Guild Wars 2

@spoj.9672:

Good post. Just going to go through point for point to rebutt.

Dredge Fractal: Yeah I thought you were saying blinds could only be useful on Dredge Fractal if they could actually be blinded, thereby blinds were useless in fractals. Instead you were saying Weakness is nice on Dredge as a replacement for blinds. I agree that Weakness should never truly be what you focus on for damage mitigation, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t do its fair share of damage mitigation. My response was originally to the statement that Necromancer could not maintain Weakness, then it was that they couldn’t on bosses, then it was they couldn’t be worked into a viable build. The exercise of mine was to show it was doable in all three cases.

Blinds: Looked at the Blinds too and again some issues. A lots of the blinds you speak of are on either non-pulse, single target or one time blinds. Lightning Hammer requires using auto attack 3 and locking out other weapon skills, Black Powder requires you use up 6init per attack for a small 100 radius pulsing blind and other thief blind skills have similar init issues (although I would say they are great for blinds, it just hinders DPS). Necromancer has a fire and forget WoD pulsing blind with other possible functions like granting protection, siphoning health, being a fire and forget utility. Plague form gives 20 seconds of 240 radius spam blinds while having x2 Power, 4x Toughness and 3x Vitality to pull them off without accidently getting killed in a massive group of foes. Lighting Hammer and Black Powder won’t save you or your team in the same instance.

Necro Loadout: I do have two other alts I ran up to 30 fractals and did Fractal dailies with for months. A Phantasm Reflect Mesmer and a Support Healing Guardian. Both were optimized fully in ascended trinkets pre-ascended weapons. I also have a level 80 of every other class too, but mostly just leveled and forgotten save for thief and warrior, who at least have exotics so not much exp with those classes. Anyways when push came to shove I had to chose a class to continue getting full ascended on first and doing increased Fractal levels with. I chose my Apothecary Necro because it always had the easiest time completing Fractal content. My Guardian came in second but I found it had slightly less influence over team performance and had very sub par damage vs area bleeds (because I never got around to a real DPS set). All were very fun and did content with ease, but when the going got tough on a run with Mes/Guard, all I had to do was switch to my Necro build most days to progress (except Shaman final, Guardian was better at tanking and Reflect Wall was great, but Necro was better at lava ele control/kite killing).

Trash Mobs: Trash mobs in Fractals include Veterans/Elites or are all Vets/Elites and by level 40+ take longer than 5-10 seconds to kill on average. Maybe low end Fractals they take less than 5 seconds, but again it’s usually 15-30 seconds if not more. If we’re really worried about getting most bleeds up in under 5 seconds, we can just cast MoB (.75 secs cast), switch weapons, and use GD/EB (also .75s cast each) for 8 stacks of bleed in 2.25 seconds with room for 5 scepter attacks in the remaining 1.75 seconds for 4 more stacks of bleeds. 12 stacks of bleeds in under 5 seconds doing 135+ damage per tick for at least 1620 damage thereon out, not counting crit procs like Dhuumfire, Earth/Torment sigils, Barbed Precision.

Direction of Game Content: You first state that i’m completely misguided and wrong then go on to say Fractals requires more cc, coordination and damage mitigation than ever, which was my very point. Although I feel Zerkers can still do the content and very well if really experienced, I haven’t seen that so far as a trend. You don’t see “Fractal 50 Zerkers only” ever. Almost every Zerker toon I do higher fracs with downs constantly or has major issues, especially on Mistlocks that effect players dodges etc. Cliffside and Dredge are actually really easy for almost any group that knows what they’re doing (especially Cliffside). Haven’t had an issue with Cliffside since around April of last year when someone killed both cultists while I was playing my Mesmer. Team couldn’t beat it until I got on my Apothecary Necro. I would say Volcanic and Boss Molten levels are harder with low DPS. I do agree very low damage can be an issue though, but no where do I say every player must be either full DPS or full support/tank either. What I have said is that full Zerker is becoming less required in newer content an in some cases is not optimal, because said content is using more game mechnics like boons+conditions, constant AoE enviromentals and not relying on gimmicky one hit attacks every 20 seconds that can easily be dodged.

Engineers have got AoE Blinds (and pulses too) MF fractal for example. Necros can blind 5 per pulse, and engineer can blind 15 at once, and 3 or 4 times per pulse with his bomb.

Behind this, engis have got rly nice aoe dmg, nice range dmg (if needed). Finishers, they can buff might oder heal the whole party up without losing much dps. They can easily remove conditions from party members.
Stacking AoE Weakness easy to, or freezing (not as much as necromancers, but aoe)

They do more vul and still nearly the same dmg (nec is only singeltarget melee a bit better).

So why should i pick a necromancer over and engineer? The only reason for me….i want to play a necromancer or don´t want to be a class kick**** AH.

And this have nothing todo with zerk or not zerk. All named things in all this posts are the same even if u play full PVT.

