Guild Wars 2

I’m currently Installing GW2. I have some friends that play the game, and I used to play GW 1. The classes I adored for GW were necromancer and ritualist (maybe Mesmer a bit). I actually liked elementalist until EOTN came out. The only spec I really liked was water and it seemed like everything I was fighting there had 75% damage reduction to cold. I love casters, especially those that have great aoe, control, support, and sadistic trickery at their disposal. Damage less of a thing for me than mass buff/debuff/control is, especially when you get to set things up for awesome effect over doing something simple for merely sufficient effect. I adored old necromancer Orders of the Vampire until ursa farming came out. (I hated Ursa no ability to be creative at all)

Anyway I think i’d enjoy the necromancer class but every-time I look at any necromancer forum most of what I see is that they suck. That they level slow, that no one wants them at high levels, that most of their builds aren’t viable. I’m thinking this might be similar to WoW where you talk to any player and they will tell you they are the weakest class in the game no matter what class they might be playing. Then again, maybe not.

If I’m going to be constantly struggling to level myself and advance my personal story, if I’m going to be ignored by other players when I want to team up and do something, if I’ll have no options when it comes to choosing a build or abilities because 90% of them do nothing, or if the only thing necro does well is single target damage… Than I’d rather know now before I invest a lot into a Necromancer.

So please let me know what I’m getting into. Let me hear some counter points about how necromancers rock. Or maybe just suggest the profession I might enjoy is Necro wont be it.

Lichloved.3218:

I love casters, especially those that have great aoe, control, support, and sadistic trickery at their disposal. Damage less of a thing for me than mass buff/debuff/control

Thats the necromancer in a nutshell. We are GREAT with debuffs. Corrupt boon is a skill we have, it allow us to change ALL the buffs (Boons as they are called) on our enemies into conditions. We can also give ALOT of bleeding and vulnerability. This makes us one of the best, if not the best condition damage dealers in the game.

Also, AOE is amazing if you choose to go with wells (My personal favourite build). By using a staff all your skills will be AOE, aswell as the wells you can use in the utility slots. I will post a video here of my build and you can see how much AOE i got, aswell as condition damage by just using my AOE skills

Most people saying ‘Necromancer Sucks’ on this forum don’t actually think it does. Most of them just want the Necromancer to be a little bit better.
Necromancer is as good a profession as any other, especially in PvE. Tons of inventive build options to play around with, and plenty of challenge. It’s not difficult to level at all, it’s basically the same as any profession. Remember to make use of all the options available for experience; Map completion, Personal Story, and Crafting are the big three. People posting ‘leveling is slow’ are usually forgetting about one of those.
The dungeon groups that kick you for being a Necro are rare and not really fun to play with anyway. I don’t remember ever being kicked or rejected on my Necromancer. Doesn’t matter if you have a fun guild to do dungeons with. There are plenty of guilds on this forum that would gladly accept you into their ranks.

That being said, your description of your favorite profession fits the Mesmer pretty well also. Try both of them, you get 5 character slots!

Actually, Necro do extremely good in AoE damage while pretty much sucking at single target.
Also, keep in mind that as a Necro it is extremely hard to leave a fight once you engaged it.

I find Necro very fun to play but we’re just good at tossing around conditions which at the moment no one really wants condition builds in dungeons. As much as we don’t like to admit it, we don’t really do anything that other classes don’t do better except look good.

But apparently we should be getting a nice upgrade next patch.

The Necro levels as fast or faster than any of the other professions I’ve tried. In fact, my Necro is the only one that I stuck with all the way to level 80.

Marks are incredible for tagging mobs in Orr. As far as I can tell, the Necro actually has more variety and viable builds than most professions. I can’t really speak to how popular you’ll be with pick-up dungeon runs, though.

If I were going to start another Necro from scratch, I’d be tempted to roll the shortest Norn possible. Necros naturally have three transformations: Death Shroud, Plague Form, and Liche Form, and Norn would add four more. (The downside is that taller characters have more camera issues, and in WvW people already like to target Necros because we don’t have much escapability, and a large Necro is an even more tempting target.)

The Necro forums are the most complaining of the forums, though.

Druitt.7629:

The Necro forums are the most complaining of the forums, though.

^ This… If you want to enjoy the class, dont readu to much here

@ Homonavn – You’re right!

PVE doesn’t seem to be our biggest issues. You can power well in PVE on mobs that are pretty predictable, or condi build on them with little fear of them being mass wiped. Our biggest issues are actually PvP, and in which cases we have a pretty valid right to be concerned. On the PVE side of things, we’re not warriors. But we can do fine. Dagger does good single target DPS, and we have quite a few viable ways to play. And overall, it is just fun.

Necros have no issues in pve. We can tag everything during events, high survivability, a variety of builds (pve) and lots of chills and cripples for champions. Necrosare very fun to play in pve, but running conditions is risky during world events or if you don’t know what your party members are running in a dungeon (why I personally use carrion, so my damage is not completely pigeonholed by other players).

Also, condition necros are godly in fractals(assuming you don’t have another high-bleed focused player in your party).

As for being worried about not being accepted in groups; you’d only have issues with cof path one elitest groups wanting to run 4 warriors and a mesmer. Any other content, we are very much welcomed.

At the end of the day, play what you like to play.

A little bit of research will maximize your success and enjoyment of most classes, and I feel that this is particularly true of the Necromancer. Many of our skills seem like obvious choices at first glance but are not that great (as is the case with almost all our summons, imo), while others sound unexciting but give you a big edge. Here are two links from these forums that helped me a great deal in deciding what skills and traits to pick:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-skills-balance-and-opinions/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-traits-balance-and-opinions/

Have fun!