Guild Wars 2

First of all i want to say thanks for making Necro so fun and cool profession (with exception of minions, sucks to have 4 skills that i will never use).
Jon has stated multiple times that necro is one of hardest class to master and i could not agree more, cause the difference between me in betas and now is huge, i utilize my DS and use my skills properly etc. etc. but im wondering once you master necro, are you actually more powerful than other classes?
Cause atm even tho im far from mastering but im 10 times better necro than any other prof, yet i feel only slightly more powerful on necro. I know everything about my necro and i do “wonders” on him but these “wonders” give me same results as playing my mesmer, and i dont even know what my skills do on mesmer.

P.S.
I`ll take the chance and share my idea about new necro skill:
IMO necro is balanced in such way that he should NEVER run around with 0 life force (which happens quite a lot), so how about giving us a F2 skill, which gives you 20% life force on 1 min cooldown and is only usable outside of combat? To disguise it and not break immersion etc. i would make it into small demon that doesnt attack and isnt attackable, once you sacrifice it you get life force. I think it would be cool for those who dont care about life force too cause then they would have small demon to run around with, even if their not minion masters.

EDIT: I just want to say that im sorry for even bringing this up, this is first time im on forums but now after reading them i see that people have no idea what their talking about, they even misinterpret my topic as necros beeing bad… I didnt mean that necros are bad i just meant that they take more effort to be as good as others but doesnt reward you if your better than others.
If your having problems with necros then its only your fault and Jon Peters ir right, once you actually learn to play it then your fine.

Basically if a dev calls out a whole community something is wrong (just remember what happened in Warhammer Online). However, if a whole community is too stupid to play a class properly, then it begs the question why Mr. Peters doesn’t come down from heaven and gives us a guide explaining to us how to spec and some tactics in pvp to make us nasty killing machines he is talking off or at least implying us to be.

I didn’t think this was an elitist game? So you’re saying that Mr. Peters is saying that we have to master the class to be any good at it? So about 5% of the total necro population (before rage quits /sigh) will ever be good at it?

Doesn’t seem very sound to me for a non-elitist type of game. I came here to relax lol… I play Tera when I want to be an elitist. Jusayin…

Pretty sure its time to reroll unless you want to wait for them to give us a viable power build, but remeber they arent gonna increase our effectiveness so it will be viable power build with the same crap dmg axe, dagger and staff, Hurray. Realy feeling the love (( though we shoulda known “love” means something else in the Anet dictionary when that statement was followed with a nerf too our scepter making us worse condition appliers then mesmers, engineers thiefs and warriors ))

I’ve never seen a developer patronize an entire community of players like that before. wow. Anet, really? So 95% of the necro community has no clue how to play the class and needs to l2p . . that’s his professional opinion?

I don’t think anyone is saying DS isn’t good, because it definately is. The main problem is that if you spec more towards DS, with 30 in soul reaping, for the 50% cd reduction (which is one of th ebest traits a necro has), you still need to put 30 in curses to do damage, which only leaves 10 points to alocate in either death for increase marks/staff mastery, or blood for mark of evasion. Which means youre going to be lacking survability at the start of the fight. I even tried using blood is power for the 20% LF, but this skill is meant to give that boost to LF at the start, however since it applies a 10sec bleed to yourself (around 2.3k damage ifyoure specced for condition damage….) it’s really a bad skill. The skill would be so much better if it just gae 20% LF and nothing else.

Of course you can start a fight with a staff, while using Soul Marks trait (3% LF from marks) and get maybe 15-20% LF with a little staff #1 thrown in, But this then means you’re marks will be on cd for for a signifcant amount of time (20/25/40sec for the 3 best ones), so you wont be able to use them at a more important moment during the fight, i.e. interupting a res/finisher.

So, you can spec more towards DS and SR, and lose that early survivability or spec a little towards it (like most people do now, 10/15/20 in SR) and have better innitial staying power, but slightly less towards the end of the fight.

A necros problems would definately be less severe if they just started with 20-30% LF.

I really do consider the self-inflicted bleed to be more of a blessing than a curse, as you suggested.

You can either consume it for extra healing, staff #4 to transfer it to the target, offhand dagger #4 to transfer it, or even turn it into a boon with a well.

I’m not attempting to be a Jon Peters fan-boy, but I have seen on multiple occasions the incorrect usage of death shroud. Necromancers will often spend too much time in DS, spamming #1 for stacks of might- And this might be a valid strategy if you don’t expect to take damage. But the difference between keeping life force above 50% to soak up a burst ability and having absolutely none left with 10 stacks of might is quite large.

