Guild Wars 2

KirinDave.6451:

Dredlord.8076:

KirinDave.6451:

Dredlord.8076:

get a clue buddy, reread the whole thread so all those reasons are fresh in your mind and move on.

It was pretty cool how you didn’t actually address what I said.

that’s because it has already been said in this thread, were you too lazy to scroll up? or are you just trolling now?

reread my quote here, this time try not to be butthurt, take the advice and be learner for once…

I did. You were wrong about the axe before, you’re still wrong about it now. With this trait and vulnerability and bleed generation with a reasonable crit rate, you’ll exceed the effectiveness of the warrior trait within 2 auto-attacks in the worst case. It’s not exactly the grim scenario you insist on painting where every player has a condition curing fairy floating after them.

This is not “difficult.” This is not “hard.” This is not “good luck waiting for 6 more conditions.” This is trivial, the matter of 1.5-2.25 seconds.

And that’s just one way of many. For a power spec.

kirindave it doesnt matter how many stacks of bleed or vulnerability you have you only get 2% per unique condition on the target, you could auto attack with your axe till it was dead and still only get 4% damage.

and gluttony try to be a little less arrogant, our discussion is just as relevant to the thread as anything you have posted.

Meanwhile, on the Guardian thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/It-s-great-being-a-Guardian-isn-t-it-guys/first#post864755

Okay, but really. I agree with a lot that has been said. I don’t think we’re a terribly broken class that is unplayable and will make your fractal group die in a fire just for even considering bringing us, but I do think we have a lot of things that need to be smoothed out.

The argument about the Target the Weak I think is very telling of the problem with the class’s trait lines. They simply aren’t resonant. For example, I look at the Explosives line of the Engineer and I get it. I know what the trait line is about, but it still gives me wiggle room for how I want to craft my character. Same with the Guardian’s Zeal line. I love my Greatsword, so I’m going to go down the Zeal line to make my Greatsword better.

Necromancer’s trait lines aren’t terribly mixed up. They each have their idea and you get a picture of what the trait line is trying to do, but not all the traits within that trait line work towards that goal.

Kursor.5746:

Necromancer’s trait lines aren’t terribly mixed up. They each have their idea and you get a picture of what the trait line is trying to do, but not all the traits within that trait line work towards that goal.

And I think that’s the point of this thread. Play other professions (besides Warrior and Guardian) in PvE or PvW and you’ll find they’re all “broken” in some way. (Maybe in PvP too, I can’t personally say.)

If you don’t want to play other professions, go to their forums. Elementalists, Thieves, Mesmers, and Engineers all complain about bugs, broken traits, and how they only have one viable build because their profession is so screwed up.

Besides Warriors and Guardians, all the professions still need work. Necros are not uniquely broken.

The forums are not equal, though: the Necro forums have quite a few who insist on posting repeated complaints that Necros are the most broken class, have the most bugs, are uniquely booted or refused in dungeons, etc, etc, etc — probably a quarter of the first page of the forum.

To be honest, I LOVED the Warlock in WoW, so a GW2 Necro was an obvious choice for me. Except after reading these forums, Necros looked “broken” and “painful”, so I ended up playing 4 other professions before finally seeing positive postings like the OP and finally trying Necro. My other four alts are on the shelf now, while I’m loving my Necro. (I’m a PvE and WvW guy, not PvP.)

I was robbed by the whiners. Yes, there are problems, and several knowledgeable follks have made a good case for issues and possible fixes in this thread. But the whiners, the “we’re broken” people are turning players away and probably causing ANet to roll their eyes and ignore the legitimate issues that are raised here — if you wade through the whiners. I’m lucky that I decided to try a “broken class”. Many people won’t, which means a smaller player base, which means lower priority to ANet. And whiners mean party/guild leaders will be biased against Necros as well. It’s a self-fulfilling, self-flagelating prophecy.

How about a deal: if you think Necros are broken, then do the intelligent thing and reroll and never come back here. Deal? Roll a Guardian and bask in your working-perfectly, over-poweredness, m’kay?

@Druitt If people wanted to play guardian they would have, but if you keep bumping into problems, stuff that dont work, traits not doing anything, minion ai and the lack of updates / fixes the joy of playing just fades away.

Part of the fun is also the build diversity, but you run into so many problems trying to build your own build like no heal scaling with health syphon, no stat scaling for minions, no minion control, 2 transform skills that dont work with minions, wells you can spec for but is unusable under water and have long cd’s, minion ai breaking alot of skills.

That other classes have problems isnt ok either and the whole play other classes but not warrior guardian. CMONN the game is suppose to have 8 classes not 2 classes, when they decided to release the game with classes having 100+ bugs you would exspect some sort of heavy investment into fixing those within reasonable time.

Or should we really just accept all the broken stuff cause other classes(not warrior guardian) also have to deal with this?

yeah all in all that was a pretty ignorant post Druitt

the necro has come a long long way since release because of the “dedicated whiners” youre talking about

We play this class since we love it. We love the style, we love what is working.

But I also want our bug fix. So I will continu to post about them on the forum.

If a forum made you choose another class, it your fault, no one else is to blame.

I had a lot of fun finding and tuning my life leech build.

Even without heal scaling you can increase the amount of life you gain over time
with the proper traits, gear and skills.

I think one of the main problems is that a lot of necromancers are trapped in the
mindset that we are only a condition or pet class.

KirinDave.6451:

I did. You were wrong about the axe before, you’re still wrong about it now. With this trait and vulnerability and bleed generation with a reasonable crit rate, you’ll exceed the effectiveness of the warrior trait within 2 auto-attacks in the worst case. It’s not exactly the grim scenario you insist on painting where every player has a condition curing fairy floating after them.

This is not “difficult.” This is not “hard.” This is not “good luck waiting for 6 more conditions.” This is trivial, the matter of 1.5-2.25 seconds.

And that’s just one way of many. For a power spec.

wat

The trait works per stack of conditions, not per condition. Having 5 stacks of vuln gives you a 2% bonus not a 10% bonus.

