Guild Wars 2

My main is a thief, that being said Im used to zipping around, avoiding battle changing stuns, going stealth often and keeping up high pressure on people. Yeah the low health is a turn off for many as well as the lack of CC, but it’s something you get used to. My second character was a necromancer,80 of course and I have played with her many times, in PvE. So I decided to run her in WvW (condition mancer 0/30/10/30/0) and I didnt kitten her, she has full exotic gear as well as runes of the undead so I thought she was pretty set and by the Gods. You guys have nothing to work with! Barely any evasion which forced me to get locked down with immobilize many times. Death Shroud helps everynow and then, I understand the mechanics of popping in and out of it to save it.

With conditions, the mentality is to wittle down your opponent which can get hectic when they are right on you cc’ing you and their teammates are there to help take you out. But overall, I’d say I just feel sluggish. No mobility, no reliable access of stun breaker, deathly swarm is one but let’s be honest, not that reliable since it needs to hit someone. And what’s up with the downed state?! When I go down Im at half health causing me to get eaten in like .3 seconds.

Regardless, it’s going to take some practice(and money) but I just wanted to say kudos to those who do well with the necromancer, from now on I’ll bow after a fight with one if I turn out the victor, if your teammates let me =_=. Cheers.

I’ll help you learn Necro in PvP, if you like. It’ll cost you less money than going head first in PvE or WvW, and get you familiar with the class.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I’ll help you learn Necro in PvP, if you like. It’ll cost you less money than going head first in PvE or WvW, and get you familiar with the class.

Sounds cool message me ingame when Im on. (cant atm school woes)

IMO the necro is the hardest class to get used to, especially in pvp. I played ele for awhile when I thought my necro was underpowered, but I find that I can kill people fairly easily on my necro as well. Going from thief to necro is possibly the largest change, going from highest mobility to the lowest, it will just take some time for you to get used to it. I highly recommend checking out Nemesis’ builds, stickied at the top of these forums. He goes into a lot of detail behind his reasoning behind everything from gear to skill usage in combat. His terror build is especially fun, and more than a couple times thieves have used their stolen fear on me, only to be feared from my trait and downed from that and the conditions ticking on them.

Just stick with it, try out different builds in spvp, and you will probably find something you enjoy to play. For closer to thief gameplay you might want to try a dagger and well build, as you can burst people down fairly quickly after ccing them in well of suffering.

Funny enough, I respect a lot of the other classes for being able to manage. I’ve got 1 of each profession, and I honestly don’t know how some of them manage to do things. Its a difference of perspective, you have tons of experience on one class, and know how to manage on that one class. When you swap, a lot changes, and its weird to get used to.

RedSpectrum.1975:

And what’s up with the downed state?! When I go down Im at half health causing me to get eaten in like .3 seconds.

Necromancer down state has been bugged since launch in WvW and PvE. It works fine in PvP. But the gist of it is that we have 1/3 the health in downed state compared to all the other classes because of how the death shroud used to work before launch.

You’re definitely going from one end of the spectrum to the other. The thief is extreme mobility at the cost of being fragile by default if you do get pinned down. The necromancer is quite durable by default, with the cost of being easy to pin down with control effects.

I have new found respect for pin ball by playing a necro.

Softspoken.2410:

You’re definitely going from one end of the spectrum to the other. The thief is extreme mobility at the cost of being fragile by default if you do get pinned down. The necromancer is quite durable by default, with the cost of being easy to pin down with control effects.

Problem being that one these features is MUCH MORE REWARDING than the other.

@Forz, that is debatable.

RedSpectrum.1975:

So I decided to run her in WvW (condition mancer 0/30/10/30/0) and I didnt kitten her, she has full exotic gear as well as runes of the undead so I thought she was pretty set and by the Gods. You guys have nothing to work with!

The problem here is that you don’t yet realize that the true power of necro is in using power/wells builds, DS life transfer and plague form in choke point defense and to provide AOE damage support in zerg and siege warfare. You’re not a 1v1 duelist. You’re a blunt instrument used to help smash through groups.

