than AFK on a point to guard it from thieves. Maybe a stun break on the movement speed signet would help, but the profession is just lapped by the land speed of other classes, especially classes with z-axis teleports.

10-15% speed for quickening thirst and 25% from signet. Necros dont have a have movement issues, you just have to chose what you want.

alamore.1974:

nekretaal.6485:

I think the biggest problem is just the lack of mobility for the profession.

The class is too kitten slow to do anything other than AFK on a point to guard it from thieves. Maybe a stun break on the movement speed signet would help, but the profession is just lapped by the land speed of other classes, especially classes with z-axis teleports.

10-15% speed for quickening thirst and 25% from signet. Necros dont have a have movement issues, you just have to chose what you want.

You can have easily have perma swiftness on a necro and even with that a necro is not very mobile. Mobility in gw2 is basicly only teleports/leaps etc. Because of this mesmer have much better mobility then necros and they dont even have any +movmentspeed traits or signets and thier access to swiftness is limited…

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

MM’s make me ashamed to be a Necromancer. Every time I run in to one in PvP I feel like asking them why they didn’t roll a Mesmer.

Because mesmer and MM only have superficial similarities. They function differently, with different focuses. The best thing you can say is that they are both good 1v1 and have things they summon.

I take perma swiftness any day.

alamore.1974:

I take perma swiftness any day.

Problem is, it will not help you to get out of a bad situation unlike teleports or a good timed leap.

Muchacho.2390:

alamore.1974:

I take perma swiftness any day.

Problem is, it will not help you to get out of a bad situation unlike teleports or a good timed leap.

True that. And i was also thinking wVw not tourneys lol long day.

I guess it is because of the following reasons:
1) No blocks
2) No escapes
3)No stability that can be used for revive or stomp
4)limited power builds
5)No boon stacking
6)Boon corrupting is currently worthless. Too many professions can easily restack all boons (Particularly engi/ele) Directly over former corrupted boons.
7) Slow and lethargic skills that can’t keep up with pace of game.
8)No team benefits
9)No cleave
10)Limited condition usage. Others can stack bleed/poison/torment (Killer conditions) A lot faster than necro now.
11) staff/axe woefully slow to use
12) FEAR negated fairly easily nowadays.
13)No leap finishers

I guess this is why the collabrative CDI on which three professions need the most help listed ele/ranger/necromancer. The necro needs help. It has become a one trick pony with fear spamming and that is it in PvP.

alamore.1974:

nekretaal.6485:

I think the biggest problem is just the lack of mobility for the profession.

The class is too kitten slow to do anything other than AFK on a point to guard it from thieves. Maybe a stun break on the movement speed signet would help, but the profession is just lapped by the land speed of other classes, especially classes with z-axis teleports.

10-15% speed for quickening thirst and 25% from signet. Necros dont have a have movement issues, you just have to chose what you want.

They do have a swiftness issue. Runes of traveler are expensive to unlock and their natural trait assigned movement speeds are found in odd lines and related only to dagger. A warrior/thief/ele/ranger will always beat a necromancer off the mark to whatever location. To have to equip a signet and forgo a slot just so you potentially push far or move off center when needed in a timely manner is what is making them unattractive. Home defender is all they will always be at best.

We have projectile finisher on Necrotic Grasp as far as I remember

Rym.1469:

We have projectile finisher on Necrotic Grasp as far as I remember

You are indeed correct. 20% chance. I guess no one has ever really seen it because of how slow staff AA works..

Necromancers not being in top tier tpvp does not mean in any way that they need adjustments. Almost all pvp happens outside of top-coordinated groups and there the necromancer is still strong, especially the MM (for obvious reasons).

Bhawb.7408:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

MM’s make me ashamed to be a Necromancer. Every time I run in to one in PvP I feel like asking them why they didn’t roll a Mesmer.

Because mesmer and MM only have superficial similarities. They function differently, with different focuses. The best thing you can say is that they are both good 1v1 and have things they summon.

I understand what you’re saying but I was relating it to the fact that MM’s and Mesmer’s are both very good at 1v1 but it’s the build, and in Mesmer’s case the profession, that makes them good not the player. MM’s make me ashamed because they take absolutely no skill to use. Sure you can practice a rotation to use with your minions such as immobilizing someone with bone fiend or blinding with shadow fiend, but you don’t even need to… All you need to do is learn when to interrupt someone with flesh golem and the minions will do the rest. A chimp could figure out how to stop someone from healing and that’s all you really need to know how to do to be an MM.

Against bad players sure. I’ve never lost a 1v1 to an MM, however, regardless of my build, because it takes more than smashing your face to be good. They have to land putrid explosion (which is really easy to stop unless you have single target damage only), they have to constantly CC you with abilities that have very long windups or very long CDs, there is a lot that goes into it if you want to get better than 90% ranked.