I just ran some fractals last night and I actually feel that Necros are VERY powerful in them. Between the (now fixed) Spectral Walk and the condition transferring/converting, my group had an extremely easy time save one player (who wasn’t listening to the group). This was a party of 3 necros (All Scepter/Dagger//Staff), a mesmer, and a Guardian.

Your group dps must have been awful. Although admittedly that beats the average PUG where you have 4 Berserker heroes getting downed every 3 seconds any time anything touches them.

Yukishiro.8792:

Your group dps must have been awful. Although admittedly that beats the average PUG where you have 4 Berserker heroes getting downed every 3 seconds any time anything touches them.

The actual DPS was pretty good, really, thanks to condition damage constantly ticking at pretty close to max power (enemies were always close to the bleed cap, only reaching it when Time Warp got dropped). Between that and the fact that enemies always had at least 4 conditions on them made Feast of Corruption hit pretty hard, the damage output was pretty good.

Feast of Corruption hits for laughably low damage no matter how many conditions are on the target. I find it is barely worth casting, although obviously the calculation is different when you have 3 condition focused players and are hitting the stacking cap.

Even capped bleeds on a target is like 3k dps. From three players. That’s about what a single power glass cannon spec can put out. Again not that I particularly advise that in a dungeon, but 3 condition necros is going to be very low dps, especially on boss fights.

wiazabi.2549:

@Druitt If people wanted to play guardian they would have, but if you keep bumping into problems, stuff that dont work, traits not doing anything, minion ai and the lack of updates / fixes the joy of playing just fades away.

That’s the point. It’s a game. You have choices and it’s up to you to make it fun.

I’m not criticizing people who say X or Y needs to be fixed. I’m criticizing the folks who end up creating dozens of Necros Suxors threads that talk about our “traits are useless” or “Necros are useless” or “Necros are broken”.

Those people need to move on. They need to detach their self-esteem from a game profession and do something fun. Their vociferous whining is overwhelming these forums and turning people off from the class who would actually enjoy it — like me. Those people are probably also turning off the Devs, who see the overwhelming, over-the-top, emo criticisms and don’t bother to dig through the kitty litter to find the reasonable suggestions.

Kardiamond.6952:

We play this class since we love it. We love the style, we love what is working.

But I also want our bug fix. So I will continu to post about them on the forum.

If a forum made you choose another class, it your fault, no one else is to blame.

If you’re well-reasoned, continue away. I myself have done so.

My point is that there are posts every single day here — dozens of threads — that say “Necros Suck”, “LFG but not Necros”, “Troubling Trends Developing”, “Necro traits suck”, “Necros are useless”, “Necros are the most broken class”, etc, etc.

That’s counter-productive. It drives people away, which hurts the profession: fewer players means lower priority in ANet’s eyes. It makes Devs hesitant to enter the forums and engage with us, and it obscures realistic complaints. Not to mention it’s childish.

I’m not saying “Don’t complain, just leave”. I’m saying, “Don’t get all emo and flood the forums with shrieks and wailing.” I imagine you’d agree.

Dredlord.8076:

yeah all in all that was a pretty ignorant post Druitt

the necro has come a long long way since release because of the “dedicated whiners” youre talking about

No it hasn’t. I disagree 100%. It’s come a long way because of well-reasoned complaints.

I was a software developer for 16 years (not games, but I know the field well). A well-reasoned complaint gets listened to. Emo rants get ignored (by Devs, not necessarily other customers who don’t know any better).

I’m not against people, even repeatedly pointing out that trait X is bugged, or trait X doesn’t fit into traitline Y, or weapon Z has no blast finishers, etc, etc. Bring it up in every posting you make if you want. Put it in your signature if you want.

But posting “Necros are broken”, “Necro Traits are Useless” (just got another one of these today), “I’m thinking of quitting the game because Necros are so broken”, etc, is counter-productive. I won’t back down from that.

Devs don’t want to enter the necro forums because they realize how badly they’ve treated the class, and because so few people actually play it, not because they’re upset at the whines. The thief forums were FLOODED with whines after the thief nerfs and they still got plenty of dev posts.

In fact if anything whining seems to attract dev attention, not turn it away. Whether that attention leads anywhere useful is another question (see: Ranger).

I think that’s just conjecture.

My conjecture in response is that I’m sure the devs care about all the classes and try to give them all the love they can, but I’m sure the process is a lot more complicated than we know. Perhaps some broken things are technically a lot more complicated than just tweaking numbers, and getting the resources across multiple departments to fix that is no small request. (Design teams, balance teams, codemonkeys, QA for starters on ANY changes, I’ll bet.)

To think they “ignore” forums because they “treated the class badly” seems a ridiculous notion for any company taking themselves seriously.

Yukishiro.8792:

Devs don’t want to enter the necro forums because they realize how badly they’ve treated the class,

I highly doubt that they feel guilty and don’t show up.

Yukishiro.8792:

and because so few people actually play it,

One major aspect of how many play a profession has to do with its reputation. Reputation is affected by forums that are full of helpful tips or full of “we’re so broken I’m going to quit the game!!!!!!” posts. Not the only factors, but they are significant factors. I’ve seen it here and on other MMO’s before this.

Yukishiro.8792:

not because they’re upset at the whines. The thief forums were FLOODED with whines after the thief nerfs and they still got plenty of dev posts.

No they didn’t. In the first 10 pages of Thief postings you’ll find 4 threads that have Dev marks and two of these are on closed threads, one was on a joined thread.

Yukishiro.8792:

In fact if anything whining seems to attract dev attention, not turn it away. Whether that attention leads anywhere useful is another question (see: Ranger).

No, popularity of profession drives dev attention. They may not personally like it that way, but it is a business and if a third of your customers play Warriors and Guardians, well Warriors and Guardians will get more attention. If only 3% of players play a profession, it’ll be a lower priority. If, however, the forums are organized, well-reasoned, and helpful, that may raise your priority even if you’re a smaller profession. I’ve seen it on other MMOs (I never play the most popular classes) and I’ve seen no evidence here that it works differently.

