Guild Wars 2

Necromancers are unfortunately not too useful in Dungeons and FoTM. We have high SINGLE TARGET damage and… that’s pretty much it. Warrior with 100b+Axe is better for damage, too. So not much reason to take a Necromancer.

So what could make Necromancers more appealing?

First and foremost, Necromancers need cleave. This is our biggest issue, otherwise Dagger builds would be amazing in stacking situations.

Secondly, we need a niche. Guardians have reflect and protection, Thieves have blinds and stealth, Warriors have the highest damage in the game and banners, Elementalists have conjured weapons. What do Necromancers have?

Personally, I propose giving Necromancers the niche of control THROUGH defiant.

That is, perhaps allowing Necromancers to fear a boss into a wall, then allowing a team their usual stack-zerg things (and synergizing with Flesh Golem’s Charge skill.)

I can definitely imagine this useful for speedruns using Fiery Greatsword.

One concern is that the Warrior’s “Fear me!” would have to be adjusted to make this the Necromancer’s niche. Another concern is that this may trivialize bosses if a Necromancer could permanently fear a foe.

Well, I haven’t played for long, but I would think that Necromancers have a niche in the form of Minions. It’s just… it isn’t a great niche. Yes, MM is a good build, but for solo play, I’d think. I’ve heard that minions in dungeons/fractals/etc. seem to just get in the way. I want to say that some more support buffs on minions would be nice, but I just don’t have enough experience playing Necromancer to really say what the class needs.

Bosses are already trivialized, there is nothing more trivial about a boss that you can lure into a corner and maul for about 30s without doing anything but spamming attacks.

AnonMD.7263:

Well, I haven’t played for long, but I would think that Necromancers have a niche in the form of Minions. It’s just… it isn’t a great niche. Yes, MM is a good build, but for solo play, I’d think. I’ve heard that minions in dungeons/fractals/etc. seem to just get in the way. I want to say that some more support buffs on minions would be nice, but I just don’t have enough experience playing Necromancer to really say what the class needs.

Minions were good in GW1 because they mitigated damage, held agro, and actually BLOCKED FOES FROM CROSSING by forming a living meat wall (GW1 had body blocking)

Since bosses in GW2 have aoe/cleave and can move through minions, they provide nowhere near as much damage mitigation as they did in GW1.

Furthermore, Necromancers hold significantly much less minions in GW2, with only 5 minions compared to 10 in GW1.

In addition, if a minion dies in GW2, they have a recharge of about 30s, as opposed to GW1 where Necromancers were a Minion Making-machine.

Personally, I would love to see Minion Masters come back. However, it would require an entire rework, and it would only be useful in places like FoTM where you do not stack the entire time.

Necro already has good control. Unfortunately most of it is single target. Being able to stunlock bosses is bad design. Defiant is in place for a reason and it works really well, its a great example of what seperates experienced players from the rest. Its up to the players to work around it. If they refuse to learn about defiant then they dont deserve to be able to disable the boss.

Anyway if we want more control in the form of hard cc we would make the warrior take hammer (not needed anymore as dredge clown car got nerfed). If you want soft cc and low cd defiant stack stripping then necro already has that covered with very little investment (hello deathshroud).