Guild Wars 2

Based on the class forum’s rating of classes for PvE, the Necromancer is dead last on every response. I have two questions.

1.) What are the limitations of the necromancer’s build options that keep it low tier in PvE?

2.) How can some skills be improved to help the necromancer be accepted into PvE groups?

Short answer: no support.

Suggestions:

1.) Make Blood is Power an AoE that affects party members with might boons.

2.) Give axe weapon skills AoE options (skill 2 possibly hitting multiple targets around the primary target).

3.) Withering Precision: Additional affect that makes it so weakness applied by you now causes the target to receive 5% more damage from physical damage sources.

4.) Vampiric Rituals: Allies now attacking enemies in your wells now steal health on critical in addition to the trait’s current effect.

5.) Ritual Mastery: Allies deal 5% more damage when standing in your wells.

6.) Training of the Master: Allies gain increased precision for each minion you have summoned (+25 per minion via an aura centered around the necromancer).

7.) Death Nova: Now grants might to surrounding allies when a minion erupts.

Sustained dps is actually relatively low too according to the published math we are dead last in this but this unfortunately has a lot to do with very poor scaling on a lot of our abilities in organized runs at 25might stacks your abilities simply will not scale as well as everything else the very limited cleave options are also very punishing in this regard too. There are a few exceptions of course lich and wells can put out some fantastic damage but even with the right traits in place you’re looking at very long recharge rates. Wells unfortunately also interfere with might stacking and other support fields that have a much higher value in groups than dark fields.

With all that said Necros have a niche in high level fractals with weakness application through a variety of methods along with vuln stacking and then hitting epidemic mass aoe weakness/vuln can help a lot in some instances. Well of darkness(aoe blind) and blind from plague can marginally be good depending on your composition too. A lot of this value is lost on most bosses however where conditions of any kind basically fall off them to fast to be of use.

As stated above by others it simply lacks group support in today’s landscape across the board in PvE is the biggest issue.

I think one nice thing would be to give the necromancer access to a form of group aegis it could be thought of as ’Death’s Guard’ have a trait where it triggers on the group on death shroud usage so we had some control over when it activates I would even be fine with it not affecting the necro and just other party members. This would allow for some interesting play in PvE/WvW/PvP and fits right in line with the ‘vision’ ANet seems to have for the Necro. It’s just a single idea and I also think the base damage scaling for necro needs to be adjusted.

I’ll start with the positives. Unholy Sanctuary & allowing us to res/interact while in DS. REAL big step in the right direction.

- Very condi focused class. Prob being ‘group wide condi stacks’. As we can max bleed solo, any other condi’s added by party are 100% wasted, or having others not in condi gear applying weaker versions of our condi’s is a big group loss.

- Attrition. No dodge regen, no block, invul. Very little stability.
Our DS can be a huge hindrance, as we can’t condi clear/heal/combo/use utils etc.
We are a total pain to ‘support’. We take no heals while in DS, so using it as mitigation means the party get’s fixed and a few seconds we drop out on little life missing the heals.
It’s also VERY scary/frustrating to support us as our life force shows up as our health bar, looking like were always about to die.

- Boss/Elite/Champs. Immune or huge duration removal of our chills/fear, etc.

- No role. Massive nerfs to condi swaping/throwing group condi’s back killed that off.

- Crappy Combo’s/combo triggering. 20% proc on staff, or minions.

- Minions suck. They also ‘upscale’ champions etc as tho each was a player. (A.I. and even elite dyeing and going full CD if wet, etc)

- DS CD on Entry & EXIT. Not sure why on exit. It really makes Deathly Invigoration rather dangerous/unworthy. Also it seems we don’t gain life force on mob death if in DS. I really feel in PvE removing the CD on exit would add more skilled play. (Or it’d at least be nice to get lifeforce gain from dead mobs while in DS)

- Our support. Mostly Regen, that’s overwritten lots by others with weaker version. As pointed out Deathly Invigoration puts us in harms way and puts a fresh CD on DS, (Vs say a guard who bursts a heal while dodge rolling out of danger)
Our Vuln stacking from axe, can be done faster & AoE by other class’s.
We don’t really feed others might or any other buffs.

- DS damage only works off main hand weap. Meaning staff is ‘the’ weapon. Axe doesn’t really keep up with dagger, even if traited. Giving us only really 1 optimal set up as power.

Other classes do condi better. The only speciality necro has is epidemic. But thats not needed when an engi can just do superior aoe condi right from the beginning.

lordhelmos.7623:

Based on the class forum’s rating of classes for PvE, the Necromancer is dead last on every response. I have two questions.

1.) What are the limitations of the necromancer’s build options that keep it low tier in PvE?

Most of Necro’s conditions are soft CC. Every profession can do that and bosses treat them all equally.

2.) How can some skills be improved to help the necromancer be accepted into PvE groups?

If a group member traits and equips for condition damage, it should mean something. If not, it should mean nothing.

The necro profession is a very, shall I say, selfish class. It lacks overall support due to just general class design and past nerfs to the class that removed some of the little support we provided. The classes signature specialties mainly shine in pvp so we can’t really apply them in the pve side of things.
Not saying that our only flaws are lack of group support but it’s the defiantly one of the most obvious.

Necromancer is only bad for dungeon speed runs. Everything else is fine. With that health pool and all the condition damage (power too, cause mobs don’t dodge), most PvE content feels way easier than on other classes to me.

In,

Organized
Group
PvE

content, A necromancer is Useless. Once you have accepted this reality, You can go back to Soloing everything for a challenge.

Ropechef.6192:

In,

Organized
Group
PvE

content, A necromancer is Useless. Once you have accepted this reality, You can go back to Soloing everything for a challenge.

And then cry when you realise you could be much more creative with an ele or any other class for that matter.

spoj.9672:

Ropechef.6192:

In,

Organized
Group
PvE

content, A necromancer is Useless. Once you have accepted this reality, You can go back to Soloing everything for a challenge.

And then cry when you realise you could be much more creative with an ele or any other class for that matter.

i know right…

((sobs))

I have been playing Ranger. It is silly how much more powerful and capable it seems than Necro.