Look at just the first two pages of these forums, for negative threads:

Necromancer traits are useless
Best decision I ever made for my necro (Sarcastic, now a Warrior)
Why do you play Necromancer? (Request to convince them Necro is worth it)
Necromancer Sigh
Necro Sucks -Proof
A Necromancer’s Worst Nightmare
Necros are so worthless….
So really how is the Necro? (Talks about how crappy Necros appear based on forums)
Serious Problem Starting to Trend…….. (Talks about “LFG except Necro”)
I Think I Know Why
conditionmancer for wvw still a joke

And that’s not even counting how many threads get side-tracked with “Yeah, but Necros suck anyhow, so…” kind of replies within threads.

Yukishiro.8792:

Feast of Corruption hits for laughably low damage no matter how many conditions are on the target. I find it is barely worth casting, although obviously the calculation is different when you have 3 condition focused players and are hitting the stacking cap.

Even capped bleeds on a target is like 3k dps. From three players. That’s about what a single power glass cannon spec can put out. Again not that I particularly advise that in a dungeon, but 3 condition necros is going to be very low dps, especially on boss fights.

I got a Hybrid Power/cond necro, and Feast of corruption hits for a good amount. Might not be the best DPS around, but it also regen life force and not too long cooldown.

My high crits are around 4k, which is pretty descent.

Corrupt boon + Feats of corruption is delicious.

Sheobix.8796:

I’m only going to address your “lack of defensibility” statement.
My necro has 3000 armor. 28k hp, and 3400 attack. There are a good portion of endgame warriors that don’t even have that. What are you talking about, not being able to defend? we have daze, immobilize, two fears, and a chill if you go d/horn + staff. plus, in DS, your armor still protects you. if you’re running berserkers with no points in death magic, you’re going to die 5x faster than i will. Period. i don’t even have to press any buttons or combos to prove that.

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction). All professions can get similiar stats without counting HP, but they still have better defenses as I’ve listed.

Daze is only 2 second from warhorn. Immobilization hasn’t actually any defensive capability. Fears are much more of interrupts rather than defensive skills. Chill and snares aren’t that worty in a game in which every profession run with at least one ranged weapon and melee weapons are filled with leaps and movement skills. That would have made sense in Guild Wars, but in Guild Wars 2, snares are worth almost nothing.
Other professions have access to multiple CC skills at the same time which isn’t only the 1s fear. Take Mesmers, for instance. They have a bunch of CC skills, while still having visual confusion and invulnerability.

sorrow.2364:

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction).

You make it sound as if there are actually different qualities of armor. As far as I can tell, Heavy Armor simply has higher armor values. So if a cloth-wearer and a plate-wearer both have 10,000 armor and 2,000 toughness, they are have exactly the same mitigation.

Or was this just a typo?

Druitt.7629:

sorrow.2364:

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction).

You make it sound as if there are actually different qualities of armor. As far as I can tell, Heavy Armor simply has higher armor values. So if a cloth-wearer and a plate-wearer both have 10,000 armor and 2,000 toughness, they are have exactly the same mitigation.

Or was this just a typo?

But, while having the same toughness, and bonus toughness cap is the same across all professions, not counting traits (in which Necromancers are inferiors anyway), Warriors still have an extra damage reduction of about 200 toughness compared to clothies. I’ve read somewhere it is 9%+ extra damage reduction on 1800 toughness (900 bonus toughness).
Plus, warriors have access to shield, which is another toughness booster.

When you take into consideration that the class is supposed to be an attrition class which it is hard to get away from according to the devs ask yourself if the class really fits that description.

That aside I don’t like the drama here. Is the class “broken”? For me that would mean unplayable without being no fun at all. Nope, by no means imo.

Is it great and do the traits offer a lot of interesting synergy? Does the class support many builds which are interesting to explore and really competetive? I don’t think so either unfortunately.
Especially the minions are a catastrophe. Even with a working AI their abilities would be pretty bland (ok, maybe that’s about taste but I no minion has a “cool” or “unique” ability).

Also bleeds get removed so often in fights were many people are involved and take a long time to stack up again to a serious level – long time in comparision to the huge numbers of direct damage you can eat during that time.

Whatever, I haven’t seen any class patch notes and I guess they will try to make money with X-Mas stuff so the most sensible thing is to play something else while coming back now and then to play a spvp game for fun. That’s win-win for me /shrug

Sheobix.8796:

3. 2s fear is an amazing and very long fear for battles. every 15s, that’s a very good tool. don’t underestimate fear. What I don’t like, though, is how long a warrior’s knockdown lasts. This does not mean we suck, it means other classes may have slightly unbalanced skills.

You just said in an “inverted” way “we suck” because that’s the essence if many classes have better skills .)

sorrow.2364:

Druitt.7629:

sorrow.2364:

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction).

You make it sound as if there are actually different qualities of armor. As far as I can tell, Heavy Armor simply has higher armor values. So if a cloth-wearer and a plate-wearer both have 10,000 armor and 2,000 toughness, they are have exactly the same mitigation.

Or was this just a typo?

But, while having the same toughness, and bonus toughness cap is the same across all professions, not counting traits (in which Necromancers are inferiors anyway), Warriors still have an extra damage reduction of about 200 toughness compared to clothies. I’ve read somewhere it is 9%+ extra damage reduction on 1800 toughness (900 bonus toughness).
Plus, warriors have access to shield, which is another toughness booster.

I think you’ve lost track of the issue. Someone (perhaps you?) said that Necros have no defense. Someone replied that they can have more toughness, vitality, and attack than many (not all) Warriors, plus various dazes, etc, so most certainly have defenses.

Perhaps Warriors get additional in-built bonuses that put them above his example Necro, but the point remains that in terms of mitigation Necros can be in the same ballpark as many Warriors. The statement that Necros don’t have any defense isn’t supportable.