If you ask me, every group should have 1 necro in it. The AoE damage and potential utility of the class can trivialize many otherwise challenging or lengthy encounters in dungeons/fractals. In terms of damage, if you have a some might stacking in your party and food/corruption stacks, your bleeds will do around 3900 damage per tick, burns will do over 1000 per tick and poison/torment over 300 per tick each. Not to mention support conditions like weakness from dagger 5, then epidemic on a 12 second cooldown when traited to spread all of it to every single mob. There is no way that cannot be considered good dps. The best part is that you don’t even need to take Dhuumfire to do burning damage in an AoE situation. I play with a pretty set group with at least 1 guardian, the burning applied from their virtue of justice will take your condition damage/duration when you use epidemic, so every mob other than the primary target will take burn damage as if you personally had applied the burning. Same goes for other conditions of course, a mesmer or warrior may apply some weak passive bleeds but when you epidemic them, they become your bleeds with optimal condition damage/duration, allowing you to get a big epidemic off earlier in a fight. Single target dps could be better, don’t get me wrong, but coming from someone who plays with a regular group of people that like to swap characters frequently, I can guarantee that nothing melts dungeon trash faster than a condition necro with epidemic.

Also as others have already mentioned, necro is incredibly tough without sacrificing any real offensive ability. Rabid gear is a great choice and will give you about 2.5k armour without much damage sacrifice since majority damage for a condition necro is from, well, condition damage. I like to play 30 points in blood too for the life siphon on hit/crit traits which not only boost your dps but rack up a decent amount of self heal, helping keep your 22k ish healthpool full thanks to necro’s already massive base hp. It also lets you take Transfusion which causes your death shroud 4 ability to heal all nearby allies for around 3.2k, which is pretty impressive group support for a skill that you’re going to be using offensively anyway. Death shroud of course is a great defense too, while other classes can block, you can toggle DS for what is effectively your second health bar and just absorb most hits like they’re nothing. People saying necros have poor defensive potential clearly haven’t played them properly. In fact, people saying necro is weak in PvE in any way must not be doing it right.

Won’t make a lengthy section regarding all necro utility in various situations, but suffice to say it’s a very versatile class that can be used to make many things easier. Well of Darkness as lots of people have already mentioned is brilliant, it offers near-immunity to all damage from all mobs standing inside it, and while it doesn’t have the uptime of thief blinds, the radius is far larger. Plague also is of course a great source of blind/survivability that you can use if your group struggles for some reason. As already stated, lots of weakness is awesome and you’ll spread it around a lot. Fears can be used situationally for interrupts/to get mobs away so you can revive someone. You also get a pull which can be useful in some situations (getting Mai Trin into circles when defiant has been stripped, preventing oozes healing on Subject 6 in Thaumanova etc) as well as some other useful bits and pieces. I don’t use staff much but it can be used to give some aoe regen if you need a bit of support, fear, but more importantly staff 4 will cleanse your whole group of conditions and send them to enemies, which can make a huge difference in condition-heavy situations.

tl;dr necro is awesome if you know how to use it properly, just don’t play one with multiple condition classes in the same group or you’ll be wasting lots of damage.

Just a little extra since I couldn’t get it into the edit:

Won’t make a lengthy section regarding all necro utility in various situations, but suffice to say it’s a very versatile class that can be used to make many things easier. Well of Darkness as lots of people have already mentioned is brilliant, it offers near-immunity to all damage from all mobs standing inside it, and while it doesn’t have the uptime of thief blinds, the radius is far larger. Plague also is of course a great source of blind/survivability that you can use if your group struggles for some reason. As already stated, lots of weakness is awesome and you’ll spread it around a lot. Fears can be used situationally for interrupts/to get mobs away so you can revive someone. You also get a pull which can be useful in some situations (getting Mai Trin into circles when defiant has been stripped, preventing oozes healing on Subject 6 in Thaumanova etc) as well as some other useful bits and pieces. I don’t use staff much but it can be used to give some aoe regen if you need a bit of support, fear, but more importantly staff 4 will cleanse your whole group of conditions and send them to enemies, which can make a huge difference in condition-heavy situations.

tl;dr necro is awesome if you know how to use it properly, just don’t play one with multiple condition classes in the same group or you’ll be wasting lots of damage.

Baleki. Ele has glyph of storms which can provide a better aoe pulse blind than WoD. That + LH and you have a ridiculous amount of blinds. The 6 init on thiefs blinds is not so bad. You wont lose much dps spamming it.

My point about playing other classes still stands because you seem to build around support in the form of healing. Which does a lot less for your group than dps + support utilities like reflect and aegis and other boons. You should try the meta dps builds on all classes to get a real comparison of class usefulness.

The reason those vets arent dieing fast is because of your build and your teammates. With 1 decent zerker in the group any mob they attack should die in around 5 seconds.

The reason you dont see zerker only lfg’s for fractal 50 is because those players dont pug. Most of us have elite dungeon guilds or a good friendlist of likeminded individuals. Pugging is a headache for most us and we would rather avoid dealing with bad players with bad builds.