Uhhh.. Necromancer being the hardest class to get used to.. Is a joke. They are intermediate at the very worst. (This is a completely opinionated statement.) The Professions with the steepest learning curve are easily Warrior/Engineer. I made a Minion Based Necro from scratch, and I can consistently beat 2 to 3 people at the same time In Tournaments. I made a Necro to learn their abilities so I could fight them better with my main (an Engineer) My Minion Necro is more over powered than a Mesmer. Once you learn how to use your fear, Necro is easy with all builds. But particularly my minion build is capable of point defense and point roaming and is almost impossible to defeat in 1v1. (And the primary point with the minion build is it is not unique. It is completely obvious to create and use. But it is incredibly effective in tournaments.)

Uhhh.. Necromancer being the hardest class to get used to.. Is a joke. They are intermediate at the very worst. (This is a completely opinionated statement.) The Professions with the steepest learning curve are easily Warrior/Engineer. I made a Minion Based Necro from scratch, and I can consistently beat 2 to 3 people at the same time In Tournaments. I made a Necro to learn their abilities so I could fight them better with my main (an Engineer) My Minion Necro is more over powered than a Mesmer. Once you learn how to use your fear, Necro is easy with all builds. But particularly my minion build is capable of point defense and point roaming and is almost impossible to defeat in 1v1. (And the primary point with the minion build is it is not unique. It is completely obvious to create and use. But it is incredibly effective in tournaments.)Particularly I am used as a Point holder in tourneys because it takes 2+ players to remove me from my point at the very least. I can stay at 100% HP while fighting most bunker builds and I am not even built for bunkering. Simply taking all the traits that compliment Minions and learning how to use Death Shroud made me top teir. There is no such strategy with Engineer or Warrior. (This is an opinionated statement from a strictly sPvP perspective and not a WvW or a PvE.)

Warriors aren’t hard to use, they just pigeon-holed into glass burst builds and require a lot of help to get their job done consistently. Even I can use a Warrior burst build in PvP to decent effect, it isn’t hard, its just bad.

Apparently Necro is not supposed to do anything alone! T1 do what you want, but once you go up solid worlds you are kittened and have no chance except behind a wall of players.

I firmly believe the subjective part of game balancing overweighted Death Shroud. The need to buff something not sure what but something!

Wolf.5816:

Uhhh.. Necromancer being the hardest class to get used to.. Is a joke. They are intermediate at the very worst. (This is a completely opinionated statement.) The Professions with the steepest learning curve are easily Warrior/Engineer. I made a Minion Based Necro from scratch, and I can consistently beat 2 to 3 people at the same time In Tournaments. I made a Necro to learn their abilities so I could fight them better with my main (an Engineer) My Minion Necro is more over powered than a Mesmer. Once you learn how to use your fear, Necro is easy with all builds. But particularly my minion build is capable of point defense and point roaming and is almost impossible to defeat in 1v1. (And the primary point with the minion build is it is not unique. It is completely obvious to create and use. But it is incredibly effective in tournaments.)

Uhhh.. Necromancer being the hardest class to get used to.. Is a joke. They are intermediate at the very worst. (This is a completely opinionated statement.) The Professions with the steepest learning curve are easily Warrior/Engineer. I made a Minion Based Necro from scratch, and I can consistently beat 2 to 3 people at the same time In Tournaments. I made a Necro to learn their abilities so I could fight them better with my main (an Engineer) My Minion Necro is more over powered than a Mesmer. Once you learn how to use your fear, Necro is easy with all builds. But particularly my minion build is capable of point defense and point roaming and is almost impossible to defeat in 1v1. (And the primary point with the minion build is it is not unique. It is completely obvious to create and use. But it is incredibly effective in tournaments.)Particularly I am used as a Point holder in tourneys because it takes 2+ players to remove me from my point at the very least. I can stay at 100% HP while fighting most bunker builds and I am not even built for bunkering. Simply taking all the traits that compliment Minions and learning how to use Death Shroud made me top teir. There is no such strategy with Engineer or Warrior. (This is an opinionated statement from a strictly sPvP perspective and not a WvW or a PvE.)