Now perhaps Necros need some additional defensive mechanics overall. But the whole point of this thread is that absolute statements like “Necros have no X”, “Necros are broken/useless”, “Necro traits suck” are emotional arguments with no real basis. Are Necros OP dominators of every aspect of the game? No. Are they the worst profession at any aspect of the game? No. Do Necros have bugs, like other non-Warrior/Guardian professions do? Yep. Is at least one characteristically-Necro aspect of the profession frustratingly buggy? Yep, minions.

When people make reasoned and well-informed criticisms and suggestion, it’s good for the class and helpful to players and developers alike. Absolute statements simply aren’t true, and the deeper you dig the less true thay are.

Druitt.7629:

I think you’ve lost track of the issue. Someone (perhaps you?) said that Necros have no defense. Someone replied that they can have more toughness, vitality, and attack than many (not all) Warriors, plus various dazes, etc, so most certainly have defenses.

Perhaps Warriors get additional in-built bonuses that put them above his example Necro, but the point remains that in terms of mitigation Necros can be in the same ballpark as many Warriors. The statement that Necros don’t have any defense isn’t supportable.

Now perhaps Necros need some additional defensive mechanics overall. But the whole point of this thread is that absolute statements like “Necros have no X”, “Necros are broken/useless”, “Necro traits suck” are emotional arguments with no real basis. Are Necros OP dominators of every aspect of the game? No. Are they the worst profession at any aspect of the game? No. Do Necros have bugs, like other non-Warrior/Guardian professions do? Yep. Is at least one characteristically-Necro aspect of the profession frustratingly buggy? Yep, minions.

When people make reasoned and well-informed criticisms and suggestion, it’s good for the class and helpful to players and developers alike. Absolute statements simply aren’t true, and the deeper you dig the less true thay are.

Actually, in my original post I said that Necro lack of real defensive capability and I’ve motivated why I think so. People have probably only read the point title and than thought “wtf taht guy is crzy, necros hav no defenses?”, while I’ve clearly stated that with lack of defensive capability I mean that Necros have only a bunch of HP and not enough way to defend them.

Necros have plenty of passive defense, but he’s right that warriors have a built in +250ish (IIRC) armor advantage. Not to mention warriors have access to way more mobility and 100% avoidance like block or vigor or even the 5 second 100% invuln trait.

Asmodean.5820:

Is the class “broken”? For me that would mean unplayable without being no fun at all. Nope, by no means imo.

Is it great and do the traits offer a lot of interesting synergy? Does the class support many builds which are interesting to explore and really competetive? I don’t think so either unfortunately.

A reasonable summary. Though I would also point out that the other classes I play and follow (Elementalist, Thief, Mesmer, and Engineer) also complain that they’re shoehorned into one viable build (in PvP, anyhow) and they have entire trait lines that no one in their right mind would use, or that are mis-organized.

In which case, my summary is: does the Necro fulfill the conceptual description of the Devs? No. Some things have major problems (minion AI), while other things aren’t significant in actual play (fear).

Is the Necro painful to play? Depends. In PvE, it’s probably one of the more fun and interesting professions. In WvW it’s reasonable. Perhaps in PvP it’s not very exciting. But is the Necro uniquely worse-off than other professions (the fair-haired Warriors and Guardians excepted)? No, not really.

Can you make any kind of Necro that you might imagine from reading the Wiki, and play any aspect of the game (PvE, WvW, PvP), without any issues? Nope. Depending on what aspect of the game you’re playing, some approaches (builds, etc) are much more difficult than others. Is this unique to Necros? Can other professions play whatever way they choose? No, other professions suffer from similar issues.

Just take another profession to, say, level 20, and read their forums. Play with them in the Mists. Some classes (Guardians, Warriors) can be face-roll easy (and boring), but on the whole we all have problems.

I’d love to see suggestions about reorganizing the trait lines. In another thread, I made several suggestions for changing several traits. I’d honestly like to hear examples of how you see no synergy, and how that might be changed.

Yukishiro.8792:

Even capped bleeds on a target is like 3k dps. From three players. That’s about what a single power glass cannon spec can put out. Again not that I particularly advise that in a dungeon, but 3 condition necros is going to be very low dps, especially on boss fights.

My bleeds alone (nobody else contributing) hit for 1.5k a second. Poison slips in another 250 and reduces healing. Add in the direct damage that’s another 250 and 1 necro alone is making up 2/3 of what you said is all that 3 will accomplish. I’m not even counting the other skills I’m running, that’s just auto-attack. I pop off Blood is Power and I hit 3k dps alone.

And I am no glass cannon.

sorrow.2364:

Actually, in my original post I said that Necro lack of real defensive capability and I’ve motivated why I think so. People have probably only read the point title and than thought “wtf taht guy is crzy, necros hav no defenses?”, while I’ve clearly stated that with lack of defensive capability I mean that Necros have only a bunch of HP and not enough way to defend them.

But I believe it’s you who writes off DS entirely as not a defense. I’m not a PvP’er, so perhaps in PvP DS is not useful. But in PvE, it literally is like a channeled invulnerability bubble that lasts for an amount of time based on your stats and the damage it negates. That’s a defense. And it’s fairly active, since you can move and perform some other abilities while still channeling it. Unlike other bubbles, its duration can be extended by the Necro, depending on tactical choices and on equipment and traits.

You also seem to regard Necro armor/toughness/vitality as “not a defense”, while also emphasizing that Warriors have bonuses to their armor/toughness that are defenses. Yes, Necros don’t have invulnerabilities outside of DS and don’t have a plethora of teleports. They do have snares, interrupts, invulnerability via DS, mitigation via (relatively) high armor and vitality, etc.

Perhaps the game is unbalanced such that snares don’t accomplish much, either because of intercept-type moves or ranged weapons/skills. That’s an issue, and perhaps a serious one in PvP. But it doesn’t mean that Necros have no defenses.

Death Shroud is also better than typical “invlunerability” in that it also absorbs condition damage. Invulnerability such as from Defy Pain does not, nor does Distortion.