@spoj: do you run your Necro in level 50 fractals? If so, how much more difficult is the run for your group than if you ran some other class, and what class does that bring that makes it easier?

@Norjena:

Good points but again those blinds are still inferior to Necro in my opinion. The blinding 15 at 1500 range is nice, it’s a one time thing with Flash Grenade on a 10 second recharge so it doesn’t keep foes blinded for a good amount of time. Smoke Bomb is 180 radius compared to WoD 240, can only ever be casted where your standing and you have to be within that kit to time it.

A engineer is also not better at stacking conditions and bleeds than a Necro. They were a bit after Perplexity Runes were introduced and before they were recently nerfed. I was losing to their DPS in WvW during that time but after that my Apothecary Necro could out condition damage condi Engis. Marks, Scepter and Off Hand Dagger apply Cond instantly at any range when they hit a foe and can be preplaced before pulling a group of mobs. Engineers have tracking/delay issues with Grenades and delay issues with bombs. The versatility is there with kit switching, but isn’t there due to having to kit switch etc. Plus Grenade and Bomb kits take up two utility slots and take away your weapon (not a big on Engi), but compared to Necro I can depend solely Staff+Scepter/Dagger for all my condition needs for the highest AoE condi application of bleeds and utility slot as I please.

Spoj:

Glyph of Storm’s Sandstorm is nice, but you have to be attuned to Earth and its on a 60 (48) recharge. Attunement can be an issue for reaction time. WoD has a 50 (40) recharge, is always available except when in DS and can prive extra utility if traited.

I have had decent zerkers in groups and vet mobs to not die in less than 5 seconds. Maybe a 4 Zerker team as you describe, but not 1. Or 1 zerker vs non vet mobs like Cultists, Dredge etc. The only Fractal where vets/bosses go down quick is Urban due to the 15 NPCs also getting might stacks etc. and burning them down. I personally like to have 1-2 Zerkers in a group with 1-2 support and 1-2 heavy dmg.

I agree healing does less for a group alone. However, when you do have all the utilities that a group can get, healing becomes much more effective. The point is to reduce incoming damage to a point where healing can overtake it or seriously mitigate it as well. The build is actually centred around Well Utility, with healing stat making WoB, MoB Regeneration and Transfusion very viable heals. I haven’t been the one reducing this to one condition like Weakness or Blinds being all power on a Necro. I wanted to discuss what Necros can do in their entirety and how that is useful. Area Blinds, Chilld, Protection, Healing, Weakness, Bleed stacks, boon conversion to conditions, condition conversion to boons, condition transfers for extra DPS. I might in another post lay out what my apothecary build does and support Socks points about Necro utility. It’s easy to single out one condition here or there then criticize and compare it to other classes to death without considering the CDs, traits and actually skill functionality (which after further inspection many those classes abilities are inferior when considering it all).

As for Zerker not lfging that’s a perfectly good explaination. However, it has more to do with player knowledge of Fractals itself and knowing what to do when and exploiting that with very high DPS. This was more viable when Mistlocks weren’t implemented. Stuff like reducing crits, random frost, taking twice as much damage from enemies when they hit you from behind can really mess with a Zerker group compared to a group oriented for more control, heavy and support. This can really hurt support builds on some Mistlocks too though.

I dont really run my necro in fractals anymore. I use to use it for 48 prepatch. 49 now is pretty much an easier version of 48 pre patch. I did use necro for 43 and 44 because condi was helpful on those instabilities. Necro can be fine in high fracs, but i prefer to increase my groups dps with warrior banners. Im usually 1 of 2 players who takes a warrior to fracs in our group so its kind of a must have. Plus i enjoy playing warrior a lot more recently. Really good solo class.

Here a not so brief summary of Necro utility in the following build, just for reference compared to what other classes can/can’t do at the same time:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjQad6Zaia07JApHXj9zTP+ecxjKMMA-j0CBYiCyINJjWQZm8IQpnBNNdRjVTFRjVPjIqWfEziDzImIqWIgFrBA-w

Transfusion on Life Transfer (if taken): 5000K+ health pulsing heal with 600 radius. Necor is able to move while channeling. 40s CD.

Well of Blood – 10s Duration, 32s CD, 240 Radius, 900 Range, 4 Seconds of Area Protection in Well on Cast. Over duration siphons can add up to health 4750 and add a total of 4350 extra AoE damage. Self heal 6600 health, Area Healing pulse of 700 health for 7000 total health over duration.

Well of Power – 5s Duration,, 40s CD, 240 Radius, 900 Range, 4 Seconds of Area Protection in Well on Cast. Over duration siphons can add up to health 2375 and add a total of 2175 extra AoE damage. Stun Break + 1.25s Stability. Converts condition stacks on allies to boons, one per pulse each. Notable conversions are Burning to Aegis, Chill/Bleeds into 11.7s of Vigor, Weakness/Torment into 3 stacks of 11.7 second Might, blind into 3.9s of Fury, Vunerability into 3.9s Protection, Poison into Regeneration.