You aren’t fighting good people then

SoI went into WvW to get some [practice, I love the terrormancer:D The CC’s hurt still but these guys are quite fun with the bleeding and the marks, and most of all, the fear!

@Wolf

I have more then 700 hours on each Necromancer and Engineer. What you are saying is ether pure bullkitten or pure luck.

My engineer is a lot better to fight multiple opponent, especially if you were using a MM necro.

Engineer have a more complicated mecanism, but you learn it pretty fast. Once you have the memory reflex and all, they become fairly easy especially with HGH build.

Necromancer have a really simple mecanism. Yet for the 5 class I have, necro are the hardest. You simply can’t do any mistake. You have no dodge, no block, no invul. You only have DS, which only absorb damage.

You also don’t have any movement skill, no crazy burst, no stealth, only 1 source of stability, few boons.

For me, necromancer is one of the hardest class around. Just because you skill cap is really hard to raise. You only have few tools, and when outnumbered, you will have a pretty hard time.

Kardiamond.6952:

For me, necromancer is one of the hardest class around. Just because you skill cap is really hard to raise. You only have few tools, and when outnumbered, you will have a pretty hard time.

I wanted to highlight this as a very insightful, and direct statement. The difficult in playing necromancer isn’t understanding how to use the fairly straightforward skills and abilities, it is in figuring out how to raise the bar above where it currently is, with so little possible options for innovation.

Playing many hours on a mesmer, I can tell you that a good shatter mesmer and a bad shatter mesmer, differ by EXTREME degrees. One would do practically no damage, and the other will be so destructive, it can take out small groups of people. Timing on those skill is such a huge factor.

With necro you really have timing on fears, and timing on DS. Hitting your skills is the only other part of that equation, and everyone has to worry about that. The problem is, there is no skill improvement on how that works. Yes I can fear someone while they are healing, but if I had to use DS to absorb some damage 5 seconds before that heal, and I hopped out of DS to land a bleed/chill/whatever, I now no longer have access to my powerful single target fear.

I am a firm believer that the skill cap would be much higher and the class would be much more enjoyable with a base shorter duration (or no cooldown at all) on the DS skill. Mesmers have a .5 second delay between their shatters, and they are always available, who decided it would be great to have DS locked out for 10 seconds?

Remove the going-into-DS buffs, replace them with something equivalent, and let the skill cap raise for the necro, by not locking out DS.

I guarantee you that many of us would take the 5 second DS trait if it didn’t share our one and only stability outside of transforms, and wasn’t so deep in a tree that severely limits power/well/hybrid/condition builds when taken to 30 points. Imagine having that at .5-3 seconds cooldown, and how much that would allow the use of DS to be more about skill, and less about dumb luck.

Rennoko.5731:

I guarantee you that many of us would take the 5 second DS trait if it didn’t share our one and only stability outside of transforms, and wasn’t so deep in a tree that severely limits power/well/hybrid/condition builds when taken to 30 points. Imagine having that at .5-3 seconds cooldown, and how much that would allow the use of DS to be more about skill, and less about dumb luck.

^ This… I cannot agree with you more about the usability of DS and it’s cool down.

The most frustrating part of the 5 second DS trait is how “On entering / leaving Death Shroud” traits are very likely balanced around you taking those 30 points in Soul Reaping. Deathly Invigoration is the best example, but Spiteful Spirit and Furious Demise are worth mentioning as well.

Softspoken.2410:

The most frustrating part of the 5 second DS trait is how “On entering / leaving Death Shroud” traits are very likely balanced around you taking those 30 points in Soul Reaping. Deathly Invigoration is the best example, but Spiteful Spirit and Furious Demise are worth mentioning as well.