Necromancers shouldn’t be sitting in death shroud and treating it as a secondary life pool, they should be using it as a defensive utility to counter burst abilities.

Demonical.1039:

Pretty sure its time to reroll unless you want to wait for them to give us a viable power build, but remeber they arent gonna increase our effectiveness so it will be viable power build with the same crap dmg axe, dagger and staff, Hurray. Realy feeling the love (( though we shoulda known “love” means something else in the Anet dictionary when that statement was followed with a nerf too our scepter making us worse condition appliers then mesmers, engineers thiefs and warriors ))

How do you make power build viable without increasing the effectiveness of power builds…? Oh, right.. You nerf scepter bleed durations. Even if this was a “L2P” issue, why does our class need to work harder than others to achieve the same results? Why not just play a better balanced class?

Ah, I forgot. Necromancer is dangerously OP if we find the super-secret build.

Kayotik.5790:

I really do consider the self-inflicted bleed to be more of a blessing than a curse, as you suggested.

You can either consume it for extra healing, staff #4 to transfer it to the target, offhand dagger #4 to transfer it, or even turn it into a boon with a well.

I was going to go into details as to why i think it’s horrible, but I didn’t. I do not like it because as I said it’s main use will be to give a boost to LF when you need to most, at the start of a fight. Which means you generally wont have many conditions on you at the time, so wasting a heal/transfer on just bleed is pointless. Sure if you’re running with plague signet you’ll likely have more to transfer/heal from, but you want to use plague signet at the most effective time, which often isn’t in the first 10seconds. So you could heal first, but then you’re left without a heal for 25sec.

Which ofc is just my eternally pessimistic view of things.

The “super-secret” aspect of the necromancer, that many still have difficulty grasping, is that the necromancer isn’t designed for 1v1 situations.

Let’s take a good look at the necromancer’s abilities, weapons, and synergies between the two:

Arguably the best ability a necromancer has in terms of raw damage is epidemic. On a 12 second cooldown, this ability alone can deal (5 target aoe x 3000+ damage per second from bleed/poison/burning damage) 15,000 damage PER SECOND.

Not the mention the ability to spread blind, chill, weakness, and vulnerability at the same exact time!

Both the scepter and offhand dagger have aoe bleeds, as well as debilitating debuffs associated with them.

The staff specializes in aoe marks, which can be increased to a very reasonable size with the greater marks trait (if the bugs ever get fixed).

Axes and daggers, although having no AoE damage, benefit the most from power + crit chance. This synergizes exceptionally well with wells, which also happen to be particularly useful in AoE damage.

And of course the highest damage per second ability in death shroud just so happens to be an AoE.

The necromancer is designed specifically for multiple-enemy encounters. This is where the necromancer diminishes in tpvp/spvp, and becomes extremely effective in WvW and multi-target pve encounters.

Kayotik, wait! Jon Peters tells us DS is basically a second HP pool and we have to learn to useit as such, and you tell us that in order to achieve greatness, we shouldn’t treat it as such?
How isn’t that a sign of flawed design?

@Kayotik: I am sorry, but I have heard this argument “it is a support class and not meant for 1v1” over the last years in many mmos simply to justify the existence of an underperforming class. Your example ignores that there is also a lot of cleansing going on (and that most classes have a 1-button cleaner as well).

And as a sidenote: a class which needs to be babysitted has been always a failure regardless how much sugar-coated you it.

Imo however, the necro tries to do too many things at once and that’s why they will stay subpar simply because Anet fears that they get too strong. I wouldn’t mind for example a trait that boost conditional damage significantly and as a trade-off prevents you from summoning your minions or keeps you from enter DS. Well, you get what I mean.

@Kayotik.5790
Necros have no problem 1v1, Basically Necros should be fearing in 1v1. Please explain otherwise and i will prove otherwise.
@Asmodean.5820
You simply have not learned to play the necro good yet. No need to complain because you went A spec you saw on twitch tv. Necros are balanced preferably an above OP one. the dev is right. the necro community is people who do NOT know how to play. DS is op. 2nd health bar. gap closer, fear, and if vs mesmer or engi, clones and turrents can be easily disposed with the use of skill # 4 in DS. Please learn to play before posting. Only fixes needed is minion AI and (Imo our fear is too short, or shorten the fear of when thiefs steal ours), and some traits. THATS IT. nothing else.