Well of Corruption – 5s Duration, 32s CD, 240 Radius, 900 Range, 4 Seconds of Area Protection in Well on Cast. Unblockable. Does normal/medium area damage. Over duration can Siphon up to health 4750 and add a total of 4350 extra AoE damage. converts enemy boon stacks into conditions. Vice versa of above. Notably it can disable pulsing Protection on mobs for duration and turn it into a max 15 stacks of vunerability. Turns Fury into Blinds. Might into Weakness.

Well of Darkness – 5s Duration, 40s CD 240 Radius, 900 Range, 4 Seconds of Area Protection in Well on Cast. Unblockable. Over duration can Siphon up to health 4750 and add a total of 4350 extra AoE damage. Blinds up to five enemies in Well per pulse.

Summary of Highlights: Massive area control of boons/conditions on allies/enemies allowing a Necro to buff allies like a Guardian when party is suffering from multiple conditions and nerf enemy DPS/toughness when they have boons. Total possible health siphon from wells is 11875 Health and 10875 extra area damage. Total possible self healing from WoB is 13600 over 10 seconds and for allies 7000 over 10 seconds. 5K area heal from Transfusion if taken as a trait. Total of 16 seconds Protection. 8 seconds repeatable in 32 seconds. Other 8 seconds repeatable in 40 seconds.

Weapon/DS Highlights/Utility:

Mark of Blood: 7.75s Duration area Regenation, 3 stacks of 11.25s duration area Bleeds, 4.75s CD, 240 Radius, 1200 Range, Unblockable. 300 tick Regeneration healing 3000 health every 10 seconds. Quick CD allows applicaiton to 5+ targets while still overlapping indefinitely especially if you take Mark of Evasion minor for Extra bleeds.

Chillblains/Putrid Mark Combo: 5.5s Chill and 8.5s Poison on a 20s total CD, giving 7s of area Weakness from poison field.

Enfeeble Blood: 14 seconds of Weakness on 25 CD.

Bleed Stacking/DPS:

MoB, mark chain the MoB again, switch weapons procing Geomancy (MoE dodge at same time if taken). Then Grasping Dead immediately followed by Enfeeble + auto attacks, followed by Geomancy (with MoE) again. That’s 20 stacks of area bleeds applied in 15 seconds mostly front end (24 stacks with MoE). This ends up mainaining at about 10-15 stacks at 111 bleed ticks for about 1110-1665 Area Bleed damage, not counting might stacks, single target bleeds, normal damage, other condition damage, epidemic, Flesh Golem etc etc etc. When you add everything together, its great damage output compared to many full support geared class builds with say clerics. Especially with might stacks. Of course damage output falls somewhat when casting utilities, but power damage can fall quicker to 0 while multitasking.

My build can do most of that almost as well but i dont ruin my dps in the process. Still not as good as other classes though. And I ignore the pointless stuff like life siphon which doesnt help teammates. Prot can be covered by a hammer guard so thats wasted. Etc…

That build has terrible dps. You dont even max your only damage stat. I could prob out dps that build by doing doing dps for a few seconds and then dieing. You wouldnt overtake the damage before the mob died.

spoj.9672:

My build can do most of that almost as well but i dont ruin my dps in the process. Still not as good as other classes though. And I ignore the pointless stuff like life siphon which doesnt help teammates. Prot can be covered by a hammer guard so thats wasted. Etc…

That build has terrible dps. You dont even max your only damage stat. I could prob out dps that build by doing doing dps for a few seconds and then dieing. You wouldnt overtake the damage before the mob died.

Most of what exactly? There’s a lot there. Mass Boon/Condition conversion/transfer? Area Protection? 10-15 stacks of Mass AoE bleeds? Area Protection with about 16-20 second downtime? Area Weakness for 30-50% of the time? Over 27475 self healing in under 10 seconds? 10000 to allies over 10 seconds? 15000 ally healing with Transfusion? Mass Area Blinds? Able to do this all at once within seconds? Able to do it all this at once minus WoB heal (but still the siphons) from 900 range away from a fight?

This is the problem. You have to look at it in it’s entirety. I keep the self siphons in because they alone can heal you for 11875 health without casting Wells on yourself but on allies in the mix with 5+ enemies, promoting you to support the team more instead of self heal. It’s also doable anywhere within 900 range. This build does about 3-4 jobs at once and well, while still doing moderately high damage when it comes a full support character, with 3000 armor and around 21K health. It can allow more DPS oriented characters to do what they need do in situations that have booned enemies and/or lots of conditions being applied to allies, while getting more DPS from converted boons. All that’s left is Aegis, reflects and blocks, which don’t require any investment stat wise and DPS classes/builds have easy access to. We have access to it if getting burned….which there is a lot of along with other conditions in fractals.