Druitt.7629:

But I believe it’s you who writes off DS entirely as not a defense. I’m not a PvP’er, so perhaps in PvP DS is not useful. But in PvE, it literally is like a channeled invulnerability bubble that lasts for an amount of time based on your stats and the damage it negates. That’s a defense. And it’s fairly active, since you can move and perform some other abilities while still channeling it. Unlike other bubbles, its duration can be extended by the Necro, depending on tactical choices and on equipment and traits.

You also seem to regard Necro armor/toughness/vitality as “not a defense”, while also emphasizing that Warriors have bonuses to their armor/toughness that are defenses. Yes, Necros don’t have invulnerabilities outside of DS and don’t have a plethora of teleports. They do have snares, interrupts, invulnerability via DS, mitigation via (relatively) high armor and vitality, etc.

Perhaps the game is unbalanced such that snares don’t accomplish much, either because of intercept-type moves or ranged weapons/skills. That’s an issue, and perhaps a serious one in PvP. But it doesn’t mean that Necros have no defenses.

As I said, I’m not talking about PvE.
I’m talking about any competitive environment, in which class unbalances feel heavy. Necros are absolutely subpar to any other profession in PvP and that’s the whole my point. I don’t think Necros are weak in PvE.

sorrow.2364:

As I said, I’m not talking about PvE.
I’m talking about any competitive environment, in which class unbalances feel heavy. Necros are absolutely subpar to any other profession in PvP and that’s the whole my point. I don’t think Necros are weak in PvE.

“Absolutely subpar”? If you consider that a top ranked player in PvP is a Necro, do you think it’s an individual problem, or a profession problem?

Gluttony.2017:

Could a mod kindly remove the posts from KirinDave and Dredlord? Honestly, you guys can start another thread talking about the effectivness of target the weak, but dont hijack this thread.
Personally, I dont find necros weak, however, to simply perform on the level of a noob thief who justs mugs, backstabbs and then spams HS, you have to put in a lot of effort. Thats probably why most people complain. That, and because our trait lines are just messed up and lack any form of co-ordination. And minions arent exactly reliable (if they dont stand around and actually attack they usually get wiped out with one AoE attack). So yeah, thats my 2cents.

the reason why i don’t call thieves OP (as i play one myself) is that by holding at least 2300 armor and 24k hp as a necro (which is super easy to do) you don’t die from those combos, and the thief in question is left with 0 initiative and 3 utilities to pull from to get away from you until they regen initiative. and they are locked out of stealth for 3 seconds.

my juggermancer takes 3 consqecutive BS combos to get to 0 hp, and i also have a ridiculously tanky and powerful DS and lich form doubles my stats for the duration. sooo…..

really, we have a lot more potential than a thief does. They were built to blow their load like a rhino, but after that they need to dodge like mad or use roll for initiative, or just plain run away until they catch you by serious surprise.

sorrow.2364:

Druitt.7629:

sorrow.2364:

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction).

You make it sound as if there are actually different qualities of armor. As far as I can tell, Heavy Armor simply has higher armor values. So if a cloth-wearer and a plate-wearer both have 10,000 armor and 2,000 toughness, they are have exactly the same mitigation.

Or was this just a typo?

But, while having the same toughness, and bonus toughness cap is the same across all professions, not counting traits (in which Necromancers are inferiors anyway), Warriors still have an extra damage reduction of about 200 toughness compared to clothies. I’ve read somewhere it is 9%+ extra damage reduction on 1800 toughness (900 bonus toughness).
Plus, warriors have access to shield, which is another toughness booster.

and we have access to a second refillable health bar. your point is? most of your arguments are stated without regard to the fact that we have a plethora of other tools available to us. if you’re going to sit there and not use ds3, dagger3, horn4, staff3, staff5, spectral grasp interrupt, well of blindness… plague form, death shroud AGAIN after regenning from spectral use and damage soaking…. then you’re plain dumb.

warriors have a few sources of CC just like us, and a shield. ever heard of using your skills at the right time to interrupt him?
(btw, all the cooldowns in the skills i JUST listed refresh in perfect rotation.)

Asmodean.5820:

Sheobix.8796:

3. 2s fear is an amazing and very long fear for battles. every 15s, that’s a very good tool. don’t underestimate fear. What I don’t like, though, is how long a warrior’s knockdown lasts. This does not mean we suck, it means other classes may have slightly unbalanced skills.

You just said in an “inverted” way “we suck” because that’s the essence if many classes have better skills .)

i never said better skills. they have skills, period. we have skills, period. one of their skills may be a tad long when invested in. (by like, one second for my tastes. it’s an opinion.) but then again, i could easily avoid being trapped by warrior knockdowns by breaking their line of sight and waiting for their repetitive combos.

Also, we have slightly unbalanced skills. get over it. who the hell can revive an ally in DS by hitting F+F1 at the same time? its a total troll tactic that most players who /whine ignore.

Yukishiro.8792:

Necros have plenty of passive defense, but he’s right that warriors have a built in +250ish (IIRC) armor advantage. Not to mention warriors have access to way more mobility and 100% avoidance like block or vigor or even the 5 second 100% invuln trait.

likewise, we have a freaking UTILITY that almost gives us 5s of invulnerability. it’s called well of darkness. 5s blind in an AoE!

not to mention, their boons like vigor come from a 40ish second cooldown shout that takes up a utility slot. if you wait for them to pop all their defense while they try to go to town on you, drop a single well of corruption, hit BiP, hit Lich, and you’ll kill them in 12 seconds or less while their shouts are cooling off. also, to get sources of healing/siphoning, they have to buy sigils, runes, take the regen healing skill, and invest in banner passive regen effects. their regen stacks by duration only, and caps at a certain number per-tick. (last time i tested this on a friend, i geared him in full cleric’s exotics and get got a 35second 12kish regen banner- 300ish per tick which re-applies until the banner is gone) but that’s what you get out of stacking a specific stat. We have a whole siphoning trait line, wells can siphon, sigils that synergize really kitten well with those traits, Regen for ~1.2-2k on staff2 (which also trigger with mark of blood dodge trait), Dagger2(if you’re ballsy to cast it) and consume conditions, which is hands down one of the best healing skills in game. And that’s what i get out of NO GEAR.

my point i’m trying to make with this wall of ragers on this thread is that they’re pointing our weaknesses while trying to support their claims with “this class can do BLAH, it’s waaaaay better than us, therefore our version sucks and makes us less viable”

but the flipside is, we have access to a huge variety of other things that those classes on their own DO NOT HAVE.