Is it still easy to do comparatively well in the beginning? Sure, its an easy spec to get in to, so is condi necro. But if there was no skill involved there would be no difference between a first time MM and a veteran of the spec, which just isn’t the case.

They nerfed everything because of dhuumfire, then nerfed dhuumfire. And voila, now everything is nerfed and necro is underpowered.

Umut.5471:

They nerfed everything because of dhuumfire, then nerfed dhuumfire. And voila, now everything is nerfed and necro is underpowered.

This is totally not true. Our new curse´s grandmaster trait is freaking good. I´ve modified my spectral build around it. Result is a great dmg output while staying tanky during deathshroud regen

Path of corruption is indeed awesome but our raw damage is still less than before Dhuumfire was introduced. You have to be smart and opportunistic to exploit an uncovered stability or other boons that are important to the enemy’s build, and even if you use it well your damage will still be less than it was. (not that it’s easy to use it well, as even if you use it at just the right time the projectile is so slow you can only hope they’ll walk into it)

… And zero in the NA semi finals/finals…

Uh… except for Necitor?

Surprised people havent been doing a dhuumfire, path of corruption power dagger build. Ive been using it recently and its incredibly powerful at nuking pretty much any class. The only classes it seems to be weak against is warrior and mesmer.

Because it has the same general weaknesses as every other Necro build, plus you increase their chances to counterplay you by going melee and centering your damage around avoidable things. Not that its bad, or any worse than some builds I saw, but once you get into the better teams it seems like it’d be too easy to train you down before you do anything worthwhile (especially in a heavier bunker meta).

And the final team comps? 2X Hambow Warrior, 1X Guardian, 1X Ele for both teams, and then one Spirit Ranger bunker and one Thief on opposite teams.

Bhawb.7408:

Because it has the same general weaknesses as every other Necro build, plus you increase their chances to counterplay you by going melee and centering your damage around avoidable things. Not that its bad, or any worse than some builds I saw, but once you get into the better teams it seems like it’d be too easy to train you down before you do anything worthwhile (especially in a heavier bunker meta).

Yeah its really vulnerable in situations where you have no lifeforce or in some 1v1 fights. But I always assumed the teams that take necro always make sure they support it. Its a pretty effective build with good support from teammates. Has a hell of a lot more pressure in the current cleanse heavy meta than full condi and you dont have to go full melee to nuke someone (lifeblast, life siphon etc).

spoj.9672:

Yeah its really vulnerable in situations where you have no lifeforce or in some 1v1 fights. But I always assumed the teams that take necro always make sure they support it. Its a pretty effective build with good support from teammates. Has a hell of a lot more pressure in the current cleanse heavy meta than full condi and you dont have to go full melee to nuke someone (lifeblast, life siphon etc).

Not really anymore. That was a big thing a while ago, where you had like a D/D ele to peel your Necro, but not so much anymore. However, with the new rise of eles (although I don’t know their meta), you might be able to get people to peel you when you need it, and also a well place Flesh Wurm could get you out of trouble really quickly too.

Plus you still hit probably THE biggest issue with necros, we’re just so slow. NA its not a huge deal, but EU has such good rotations that having a Necro can be a liability. I’d love to see you make it work though, I’m sure its possible with the right setup.

Bhawb.7408:

Plus you still hit probably THE biggest issue with necros, we’re just so slow. NA its not a huge deal, but EU has such good rotations that having a Necro can be a liability. I’d love to see you make it work though, I’m sure its possible with the right setup.

Really wish they’d revert Dark Path to being a targeted teleport (like Blink or Lightning Flash) like it was in betas. It would solve SO MUCH of our mobility problems. You could even use it as an escape at a pinch! At the very least they could make it traitable to be like that, perhaps via Path of Corruption.

With a necro you always have to decide between survivability and damage. The closest you can get to having both is with a death magic build, but still, you are going to be hampered by the long casttimes the long after-effect of nearly every necro skill.

Literally no infight-mobility. Very reliant on boons from others. Dmg is meh, you have to go the full nine yards, leaving you open like a barn door in the survivability compartment. But then you dont have escape abilities like a thief or a mesmer, making you a sitting duck, worse than any berserker ele.

And lets face it… everything a necro can do, other professions can do just a bit better and more importantly, so much easier. I have to play at 100% every single fight, no slacking allowed, because if I slack, Im dead. Thats not the case with any other profession.