The damage does suck, against a single target and is better against multiples (especially if they’re spread out as melee cleaves stops working well in comparison). However like I said that’s only non-modified bleed damage which I convervatively calculated. That does not count poison, torment, normal damage, corruption stacks, might stacks, etc. as I said. It will never, ever compare to a warrior single target DPS but that was never the point. The point was to offer as much utility as a necro, while epxloiting mass area bleeds to keep DPS up, since power secondary alone really really sucks for DPS on almost every class (especially Necro and especially with staff).

I can take wells. I can use enfeeble. I can chill. I can use CPC and bone minions for blasts. I can take a staff if i really want putrid mark. I dont need prot because thats covered. I can heal with Well of blood if i need to. And it heals enough when using beserker gear. The scaling is terrible so its not worth building around healing. These are all pve basics.

That builds damage sucks in all situations. Dont try and justify it. I could out dps it naked.

spoj.9672:

I can take wells. I can use enfeeble. I can chill. I can use CPC and bone minions for blasts. I can take a staff if i really want putrid mark. I dont need prot because thats covered. I can heal with Well of blood if i need to. And it heals enough when using beserker gear. The scaling is terrible so its not worth building around healing. These are all pve basics.

That builds damage sucks in all situations. Dont try and justify it. I could out dps it naked.

Wait I thought you were arguing that Necros are not needed and no longer play one and were arguing from a Warriors perspective? Now your playing a Beserker Necro saying you can run the same without truly traiting/gearing/speccing for it? You have two utility slots taken up by bone minions and CPC, so you have only one well utility left. Putrid Mark wasn’t a point because of the removal, it was for the combo weakness with chillblains. You’re no longer using Cond duration food since you’re now a power DPS necro minimize uptime of debuffs. You also have near 1 utility slot for a defensive ability.

WoB is never a good heal to bring without healing power. It’s one of the best scaling heals in the game, but the base with 0 healing power is only 152 health ticks for 1520 health over 10 seconds, compared to 700 ticks for 7000 health over 10 second and a 5500 self heal… plus a potential extra self heal of 4750 health… and 4 seconds of protection…. If you went 15 Spite you get 75 healing power for 182 WoB ticks for a total of 1820 healing over 10 seconds. Not exactly stellar still… However you got an extra 400 total health out of a mere 75 points of Healing power over the duration. Bad scaling? Nope. The only area heal that’s nice without actual healing power now is still Transfusion. You can get about 2-3K healing with it without investment.

Again you’re not addressing the totality of the support build and its merits as such. Instead you’re again trying to focus in one aspect that was made very clear to be an issue, DPS, and are trying to make the conversation about that only. Just like many here including yourself did with Weakness application/uptime debate and after that was disproven, decided it was “useless.” Then we moved on to how “bad” necros are at blinds compared to other classes. Once that was debated and other class blind skills had their own mechanic issues, we moved back to “Necros suck at support/utility, because.” Once that was addressed again showing a myriad of good support options and great healing over time in one build all in one package with each skill doing 2-3 things, now the Support build has to reach the damage capabilities of a Zerker Necro to be good or useful in PvE content.

The low base damage on Staff Marks makes it very very bad for AoE DPS. Only Putrid Mark is kind of nice but hits for like 2K. WoS and tranfusion are the only real aoE skills a Necro has that do good base power damage. To say you can reach the same damage potential naked as 111 tick area bleeds is just ignorant of both Power and Condition Damage potentials.

It’s a good build, not a godly build to conquer all others. You have to compare apples to apples. Show me, through math and mechanics, how a Cleric build Necro or any necro with power primary/secondary only, out DPSes the above build both in Area and single target. Entirely possible and I could have said a naked build but im not that mean.

The one point you have made that i feel is absolutely correct is that when content can be done with exp guildies all running Zerker builds together with great coordination and have done successfully many time, a Necro, along with many other classes would not be optimal. But to say Necro is bad at PvE? No they’re not.

By your reasoning any class that is not a Warrior, Guardian, Elementalist and maybe Mesmer is also non viable, because your definition of viable for PvE is: Does the most damage as a Zerker build and is the optimal class for running guild/friend parties as such, while having 1-2 things like Aegis or Reflect.

Ofc i cant take 6 utilities at once, the point is i can use what is needed when i need it. I dont need to build around it. Necro is fine for dungeons but its below every other class because it doesnt do anything but chill better than other classes. We have a good mix of control conditions but its not a good enough mix and not enough access to warrant taking a necro over other classes.

We moved on from the blind and weakness debates because they were done. You didnt prove yourself to be right. I already stated why they werent very good on the necro and that was done. You can re-read my posts with an open mind but i sense you are completely biased and are desperate to justify that support builds are good because you enjoy playing them. Unfortunately they arent. Thats not your fault, its the games design.

Im not going to start comparing cleric builds and so on because they are all terrible for pve. Anything other than a dps build is bad. All classes have a decent dps build and they provide huge amounts of support while still using the dps build and maintaining high dps.