Remember they used to be permanent effects while in DS and DS being another form instead of jump in while over 50 life force for a second or 2 then pop out/tank a massive hit.

sas.6483:

RedSpectrum.1975:

So I decided to run her in WvW (condition mancer 0/30/10/30/0) and I didnt kitten her, she has full exotic gear as well as runes of the undead so I thought she was pretty set and by the Gods. You guys have nothing to work with!

The problem here is that you don’t yet realize that the true power of necro is in using power/wells builds, DS life transfer and plague form in choke point defense and to provide AOE damage support in zerg and siege warfare. You’re not a 1v1 duelist. You’re a blunt instrument used to help smash through groups.

I laughed. I haven’t found a single class short of warrior… that could have issue with plague form… unless you are kitten of course. To me people popping pf in pvp are just asking to get turned into a pincushion. Aoe + siege warfare? And at that point I began to have doubts that you ever played this class. I’m sorry we don’t have any aoe short of lt that does anything to siege. What game are you playing here bob?
Blunt instrument… well we can agree on that one at least. It is blunt and dull.

Anyway back to conditon and pvp… its a matter of never going solo. Simple as that. All that hp means nothing if you have least mobility and escape options in game with only critters being even more unfortunate in that department. Also you have to decide betwen condition dmg and duration + fast stacking in spvp… a bit more leeway in wvw and pve with food… but meh being obligated to eat food just so class functions in a more coherent way is insulting to say the least. Undead runes mean your duration is borderline nonexistant so barbed precision and earth runes are utterly wasted on your spec which translates into not being able to stack enough bleeds stacks to make a dent in anything. In short imo its 100% bleed duration or don’t bother… its debatable but that is my opinion on the subject.

I laughed. I haven’t found a single class short of warrior… that could have issue with plague form… unless you are kitten of course. To me people popping pf in pvp are just asking to get turned into a pincushion. Aoe + siege warfare? And at that point I began to have doubts that you ever played this class. I’m sorry we don’t have any aoe short of lt that does anything to siege. What game are you playing here bob?
Blunt instrument… well we can agree on that one at least. It is blunt and dull.

Anyway back to conditon and pvp… its a matter of never going solo. Simple as that. All that hp means nothing if you have least mobility and escape options in game with only critters being even more unfortunate in that department. Also you have to decide betwen condition dmg and duration + fast stacking in spvp… a bit more leeway in wvw and pve with food… but meh being obligated to eat food just so class functions in a more coherent way is insulting to say the least. Undead runes mean your duration is borderline nonexistant so barbed precision and earth runes are utterly wasted on your spec which translates into not being able to stack enough bleeds stacks to make a dent in anything. In short imo its 100% bleed duration or don’t bother… its debatable but that is my opinion on the subject

I’m starting to think you just suck at the necromancer class. All of what he said is true just because you’re terrible at knowing different builds doesn’t mean we can’t damage siege. Plague form is pretty kitten good when rushing in first into a group of people in WvW even more so if you’ve got the chilling darkness trait which will blind them and chill them at the same time. if you have a fair amount of vitality and toughness you won’t be dying anytime soon (i’ve got 50k hp in plague form). As for damaging siege? You can use well of suffering and corruption to do decent damage coupled with life transfer. I am in fact a blunt instrument breaking through the enemy lines. I just think you’re terrible because conditions aren’t as strong in WvW especially with people running with lemongrass good to reduce condition duration.

1 100b in just power gear forget prec/crit dmg will do more damage then both wells put together. Go back to first grade. 900 range… and the longest in game aoe cooldown… oh snap sounds awesome. Up until I remember you need to dump 20 points in blood as power spec… yeah. Keep talking about how amazing your “knowledge” is and how everyone else is terrible. I’m not interested in your closet and pretend its all great game so have fun there… in a closet… with 2 ranged aoes that requires 20 points to be ranged and yet not even 1200 range…
Did you know there are some walls that are actually high enough u can’t target top with your “amazing” aoe…. again I find it hard to believe that you do.
I just counted how many hits I would need to chew your 50k hp…. 8. In trashy gear. And I would be way out of your ranged the entire time…. go figure. Everyone must be melee in this game. And zerg means <5 or that blind will “miss” 99% of actual zerg.
Not saying its useless… but your glamorizing of it does nothing except show your total denial.