I love this profession, Ive been playing nearly exclusively necro in spvp and wvw, but Im at the end of my patience, waiting for any kind of even basic system behind those changes. Every change results in necro being … just less.
The crit-dmg-nerf has hit necros in wvw so hard, I lost about 30% of my dmg. Now with a complete new build I regained about 20% of that, but Im totally depended on boons from others now.
People are crying about the terrormancer, Ive been playing terrormancer in one form or another in spvp ever since I discovered it, and it was way way way better before changes.

Those new gm traits? Useless in wvw, only gimmicks in spvp. I wouldnt base a build on them. Curse gm trait is something you can incorporate into a condimancer build, but for other builds theres just other choices that are way better.

And if you are limited to picking 5 professions, its not really any wonder to me, that necromancer doesnt make it on that list.

Yasi.9065:

The crit-dmg-nerf has hit necros in wvw so hard, I lost about 30% of my dmg. Now with a complete new build I regained about 20% of that, but Im totally depended on boons from others now.

No you didn’t. Nobody lost that much damage. You may have lost ~30% crit damage, which at maximum is “your crits now deal 17% less damage than before,” and more likely a lot less. Assuming a 100% crit chance, you at most lost 17% damage, and that’s assuming you somehow went to 0 Ferocity, which is impossible if your build and gear didn’t change at all otherwise.

Actually the DS build lost about 17% damage under normal conditions and the dagger build lost 16% damage under normal conditions. The ferocity change caused about a 50% crit damage loss.

spoj.9672:

Actually the DS build lost about 17% damage under normal conditions and the dagger build lost 16% damage under normal conditions. The ferocity change caused about a 50% crit damage loss.

I was going off of the “30%” loss and assuming that was referring to Crit damage. Going from 30% crit damage to 0% crit damage is a 16.7% damage loss at a 100% crit chance. Going from 50% crit damage to 20% crit damage is a 15% damage loss at 100% crit chance.

Regardless, it’s impossible to have lost 30% damage due to Ferocity changes. Even losing 50% crit damage (which I’m skeptical of, since full zerker Ascended gear only lost ~30% crit damage, most of which was from jewelry), going from 50% crit damage to 0% crit damage is only a 25% damage loss at 100% crit chance, and if you changed nothing about your gear or traits, going from any crit damge % to 0% is flat-out impossible.

EDIT: Found my calculations from before the change hit. Not counting food or conditional traits (like increased crit damage with specific weapons), the maximum loss of crit damage was 32% crit damage (101% max pre-Ferocity, 69% post). I know for a fact food couldn’t make up an 18% difference on that. A 100% crit chance build with maxed Ferocity would lose ~17% damage. I find it highly unlikely that any dagger build would have lost 16% of their damage.

30% lost from ascended gear. Some more from scholar. 10% lost from traits if you are using 30 in soul reaping. Banner of disc nerf, food etc.

And the dagger build did lose about 16%. I did the math to check. Most classes lost between 14-18% damage overall with the meta builds. Not the 10% the devs claimed.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Rym.1469:

We have projectile finisher on Necrotic Grasp as far as I remember

You are indeed correct. 20% chance. I guess no one has ever really seen it because of how slow staff AA works..

Hey!
I removed a condition once with my staff AA.. i was so proud.
but yeah, utterly useless

spoj.9672:

30% lost from ascended gear. Some more from scholar. 10% lost from traits if you are using 30 in soul reaping. Banner of disc nerf, food etc.

And the dagger build did lose about 16%. I did the math to check. Most classes lost between 14-18% damage overall with the meta builds. Not the 10% the devs claimed.

I figured my numbers off of full zerker gear and max points in the crit damage trait line. Runes and food were not included.

Those folks went from 101% crit damage to 69% crit damage, a loss of 32%. Even factoring in food losses, you only lost 37% pre-runes and ~41% with. My rune values may be a bit shaky, as the old values are not on the wiki, but I do not believe they really lost that much.

With food before was 111% crit damage. With Ferocity, it’s 74% crit damage, a 37% loss. Assuming 100% crit chance, this is a 14.2% damage loss.

The more you push the crit damage up, the smaller the damage loss actually was.

Your miscalculations may be coming from looking at each piece of gear individually. You can’t do that anymore and come up with correct numbers.

Meh i dont have the calcs and conditions i used anymore. But i assure you it was correct. Obviously it changes depending on the conditions you use. The point is its quite a bit more than 10% but not anywhere near 30% loss.

To calculate crit damage before and i after i totalled up the crit dmg/ferocity and calculated the crit dmg from the total ferocity. So there was no miscalculation in the amount of crit dmg i had. Im actually a little offended that you would assume I would make such a silly mistake. xD

Well, some people would do that. Again, I don’t know how much may have gotten lost on Runes, but I doubt it was more than 3-4%.

I’m just not sure how your math is showing such a massive decrease in average damage when the maximum possible loss is that large.