This thread isnt about being optimal its about being useful. But there is nothing I would specifically take a necro for therefore the class is not useful enough.

Btw i will be doing necro trials for rT if we ever get a necro trialist. The trials i will put people through force them to demonstrate good individual skill while also using what the necro has. That means using cc, blinds and control conditions to deal with the specific encounters I will take them through. If they use support builds they wont be getting my approval thats for sure.

@spoj:

Umm yes I did prove myself right on many occasions. It was clearly stated by you and others that Weakness could not be maintained by a Necro on Trash 24/7. I proved easily that was wrong. Then on bosses, proved that wrong too, then was stated that multiple classes could maintain weakness on trash/bosses too with consumables and multiple toons etc. Yes for trash, not so much for bosses. Then it was stated that there was no viable build to maintain with. I showed it with the switch of one trait and utility skill. Then you declared Rabid Necro DPS to be bad. Which I proved wrong. Then said it took to long to get up, more than 5-10 seconds. I showed it under 5 seconds. Then you stated that most/all enemies in fractals don’t last more than 5 seconds. Not quite true unless you run all Zerkers. Then you finally said something that was true: Zerker guild/friend Fractal runners that are very exp don’t need support don’t need necros if they’re already completeling easily. Can’t disagree with that.

Other classes blinds skills were limited by various things like not being pulse, not always readibly accessible on CD, not having multiple functions, being single target, having low radius. Each time someone brought up blinds I replied why that doesn’t work so well compared to Necros, but also admitted when in some cases they are just as viable,

Then Necro Support came into question and I gave you a build that can fullfill very useful functions in a team in any PvE at once, while matinating area bleeds for 1-1.5K damage alone not counting anything else. These bleeds can spike up towards 3.5K-3.9K damage per tick maintained with 25 stacks of might from other players (like Warriors). You have decided that this is not useful or viable as it must now do Zerker dmg or be Zerker to be viable. And clearly made infactual statements about being able to beat 1K+ cond dmg sated condimancer naked as powermancer, that powermancer can out AoE any condition build as Necro. Statements that didn’t encourage me about your knowledge of Necromancers.

You state a lot of opinion while hinting at some facts, but never crunch the numbers or mechanics in a clear, detailed arguement of why and how a class “isn’t useful” at all. which leads me to do it only to find your point quesitonable. I have done the opposite by proving clear comparisons of numbers, CDs, skill mechanics, durations and personal experiences that are common sense in most of my posts at length. You have just mixed and matched examples of skills from different classes and declared that if you run class a,b,c, with skills/consumables x,y,z you don’t have to take a Necro. To the point of extreme meta theorycrafting that’s not even thought out 100%. Almost any class/build can be tweaked out of not being in a group.

You don’t see that a Necro going full support in combination with Zerker/Dmg Warriors/Guards/Eles, can not only fill in the gaps of mitigation, but do unique “reversal of fortune” things with Wells and still help with DPS. Like turning enemy prot into stacks of vun or 25 stacks of might into lots of Weakness. Stipping protection for 5 seconds and turning into vunerability stacks can be a 33-50% increase in damage to all team members. I’m sorry, but you just haven’t made your case for me to agree that Necros are useless and bad at PvE. The point of the thread.

Your definition of viable and good is completely different to mine and most decent players. Im not going to bother argueing anymore. Its clear how biased and closed minded you are. Theres no way i can persuade someone like that. And I dont have the energy to post full essays on why support builds are bad and dps builds are useful even in non organised group.

Balekai.6083:

You state a lot of opinion while hinting at some facts, but never crunch the numbers or mechanics in a clear, detailed arguement of why and how a class “isn’t useful” at all. which leads me to do it only to find your point quesitonable. I have done the opposite by proving clear comparisons of numbers, CDs, skill mechanics, durations and personal experiences that are common sense in most of my posts at length. You have just mixed and matched examples of skills from different classes and declared that if you run class a,b,c, with skills/consumables x,y,z you don’t have to take a Necro. To the point of extreme meta theorycrafting that’s not even thought out 100%. Almost any class/build can be tweaked out of not being in a group.

Believe it or not I dont want to spend my evening crunching numbers to prove another one of the many deluded souls on these forums why necro is not so good. You can see it for yourself if you look with an open mind. Also i think i know more about meta theorycrafting seeing as im in a guild which speed clears and goes for record breaking dungeon runs….

If anyone can find a good use for necro in dungeons its going to be us or someone else in one of the top dungeon guilds. And believe me ive thought about a lot of situations where necro could be pretty nice. But then i remember some other class can do the same thing but better. And were back where we started again.

spoj.9672:

Your definition of viable and good is completely different to mine and most decent players. Im not going to bother argueing anymore. Its clear how biased and closed minded you are. Theres no way i can persuade someone like that. And I dont have the energy to post full essays on why support builds are bad and dps builds are useful even in non organised group.