The way the game is balanced is by giving specific classes access to slightly better mechanics than other classes.
What necros have is a SOLID access to everything (except for block, aegis, and mesmer clones… rofl) and a build-able potential for each.

Asmodean.5820:

When you take into consideration that the class is supposed to be an attrition class which it is hard to get away from according to the devs ask yourself if the class really fits that description.

That aside I don’t like the drama here. Is the class “broken”? For me that would mean unplayable without being no fun at all. Nope, by no means imo.

Is it great and do the traits offer a lot of interesting synergy? Does the class support many builds which are interesting to explore and really competetive? I don’t think so either unfortunately.
Especially the minions are a catastrophe. Even with a working AI their abilities would be pretty bland (ok, maybe that’s about taste but I no minion has a “cool” or “unique” ability).

Also bleeds get removed so often in fights were many people are involved and take a long time to stack up again to a serious level – long time in comparision to the huge numbers of direct damage you can eat during that time.

Whatever, I haven’t seen any class patch notes and I guess they will try to make money with X-Mas stuff so the most sensible thing is to play something else while coming back now and then to play a spvp game for fun. That’s win-win for me /shrug

if you can’t tank and mitigate damage with the many tools available to the necro while spamming scepter1+dagger5+ds EB proc+BiP+staff2 all day, maybe you shouldn’t play a necro at all. because spamming all that stuff minus BiP is so easy. you can stack 20k of bleeding every 10 seconds or so, so whats the complaint? it’s not like classes can cleanse all their conditions every 10 seconds or so. for example, last i checked, Guardian’s contemplation of purity condition cleanse utility takes 60s to recharge. if you’re not downing them within that 1minute time frame, you need to quit playing necro.

playing smart. it goes a long way. play other classes, study them, and learn how to attack them at the right time. sometimes, all it takes is waiting for the first 5 seconds of engagement, when most players hit their skill-chains and are left with a bar of cooldowns.

for future flamers that keep pointing out that minions AI are junk, which must mean necro is a broken class because a popular playstyle is rendered ineffective for competitive play…

please just stop. you’re beating a dead horse. and i never stated in my OP that “minions are NOT broken. PLAY WITH THEM ALL DAY.”

wait for them to improve minions. because honestly, i’m pretty dang sure they know they suck already. until then, play with the other 30ish utils and large array of traits given.

Futuro.8036:

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Did I mention I run epidemic? I can keep bleeds, vulnerabilities and chills up on most enemies at most times, so 6% by myself, not including all the times I damage targets while they’re weakened, crippled, immobilized, feared, blinded (this is quite often). Then throw on all the other times targets are confused, burning or poisoned along with any other classes who apply the same conditions I do. I’d imagine it’s considerably higher than the 2% you seem to think. Or maybe I’m playing my class wrong.

So what your saying is you first have to get chill on the target THEN you have to get poison on the target THEN you have to get weakness on the target THEN you have to get your bleeds on the target for you to get 8% extra damage THEN you have to rely on ANOTHER class to get burning on the target THEN you have to rely on ANOTHER class to get confusion on the target for the 12% damage increase

OR a warrior just needs to auto attack to get 10% extra damage

why don’t you just use dagger4, staff4, plague sig (lol, that was a joke), or cleanse conditions? most of the time, you can take all that bleeding, and give it right back to them with a single button. if they blew their cleanse early, just bubble up and /laugh while they realize they’ve killed themselves.

oh, btw, if you’re really butthurt about warriors getting 10% bleed, go pick up scepter curses grandmaster trait for +33%, hemophilia for +20%, and maybe points in spite (% condition duration) with tasteful uses of afflicted runes to absolutely overshadow the stupid +10%.

Dredlord.8076:

yeah all in all that was a pretty ignorant post Druitt

the necro has come a long long way since release because of the “dedicated whiners” youre talking about

you’ve been bashing on posters who have explained in articulate detail their points, as well as provided helpful information on using the Necro to succeed.

Please stop insulting other players who work hard to provide advice or beneficial information.

Or.. just leave. thanks!

Sheobix.8796:

Gluttony.2017:

Could a mod kindly remove the posts from KirinDave and Dredlord? Honestly, you guys can start another thread talking about the effectivness of target the weak, but dont hijack this thread.
Personally, I dont find necros weak, however, to simply perform on the level of a noob thief who justs mugs, backstabbs and then spams HS, you have to put in a lot of effort. Thats probably why most people complain. That, and because our trait lines are just messed up and lack any form of co-ordination. And minions arent exactly reliable (if they dont stand around and actually attack they usually get wiped out with one AoE attack). So yeah, thats my 2cents.

the reason why i don’t call thieves OP (as i play one myself) is that by holding at least 2300 armor and 24k hp as a necro (which is super easy to do) you don’t die from those combos, and the thief in question is left with 0 initiative and 3 utilities to pull from to get away from you until they regen initiative. and they are locked out of stealth for 3 seconds.

my juggermancer takes 3 consqecutive BS combos to get to 0 hp, and i also have a ridiculously tanky and powerful DS and lich form doubles my stats for the duration. sooo…..

really, we have a lot more potential than a thief does. They were built to blow their load like a rhino, but after that they need to dodge like mad or use roll for initiative, or just plain run away until they catch you by serious surprise.

