Guild Wars 2

Without a good team to support you, which is what 90% of the games are like at the moment, I feel this gif perfectly describes what playing a necromancer feels like…

Honestly, I’ve played necromancers in PVP for probably half a year now. I really enjoy it, but there’s just way too many hard counter classes for us. Sure I can play it safe and kite 24/7, but when there’s a good team on the other side there’s nowhere you can run with no mobility and stability…

I hope we get some tweaks next expansion/season.

I have been playing necro in solo queue all seasons. It gets worse from season to season. You need support of a team because hp pool and death shroud don’t offer enough sustain after all the balancing. There is still condi spam and now direct damage comes back again as well. In most team fights you are target number one. Especially when the game starts. The fact (for example) that you don’t have any death shroud pool at start for a long time now shows that anet does not look into tweaks for necros.
This would have been an easy fix to help with the always focused at start problem. Having no pool is even worse than having blocks, evades, invul on cool down for other classes imho.

Kiting as a necro is not that great either as most other classes (if not all) got more mobility.

Warrior with all the cc, resistance and high burst damage -> no chance. Druid just outsustains you. Thief evade, evade, evade, damage. Revenant deals insane damage – similar to warrior. You are death before you can corrupt or apply your own pressure. I have not that much experience with guard. But I guess the new guard can outsustain a necro easily as well.

Sure you can play and win half of the matches as average guy. But it is less fun from season to season. Sometimes frustating if you see how weak you are because you have no options for counter play to almost all other meta specs.

The only thing you can do atm is to join a team that has a dedicated babysitter for you :-).

What are you talking about? Fighting perma-cleanse CC AoE Dragonhunters is so fun! Especially when every game has like 3 of them!

Fun for the whole family.

issue isn’t generally for duels but the +1’s & +2’s are absolutely killer. With no blocks/evades/invuns you are basically taking full bursts and with the current state of the pwr creep necros are just not viable without a solid team to control +1 situations. If i’m fighting on point vs lets say a druid (which i have no issues with controlling the fight on point) i will eventually kill them or have them run, but if my team isnt paying attention and i get +1 by a theif/rev/DH/Mesmer/War/2nd druid….i’m toast. 1 – 600 range leap with no evade property = FML. Wurm was viable last season but can easily be pre-bursted or is insanely hard to cast during battle (needs a Cast time reduction imo).

I commented playing necro in solo q is hard now. Someone replied necro just needs to kite. I bet they haven’t got smashed by rev and thief.

You have to be good mechanically with perfect rotation. It’s really not forgiving.

Not to forget that you weaken your team when playing necro. As free target you get down a lot. If your team mates try to pick you up it is a perfect opportunity for the opponent to concentrate damage. Even when winning it feels bad if your team had to carry you.

Yes I agree.

MAYBE.. JUST MAYBE if we are more mobile, then kiting wouldn’t be that big a problem and we wouldn’t get gang smashed by faster classes (which is like every class? Lol).

MAYBE.. JUST MAYBE if enemies could let us have a jolly time 1v1ing on a node, perhaps we could be a more viable class.

MAYBE.. JUST MAYBE if we had more sustain/stability and mobility ….

You know what, I’ll just wait and see what happens next balance. Wishful thinking, right folks?

Yeah, I’ve been playing necro almost exclusively for the last 4 years now (roughly), and I honestly only stay with it because I love the style and theme of the class. It’s core design flaw is in it’s HP pool. Other classes have scaling defenses such as blocks, evades, and invulnerability. Necro obviously has none of these and instead has an extra, self-degenerating HP pool that is unavailable at the beginning of a match until charged. If 4 people attack a mesmer using blurred frenzy, 0 damage is taken, where if a necro has 4 people hitting him, he/she just has to eat all of the damage. In a 1v1 situation this makes necro ‘okay,’ but in situations where you’re being focused you have a massive disadvantage. Couple that with long cast times (not allowing for quick reactions) and low mobility, it’s no question why it’s not a “top-tier class.” For that reason, I honestly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who REALLY wants to win. Just look at guardians right now though, they survive like nothing else with their 80+% block uptime lol.

Necro needs a shroud/skill revamp to allow for scaling defense before it will be in line with other classes. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for an elite spec that will change things. If not, or until then, I’ll stick with playing my non-optimal, but fun class.

Exactly my thoughts. As seasons started there was no issue because chill application and uptime compensated for weak death shroud more than it was balanced. Also shouts (rise in particular) were helping with scaling. First chill got nerfed which itself was OK but never got balanced. Now rise has changed in line with similar adjustments for other classes for the same type of skill. Together with amulett changes, persisting condition meta and all the buffs to direct damage classes (thief, war, guard) necro sustain can’t keep up anymore in PvP. In PvE this isn’t an issue. Get viper/sinister gear and you are doing fine. Without a PvP balancing team and low resources spent for PvP in general it will take ages for anet to do adjustments I guess. Warrior, Guardian, Thief, Necro (maybe all classes) where in the same weak state once and it took forever until they got fixed.

gin.7158:

I commented playing necro in solo q is hard now. Someone replied necro just needs to kite. I bet they haven’t got smashed by rev and thief.

While you don’t kite a Thief, ever. You can definitely kite a Rev. Just dodge surge, and UA if the rev has has enough might to make it hurt and it’s easy going from there on.

EvesDesire.2596:

Necro needs a shroud/skill revamp to allow for scaling defense before it will be in line with other classes. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for an elite spec that will change things. If not, or until then, I’ll stick with playing my non-optimal, but fun class.

I totally agree with this as I’ve said so in other threads. Because our defence is static it’s hard to balance. If it’s too high it’s too good at 1v1, if it’s too low we get destroyed instantly in teamfights. Necro being tanky is why we don’t have nice things. And sure necro is tanky, but hardly anything in this game is about being tanky. It’s mostly about avoiding or mitigating dmg. This is why I feel like the devs didn’t know their own game well enough when necro was designed. Which is clear looking at a lot of statements they made around launch.

I really like this class and I’ll stay on this ship even if it sinks.

DTATL.9641:

I really like this class and I’ll stay on this ship even if it sinks.

I’m on the same line with you there. TO THE END!

I would rather die as a necro than live like a cheese!

Nero was “designed” with the idea to outlast your opponent so low mobility unfortunately is part of our class. I have found that staying alive is very hard in the power burst meta of this season, especially as a condi Nero. The warm up time for condis, especially in a 1v1 is too long and your mostly dead, or they are cleansed, before your condis are worth it.

I’ve been running a power build myself to stay alive a bit longer and do some damage in the fights.

I hope to submit it to meta battle soon as I see a marked survival increase in playing lately.

I’ve been running a Spite/Curses/Soul Reaping Necro with Wanderer+Krait Runes and Earth/Frailty sigils on scepter/horn and been having lots of success with it. +1ing with this build is pretty deadly :P
You need Foot in the Grave tho. I played one game without it and ran into 2 condi warriors and…. yeah. *crawls into a dark corner in a fetal position *

Edit: I just realized Frailty sigil is irrelevant with Spite. Time for Torment sigil.

To play Necromancer successfully in this meta, you need to be mechanically proficient, you need to know your matchups, and you need to be willing to make changes and try different things. Builds for Necromancer are not static, and Necromancer has access to a number of good utilities and traits to help you deal with different compositions and situations.