I respect your decision, however disagree with your conclusion about me. I have been very open to your points and although you don’t appear to see it, have agreed with you on some of them. Especially some of the more important ones. However, I have been the one presenting you the raw data explaining step by step how skills can/do work, and calculating the numbers to prove my points and coming to my conclusions based upon them and personal experience. Showing you how Necros can be very useful factually. Should I throw away the numbers and my experience just because you say so? Or the community says so without providing your own numbers while making clear unfactual statements throughtout the conversation? Of course not. I doubt you would if you were in my shoes.

Edited above post.

Out of curiousity what numbers do you want? Because im strugging to see what could make you change your mind. Would dps comparisons be an option? I doubt that would work as you seem to rate healing and high cd utilities above dps and low cd utility.

spoj.9672:

Edited above post.

Out of curiousity what numbers do you want? Because im strugging to see what could make you change your mind. Would dps comparisons be an option? I doubt that as you seem to rate healing and high cd utilities above dps and low cd utility.

What I wanted was when you made a claim you proved it or at least explained thoroughly laying it all out. Again in replying I had to do that work looking at other class skills, doing the calcs before stating a conclusion, figuring out how I would use them etc.

Show the healing and/or support of another class with or without healing power, how it works and funtions in a group, how much range is has, whats it’s CD, how much protection said class doing regular-high DPS can maintain. Give me links to builds. Your experiences in detail when you run fractals full zerker compared to my apothecary necro experiences in the same areas. Can all that support be put into a single build still and not be necro or support oriented? When you make the claim that you can out damage a condi necro area wise with Power+Wells show it. Show that you can out damage my build DPS while naked at level 80 etc etc.

Months ago I think I did break down healing comparisons and came to the conclusion that Guardians and Eles do in fact have better spike heals and healing generally, but Necro had some special mechanics which made them just as useful in actual play. Also Necromancer could compete over time with the sum of Guard/Ele healing damage builds and support builds (I see this meself with Guard). However, unspecced Necro has near 0 ally healing potential, because its healing is based off non water fields a few select heals and would never compete with any other group heals of other classes.

Edit:

To help refocus if we’re back to square one. Which class can achieve that amount of support with said conditions, boons, healing, and AoE dmg across the board at 0-900-1200 range in my build post to self and others? Can that class do it as you say while still having great DPS or better DPS? Does that Class have access to all of its skills once CD is up? Does that class have multi function skills that make multitasking both support and damage easier?

I wont do healing comparions because its pointless. You can provide full heals just by spamming blast finishers in a water field if you really need healing. Theres been threads where people did the maths for healing on guards and so on. I dont feel the need to redo stuff which has been proven to death already. You should know its not worth building around healing. Seeing as you did a healing comparison did you not notice the really poor increase in healing from healing power? Its nothing compared to the increase in dps you get from putting those stats points into offensive stats.

Protection can be covered permanently by a hammer guardian.

Also i assumed i didnt need to go into detail as you obviously have multiple classes at 80. But if thats the case then you should really know all these things already. I think you must spend too much time on necro and havent really explored the other classes anywhere near enough.

spoj.9672:

I wont do healing comparions because its pointless. You can provide full heals just by spamming blast finishers in a water field if you really need healing. Theres been threads where people did the maths for healing on guards and so on. I dont feel the need to redo stuff which has been proven to death already. You should know its not worth building around healing. Seeing as you did a healing comparison did you not notice the really poor increase in healing from healing power? Its nothing compared to the increase in dps you get from putting those stats points into offensive stats.

Protection can be covered permanently by a hammer guardian.

Also i assumed i didnt need to go into detail as you obviously have multiple classes at 80. But if thats the case then you should really know all these things already. I think you must spend too much time on necro and havent really explored the other classes anywhere near enough.

Again your not explaining, you’re stating. Are you running hammer guardian in Fractals? Against bosses? What’s the radius? Can it be applied over great distances to others? How does it play DPS wise? CC wise?

Guardian healing and protection procing is great if not the best, within 1-600 range… Ele healing is great and better than Necro, unless he can’t get it setup, can’t get to victim, isn’t within range, someone uses a long duration field before it and you get mass retal instead of water field procs, he’s in the wrong Attunement etc. Necro healing is great too, as long as you spec for it, people stay in WoB, are in range of enemies to proc Mob… Not saying any are bad or the best, they’re just different. Does that make the healing of one or another useless especially when all three can bring something useful to the table? No.

Why do you need to know that? You shouldnt need ridiculous radius or range. And like ive said if you are taking “support” builds usefullness goes out the window anyway.

We usually have a hammer guard for fractals yes. Its perma in a 240 radius if you must know. These little details dont need to be said. If you care that much you can check them yourself. But i dont check the exact details of all of them and I dont know them from memory. I know what every class can do but the details such as radius and duration of specific skills is not something im going to check everytime i make a post. All you needed to know is its perma protection. Thats enough info to tell you that you dont need prot on wells….

spoj.9672:

Why do you need to know that? You shouldnt need ridiculous radius or range. And like ive said if you are taking “support” builds usefullness goes out the window anyway.