I feel like you don’t have much experience with a thief. First off they aren’t out of initiative after a BS combo, they have 6 left and more than likely 7-8 from regen. Second of all at the very least that BS combo is doing 15k damage(bringing you below 50% health) opening you up for HS spam to finish you. They also aren’t "stuck out of stealth for 3s vs a necro considering they get a stolen 3s fear, giving them ample time to finish you. If you get into DS dodge out of life transfer range then come back and just pummel you. Lich form is a bit tricky but that’s the only time I’d actually run away, mostly just to waste the cooldown :P.

A BS combo is not the end of the thief, that’s the opener. If it doesn’t kill you there are a multitude of things a thief can do to kill you. Only when things look grim is it time to leave. A good thief is going to BS combo and continue to kill you, not run away and wait for another BS combo. Personally, I don’t even play a BS thief. I play a high damage but decent health/toughness build that is built around dodging, stacking might, using auto-attacks+quickness to get people quickly into HS butter zone. I haven’t had any issues with necromancers, but it’s not like there are a ton of them running around.

I play both classes though. The necro has some neat stuff, it’s just not nearly as cohesive as what the thief has. Even though the thief probably has less overall variety, what it does have all works together very well. I truly await the day that the necro gets an overhaul and becomes cohesive. I also await the day I can make a vampire thief or use traps…

Sheobix, you made an huge post storm to answer them all, so I’ll answer to some salient point I’ve read in your 8 consecutive posts.

1. Well of Darkness isn’t a 5s invulnerability. It pulses every second making just one hit per second to miss. Any profession can deal much more than one hit per second and, also, they can move out of the well, if they aren’t completely stupid, taking their ranged weapon set (yes, everyone runs with at least one ranged weapon set) and striking you till you’re dead.

2. You can consider single target CC as a real defensive mechanic, especially when those CC are weapon skills. With a CC you are able to stop just one guy to attack you for about one second, 2 second if you’re bringing a Warhorn and probably more than one guy, which isn’t mitigating damage considering the amount of time it takes effect and the recharge time. You can also build with all the CC you have available and still not mitigating enough damage. Protection mitigates damage, vigor mitigates damage, clones and visual confusion mitigates damage, stealth mitigates damage (fell into visual confusion actually), blocks and invulnerability mitigates damage not CC, not snares and, of course, not Death Shroud.

3. Thieves can build as way better tanks (not actually tanks to be honest) when speccing into Shadow Arts and Arcrobatics and perform way better than a Necro, holding 3+ people at time. The point is that everyone runs as glass cannon, but there are few video on youtube of people running conditions and cutting people like butter while popping in and out of stealth, dodging like a rabbit and taking no damage at all, while being healed up at roughly full health and cleaned from all conditions each time they go into stealth.
Necromancers are a uneffective tanking machine, taking all the damage that comes to them, without having a real way to reduce that damage passively, meaning that before or after, the damage you are taking will outperform your heals. And this talking about tanky builds, what about when a Necro plays glass cannon compared to other professions? Slaughtered in a couple of seconds.

Sheobix.8796:

Dredlord.8076:

yeah all in all that was a pretty ignorant post Druitt

the necro has come a long long way since release because of the “dedicated whiners” youre talking about

you’ve been bashing on posters who have explained in articulate detail their points, as well as provided helpful information on using the Necro to succeed.

Please stop insulting other players who work hard to provide advice or beneficial information.

Or.. just leave. thanks!

actually I have been responding to ignorant posters like you and kirin who are spreading misinformation about the necro class.

take off your rose colored glasses before you post here, oh and actually know what you’re talking about for once.

example: this thread -> kirin thinking target the weak’s damage bonus applied for every condition in a stack. We only find this out after post upon post of his “hard work, advice and beneficial information”

Sheobix.8796:

I’m only going to address your “lack of defensibility” statement.
My necro has 3000 armor. 28k hp, and 3400 attack. There are a good portion of endgame warriors that don’t even have that. What are you talking about, not being able to defend? we have daze, immobilize, two fears, and a chill if you go d/horn + staff. plus, in DS, your armor still protects you. if you’re running berserkers with no points in death magic, you’re going to die 5x faster than i will. Period. i don’t even have to press any buttons or combos to prove that.

I’d note that Lich Form would increase your attack by almost 40% (though you only have Lich abilities in Lich Form, of course) and would add 4% to your HP which is basically an additional 4% mitigation. Plague Form would would add almost 7% to your HP, and would almost double your armor, plus provide an AoE blind for 20 seconds. DS with a full Life Force bar would essentially give you a channeled bubble that would sustain around 28K of damage before collapsing.

Yes, Forms are limiting and you don’t have full access to your equipment and skills. So you trade off 24 skills you’ve chosen for 5 in the case of DS and Lich, or zero for Plague. Perhaps not powerful enough to rank as highly mobile defense in PvP, but quite useful.

I don’t play PvP. I don’t even play WvWvW. And when I do I use my ranger alt. So I can’t tell about the strengths and weaknesses of the Necro in PvP, but in PvE I don’t think we are as weak as we are portrayed.

Does a necro really need damage mitigating skills? We have DS, access to regeneration and health siphoning, a great condition removal with Consume Conditions, can buff out hp with forms etc. We can tank! we’re just meatshields when we do, but we can do it. We also can support our group while doing it, since we have a great AoE heal skill in DS when we have the blood Transfusion trait equipped.

If you compare glass canons, I think we do pretty well in suriviability. I run a glass cannon build because I can’t stand the reanimator trait. My BF runs a glass cannon trait as Ele since he likes high numbers on a red back ground. If the two of us are alone, he goes down and I pick him up. Usually. The opposite dies happen every once in a while but mostly it’s me picking him up. So to me, a glass cannon necro surives longer than a glass canon ele.

Apart from DS, a necro has other ‘extra health bars’. Plague and Lich both give extra HP. While you can’t heal while in plague or lich form, you have extra HP sustaining more damage than usual and if it gets critical you can always get out of the form early, use a heal and get into DS.

@ Druitt

I appreciate your optimism, but I would like to address a few things.

