Guild Wars 2

Hi all necro’s, I play a D/D elementalist in WvWvW and well to put it lightly, almost every condi necro I come across destroys me. The amount of pure pressure and the fact that they can easily kite me with perma chill/cripple/weakness uptime combined with constant fearing (probably worse then WoW fear spam tbh) makes it hard to even get some damage off.

So basically I’m asking if there is any specific method of defeating you guys, not asking for nerfs or anything, just some honest to god help. Because I’ll be kittened if I need to run every time I see a necro.

P.S. before you say “L2P”, try versing a good condi necro as a D/D ele. Then you will know my pain

Sorry, i need to jump in, before misinformation starts to spread again.
Our fear is not infinite as other classes think, but enough for a burst, but sadly fear has the most counters in this game namely:
*Stability
*Stunbreaker
*Condi removal (active / passive)
*Dodge
*Reduced condi duration
*Condi immunity

And if you can fear with Doom, mark, fear wall and corrupt at least once its still just 9 second (with 100% fear duration), which is still 1 second less then the WoW fear. :P

edit: forgot another counter

I found that ranged fireballs work pretty well vs necro’s, try to use your small heal before your big one.
retreat and attack also works, get in and out.

First try to dps the necro from range untill he’s on to you.. then basicly dodge his transfers and maybe try to keep your boons/lyssa_elite untill he has casted his boonhate (WoC/Corrupt boon) after that its about bursting and retreating.
The more attacks the necro misses the better.
any form of cc is also useful on necro, get as many of the skills interrupted.

Well. Diamond skin.
Alternatively, you should never die to a solo necro. Necros have a really nice heal but miserable maneuverability and too much health to abuse it; get their health as low as you can, clear chill and ride the lightning/etc away (knockdown will help you here too) you can dodge/sidestep the necro’s two chase skills (both look like icy claws). You’ll be able to catch them again no problem after healing to full. If you’re not making progress, just disengage, maybe they have food/better armor or are just better than you.

Moral of the story, use their weakness against them: low maneuverability and very little/no access to vigor or stability.

Trait diamond skin, kite them since they can’t kite you till their ds runs out – win. As long as you don’t eat life blasts, they won’t be able to break you 90 percent invulnerability to condi necros.

Boon conversions just remove when diamond skin is up. Hopefully you have guard stacks too, which makes it that much easier.

That literally is one of the builds that right now shouldn’t ever lose a 1 v1 against a full condi necro

Thanks everyone for your tips! I have no idea to answer individually so I’m just going to do it like this:

@Dalanor.5387 – Yeah that’s true, I shouldn’t have said permanent fear. But that isn’t the point :P not many classes can even survive 3-4 seconds (unless you have all your cooldowns) because the necro will just SoS or stack many bleeds and burning while you are feared, then GL removing that fear with condition removal lol. Additionally, eles only have two cantrip stunbreakers, both on verrry long cooldowns (90s and 70s) so its much easier to spam fear more then I can stunbreak it XD. I have water attunement for cleanse yes, but any necro worth his/her weight is gonna actually wait untill I’m out of water attunement before they fear. After that its perma chill time and suddenly I can’t access water atunement for another 20 seconds.

@Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046 – That hit and run tactic sounds pretty good actually. Everyone else seemed to suggest it aswell.

@necromenous.5490 and Rennoko.5731 – I’ve never really used diamond skin because its too difficult to get :/ It’s also useless outside of fighting condi, but I think I’ll give it a try!

Thanks everyone! Much appreciated

My recommendation would be to keep Ride the Lightning as a safety, and you expect that you’ll the Terror’d, try to pre-emptively swap into Air and get out. Necromancers can’t chase, so if you hit and run, you can reset the encounter, only the Necro will be short Life Force, and will have trouble breaking Diamond Skin. Think of Fear-chaining as the Necro’s equivalent to Bull’s-Frenzy-100Blades – you know it’s coming, and it relies on some moderately long cooldowns, so if you avoid it, it’s easy pickings. Predicting it is the hard part.
Another piece of advice is to try and set up his heal when you want it. Necros have one of most predictable and interrupt-able heals in the game. If you load the Necro with conditions when they are at low-ish health, many with succumb to the temptation of boosting their heal by Consuming Conditions. If they take the bait, the long channel should be more than enough for you to rush in and Updraft it away.

Another thing to consider: many Necros cycle through their abilities predictably. If you see them cast Mark of Blood (if you take 3 stacks of bleeding), odds are they are following it with Chillblains. If you dodge it, it’s a decent amount of chill/poison you just avoided. If they Putrid Mark next (a really terrible idea, but hey, cycle-Necros!), then you can also assume that Reaper’s mark is going to be following. Predict that with a dodge as well.

Also, after you knock a Necro down/CCing in some way, try throwing a dodge in about .5 – 1 seconds later. The instinct (at least for me) when CC’d is to immediately DS and Doom, and although it’s instant, its predictability means you can potentially dodge it as well.

Many Necros also like leading in with Signet of Spite. If you see the passive up under their name, have your dodge-finger primed for a quick dodge once you hit roughly 1200 range.

When a Necro switches from Staff to Scepter, odds are they are going to go 2, then 5, assuming they don’t have condis to drop via Locust Swarm. If you have enough dodges, you can try dodging both. Just watch for the beginning of a cast animation that isn’t an auto.

The kicker is that many Condis Necros are going to cycle through every ability that gives you stacks of bleeds, then they’re going to Fear you. If you play against it enough, you’ll probably notice the pattern, and patterns are the doom of players in PvP. It’s very seductive to just say “LOL AOE!” and go through every ability in order. You’ll probably be able to stave off many a Condi Necro by watching closely, finding the pattern, and then countering it however it may fit your playstyle.

If you play a good Necro who mixes it up and knows how to counter Elementalists intimately, well, it’s probably going to be rough. I don’t know Elementalists intimately enough, but not every Necro is going to be a prodigy, and knowing patterns can be very useful, even against good players.

Oh, and I don’t know what food you run, but -40% condi duration (or -36% if you’re cheap like me) evens the playing field. If you have -40% and they don’t, odds are conditions will drizzle off surprisingly quickly. If they have +40% and you don’t have -40%, things are going to feel way imbalanced. If you both have it, the game actually feels more normal. I know that’s “a given”, but I don’t know what kind of food D/D eles typically run, so I wanted to mention it.

Good luck out there.

^ that is super solid advice. I even learned a few things from that, which are true of my play style too.

Unfortunately playing a condo necro has become a big spamfest that anyone can play reasonably well, and in wvw they haven’t seen the nerfs that they saw in spvp. Fortunately for you, though, are that a lot of these necros are pretty bad. As others said, diamond skin would probably work well. Perhaps you can work It into your build? I’m sure it would solve this problem quickly. Anyway, a stun break may take you pretty far in disrupting fear, as well as stability, and I know the ele ability that blocks 3 attacks could also help quite a bit. That will block attacks and hit these spammy necros pretty hard. The good news is the stun break and stability should help against most specs.

Also as others said, playing a hit and run playstyle is very effective against a necro. They can’t really catch you if you want to run, so if you hit them, make them blow some cooldowns and use some DS, then leave, reset the fight and come back, you’ll eventually wear them down. That is true of most necro specs. Also, kite plague form at all costs.