We usually have a hammer guard for fractals yes. Its perma in a 240 radius if you must know. These little details dont need to be said. If you care that much you can check them yourself. But i dont check the exact details of all of them and I dont know them from memory. I know what every class can do but the details such as radius and duration of specific skills is not something im going to check everytime i make a post. All you needed to know is its perma protection. Thats enough info to tell you that you dont need prot on wells….

Fair enough, but that protecton from hammer isn’t going to help a team much if anyone spread out kiting/fighting like molten bosses or shaman unless you stack. At least Well necro can cast from 900 range and hit players ressing someone etc and 900 range in another direction.

Prot isnt gonna save you on molten duo anyway.

spoj.9672:

Prot isnt gonna save you on molten duo anyway.

No dodges and jumps are going to. However, it does help if someone is ressing some downed and they’re both getting DPSed by a Molten combo. Weakness+Protection may help there and keep both of them alive enough for a successful revive. Maybe place WoB, MoB, Chillblains/Putrid Mark combo for weakness in addition to chill, slowing down molten attacks while giving reviver 1K more regen and 4 seconds of protection. Then pass by running healing 5K with Life Transfer. Hey you might even hit 3 other party members with 2-4K healing as your running by.

Your Hammer Guard might not be able to get there in time to prot and will be putting himself in harms way. He could charge a heal from 600 range, but that requires staying still. Necro can do this save for Transfusion all at 900 range. Actually in reality because of the “ridiculous” range/radius, it can be done at 1020 range from the near opposite side of the Boss pad, while moving/kiting. Only have to sweep in and use transfusion form 600ish range while moving again. An ele to do water field combo has to be within 360 range of targets, but could slap Geyser on for at least 1.6K healing over two seconds.

The Necromancer, since he’s built for range area bleeds, can easily kite and DPS at the same time while running away, sideways, jumping etc. The only thing he doesn’t get is geomancy sigil proc. Still low damage, but still doing damage all the time too.

Again all doable, but Necromancer has the easiest time in that instance. Just showing where skill mechanics, CDs, range and radius can make a difference.

If you get caught in the aoes you’re dead regardless of prot. They are stupidly high dmg.

Thank you alot of the detailed information you have been writing Balekai ! I think I know how to trait and gear up my necromancer now when I hit lvl 80.

I nearly cut my finger of today and thats what i have to read? Man, i wish i had some popcorn.

On topic:
Spoj, leave it, dont get yourself upset.

I realised a good few posts ago it was pointless.

spoj.9672:

If you get caught in the aoes you’re dead regardless of prot. They are stupidly high dmg.

Yep, which is gonna happen if a person is still too long. I was only commenting on that small window to res someone, but Beserker spawns on top of them when the downed person is like 70%-80% res. Sort of a “How can you help them without getting… involved.” scenario. Instead of the player having to aimmediately abandon a another to die (which may still be the wise thing to do), or both of them dieing in the revive process. If up to that player to make that final decision, before getting hit with AoE Firestorm dmg.

Which was the other point that to help a Necromancer doesn’t have to stop moving, or get within dangerous range of Beserker and can still focus on not getting hit by AoE, while still supporting from a far at almost 100% capability.

Just one scenario though that doesn’t mean much, unless it really is the difference between 1-2 dead party memebers or not.

Rock.4019:

Thank you alot of the detailed information you have been writing Balekai ! I think I know how to trait and gear up my necromancer now when I hit lvl 80.

No Problem and thanks. Just make sure it’s what you want to build though. The reason why we’re having this “lively” debate is because there is a community out there that does favour DPS above all else and where it is the best optimization for certain content with certain people. Explore other options as well including DPS Powermancers etc.

When I first started down the path with this build more than a year ago, I had two armor sets already and no ascended gear. So it was easier for me to take the risk back then and try it out. I of course stand by all I said before as it’s true, tested and works very well for me in PvE, SPvP and WvW, in both solo/group roaming and Zergs (although I like to play soldiers gear Wellomancer while zerging too). But this topic is about whether Necros are bad/useless at PvE. I believe they’re not bad but could use some tweaks to DS among other things. Other believe there is nothing Necros can do well and aren’t worth playing as other classes can do similar things. I disagree.

Dalanor.5387:

I nearly cut my finger of today and thats what i have to read? Man, i wish i had some popcorn.

On topic:
Spoj, leave it, dont get yourself upset.

I don’t care about your finger you will read! …or don’t your choice.

spoj.9672:

I realised a good few posts ago it was pointless.

That’s because you never truly proved your point.

It’s pointless to have a detailed back-and-forth about the possibilities for Necro in PvE? Do you really think discussions are only worth having if, in the end, you convince everyone you’re right? I truly hope not.

No i meant it was pointless trying to convince him. I know the discussion will have been useful to other people. Which is the only reason i kept posting.