The crux of much of what you have said is “you make your own fun.” This is true, but you also need to consider that we are customers and not just some kid in a sandbox complaining about being bored. We have reasonable expectations that our purchase will be complete. It wasn’t. It was addled with bugs, many of which are directly affecting important traits/skills.

Two, the Necro is infinitely playable. It is largely pigeon-holed into condition, but it can make do in a power build easily enough. That said, relatively speaking, Necromancer does feel in a bad place. Our traits are poorly laid-out, thought-out, and bugged. Axe does pathetic damage. Our build options are limited. And our class mechanic is uninspired (it is virtually a shield) and aimless.

Three, the Devs have generally been pretty fair. That said, any early Necro will remember the l2DS SNAFU. It was insulting because it was essentially a l2p post while we were busy getting crushed by pre-nerf thieves, mesmers and guardians. Moreover, their lack of communication has been noticeable. They seem to only hop onto the forums when the forum-rage has hit its breaking point. Moreover, they have shown little consideration for what we consider to be the big problems. Hell, many of us are at this point asking them to disable one of our traits so we can enjoy the game a tiny bit more. Ever moved at combat speed for what feels like the majority of a zone? I have… it is kittening annoying. Pet AI? I am at the point where I use Golem as my elite, but I only summon him when I need him because if I have him out, he aggro’s everything. Working as intended?

Finally, and this is important, you weren’t ‘robbed’ by we whiny forum dwellers. You chose to follow the crowd and not roll the class you were most interested in. This is in zero way our fault. Many of us rolled Necros expecting them to be meh (after BWE 3). You could have done the same.

QSpec.4298:

@ Druitt

I appreciate your optimism, but I would like to address a few things.

I’m not optimistic. I’m not saying “everything is fine, stop being negative”. I am saying that every profession I’m interested in (i.e. all but Warrior and Guardian) have quite a few problems, some of the that can be called game-breaking if you want. If you’ve played other classes to 20 or 30, and if you browse their forums and the wiki, it’s pretty clear.

QSpec.4298:

The crux of much of what you have said is “you make your own fun.” This is true, but you also need to consider that we are customers and not just some kid in a sandbox complaining about being bored.

Actually, no, that’s not the crux of anything I’ve said. That’s a single quote from a single posting in a single thread. And it was aimed at the over-the-top emo folks who launch threads about how broken the class is, how despised it is by other professions, etc. Pure rage and exaggeration. Which turns of prospective Necros and devs alike.

For those raging folks, it is useful to gain perspective that this is just a game. Try other professions and you might find you like them better. Don’t keep banging your head against the wall and then rage about it.

But that’s not the majority in these forums. Look on the first page of our forums and you’ll find 5-10 threads that say Necros are useless, their traits are worthless, no one wants to invite them to dungeons, the best build for a Necro is to become a Warrior, etc, etc, etc. THAT is what I’m addressing.

QSpec.4298:

We have reasonable expectations that our purchase will be complete. It wasn’t. It was addled with bugs, many of which are directly affecting important traits/skills.

Quite right. The keyword is “reasonable”. I’m trying to fight the unreasonable folks.

QSpec.4298:

Two, the Necro is infinitely playable. It is largely pigeon-holed into condition, but it can make do in a power build easily enough. That said, relatively speaking, Necromancer does feel in a bad place. Our traits are poorly laid-out, thought-out, and bugged. Axe does pathetic damage. Our build options are limited. And our class mechanic is uninspired (it is virtually a shield) and aimless.

A reasonable set of opinions. But I’d point out that Elementalists also complain about poor trait layout (overly-focused and niche in their case), and buggy skills, including build-defining skills like Ride the Lightning (D/D build core skill). I’m not saying that you should be quiet because we’re not alone, but I do think it says that there are things to be fixed and not that the class is uniquely, among all classes, broken.

Which you’re not saying, but a LOT of people — I call them whiners — are. You’re not a whiner.

QSpec.4298:

Finally, and this is important, you weren’t ‘robbed’ by we whiny forum dwellers. You chose to follow the crowd and not roll the class you were most interested in. This is in zero way our fault. Many of us rolled Necros expecting them to be meh (after BWE 3). You could have done the same.

Actually, both you and I were robbed. I didn’t “follow the crowd”. I’ve specifically avoided the most popular classes and even races as much as possible, while still following my interests. BUT when you come to a forum and find that apparently 90% of folks think the class is “broken”, “worthless”, “unwanted”, “despised”, “painful”, etc, yeah it gives you pause. I’ve done MMO’s before and know people in forums are more likely to complain, but the Necro forum was (and still is) the most critical, negative, absolute forums in any game I’ve ever played.

You, too are hurt. As you say, ANet is reasonable, but they are also a business and they don’t have infinite resources and they have to prioritize to please the maximum number of customers, which means the professions that have more players. When the public face of a profession is so over-the-top ugly, it turns away prospective players, which means lower priority in ANet’s queue. It hurts you, too.

I don’t want to say Necros don’t have problems, but the forums are too negative.

The last time i saw something like this was on the ffxi dragoon forums.
And we successfully managed to damage our reputation in the game to the point
that when you entered a party, at least two people instantly left and just said “loldrg”
in party chat before doing so. Or they asked the leader to kick you.

The Necromancer isn’t perfect but it’s also not broken as badly as this forums wants you to believe.
If you overdo it, developers won’t listen to your justified complaints… and the community
in the game will shun you.

Thanks for the post, helped out a lot, I usually like to run a class that has summons or sort of dot damage type (warlock, witch doctor, gw1 necro, etc). The only thing I have beef with right now is the lack of AI that the minions have. I’m sure you read A LOT of complaints about it and I apologize in advance if bringing it up gets under your skin, but as a huge fan of being a summoner in other games, I hope you understand what I’m trying to get at. I recently got back into playing and noticed they added a new set of gear called Apothecary (condition, toughness, healing. I think) I wanted to craft that for my necro thinking that could be good for either MM or condition based necro with scepter/dagger combo with staff as swap. Wanted to get your opinion about it and about MM Necros, your feedback will be greatly appreciated.