Warriors are still well known for being the hardest to succeed with and least balanced class in PvP. They are all around terrible, and it takes a really strong team and a great player to make up the difference. 100b can do all the damage it wants, its still terrible without tons of help.

HiSaZuL.2843:

1 100b in just power gear forget prec/crit dmg will do more damage then both wells put together. Go back to first grade. 900 range… and the longest in game aoe cooldown… oh snap sounds awesome. Up until I remember you need to dump 20 points in blood as power spec… yeah. Keep talking about how amazing your “knowledge” is and how everyone else is terrible. I’m not interested in your closet and pretend its all great game so have fun there… in a closet… with 2 ranged aoes that requires 20 points to be ranged and yet not even 1200 range…
Did you know there are some walls that are actually high enough u can’t target top with your “amazing” aoe…. again I find it hard to believe that you do.
I just counted how many hits I would need to chew your 50k hp…. 8. In trashy gear. And I would be way out of your ranged the entire time…. go figure. Everyone must be melee in this game. And zerg means <5 or that blind will “miss” 99% of actual zerg.
Not saying its useless… but your glamorizing of it does nothing except show your total denial.

Why would I waste a trait for a ranged well when i can run in and place them on me? You truly are a moron it seems because I’ve done it countless times and it’s quite possibly the most fun ever because I can survive a zerg trying to stop me from destroying their siege. I suppose you just can’t accept the fact that you’re that bad.

You talk about seige damage aoe then call me a moron when I tell you about 20 points to make it useful?… You have an itelligence level of a door knob. Good luck …. “running in” and placing it on top of a wall… or running >in< a zerg and placing that precious well of yours. Every statement you made so far was an insult followed by contradicting your own “logic”. It’s like talking to a 2 year old… amusing… but fruitless.

And yeah bhawb its a carry me class same as necro in pvp. All solo specs for both are either 100% boring bad support or they rely on not getting trashed. Point was to indicate that 1 weapon skill does more damage then 2 aoe damage utility skills on a class purely defined by utility skills. Anyway… this scene is dead trying to argue a point with someone who contradicts their own statements is a waste of time.

Bhawb.7408:

Warriors are still well known for being the hardest to succeed with and least balanced class in PvP. They are all around terrible, and it takes a really strong team and a great player to make up the difference. 100b can do all the damage it wants, its still terrible without tons of help.

Necros are still well known for being the hardest to succeed with and least balanced class in WvW. They are all around terrible, and it takes a really strong team and a great player to make up the difference. Wells can do all the damage it wants, its still terrible without tons of help.

see what I did there.

point is listen to hisazul with an open mind

In other news, warrior team victorious over necro team 2-0 in this week’s soac tournament forcing necro team to face ranger pets next matchup. May the force be with you all. And now to the weather

I am a roaming power necro who kills most anybody I come across and consistently succeeds in winning 1v2 or 1v3.

Despite this I will say that if you start playing necro now, unless you immediately feel like it’s a class that has been made for you, it’s probably too late in the game to really get comfortable with it. Problems for a beginner necro is that you don’t have any bail-outs and don’t really get to pick and choose the fights, the fights come at you.

It will take time to be able to perfect the winning combinations and to come to terms with necro’s unreasonable weaknesses as far as defense goes (lack of stability, short cd stun breaks and vigor for example). The little dodge rolls that necros have are extremely precious and cannot be wasted on low dmg moves, you simply use your high HP, death shroud and hopefully stacked toughness to soak up anything else.

My necro is melee-oriented, enormously difficult to beat in close range combat, with some long range options, which makes it fun to play.