@Tony.2150
So Dagger MH and Axe MH should remain completely unusable? Epidemic and Plague Signet should remain as absolute necessities? What will happen when the inevitable nerf to those two skills happen? Will you still stand and say Necromancers are okay?

Most people still do not understand what the whole argument is about. We know that Scepter+Dagger OH works, we know the build with Epidemic and Plague Signet works; the issue is that it is the ONLY thing that works. Necros have no other options, and even this working build can be ruined by other bleed stackers as bleeds can only stack so much.

@Swadow.6213
WHAT!?!?? are u talking about? well do u see duel pistol thiefs walking around? do u see Mace/shield wars walking around? yes there are certain weapons you use to Obtain Good Dps. You stubborness confusses me. I do not use those utilitys at all. IMO theyre good. but trash to my build. They wont nerf dagger and axe for its the only way we can maintain dps with other classes. NECROS DO HAVE OPTIONS. I run no signets and no corruptions. I run wells. ( here we go the well is bad inc). Scepter dagger works as Condition but what people do not see CONDITION NECROS are not upfront DPS. They sit in the back and dot and assist team. Yes, they are killers, yes they do help the team But really. Our bleed dmg is U.P. A thief can spam deathblossom get up to 25 stacks. for we can get about 15 maybe 18 at most with ours. Sorry im a little slow im just bored doing free tourneys. But as i said. there are many viable builds for necros to do what u want to do. The main 3 i have seen are Condition/Power/Tank. Not many other versitile ways. But what other class has versitile ways. Not warriors, not thiefs, not mesmers, not guards. WE may be limited to certain specs/traits to be viable in pvp But isnt every other class?

Jesus clean up your freaking post please, that is absolutely horrible to read Tony.2150. Paragraphs, USE THEM. Also, what kitten stubborness? It seems you are the one who is too stubborn to realize the situation at hand.

Pray tell what other options do we have other than Scepter+Dagger OH/Staff? Axe? The damage is so laughably low and only tickles. Dagger MH? Good luck surviving in melee with Thiefs and Warriors. And also yes, Wells are bad against opponents with something called brains as they actually move away from them the instant they are dropped.

You also seem to say that you do not use Epidemic nor Plague Signet, so you arent getting invited into many groups are you? Or if you are they either kick you the moment they notice you don’t have Plague Signet to be a useful asset or Epidemic to have any AoE presence.

Swadow.6213:

Jesus clean up your freaking post please, that is absolutely horrible to read Tony.2150. Paragraphs, USE THEM. Also, what kitten stubborness? It seems you are the one who is too stubborn to realize the situation at hand.

Pray tell what other options do we have other than Scepter+Dagger OH/Staff? Axe? The damage is so laughably low and only tickles. Dagger MH? Good luck surviving in melee with Thiefs and Warriors. And also yes, Wells are bad against opponents with something called brains as they actually move away from them the instant they are dropped.

You also seem to say that you do not use Epidemic nor Plague Signet, so you arent getting invited into many groups are you? Or if you are they either kick you the moment they notice you don’t have Plague Signet to be a useful asset or Epidemic to have any AoE presence.

I never use Plague signet. I have also never been kicked from a group. And only one of my builds uses Epidemic. In fact the only time i use Epidemic is if I am asked to run Condition, and that does not always happen.

@ Swadow.6213
Sorry, I do not care for paragraphs though i may use them now since you decide to insult me.

SO your telling me that i dont get into groups? Just because i dont run the signet you saw on twitch.tv, Im a champion phantom btw. I know what im doing and i dont get kicked out of groups. Every tourney ive been in i get added on friends because they dont see necros played like i do. For your info.

When i VS thieves and warriors. Im in there face because that is my build. I run power/crit necro and im good at it, plus it is my playstyle. Dont come around bargining in like you know everythign about necro. I have never dissed another build. Only i have said anything is to people who complain. Curious of what i do I will post my build.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.1.4.13.18.24.24.33.33.106.108.109.121.129.2.2.6.302.310.312.0.0.0.0.0.0.350.353.0.366.367.0.30.0.0.20.20

My build^. paragraphs doing alright for you?. Because i have no trouble continuing why you are so stubborn to see only few spells are useful in pvp. Get out the box and Learn.

Edit: Wells are bad to people have brains?… Dont you have a brain. Dont you know what an immobilize does? dont you know how to bait? Do you not know how to properly learn to play against classes. Learn combos. Learn what works then please apply your “brain” to this concept.

Feel free to continue this arguement. I got work soon but i will reply to your superior knowledge of the utility skills we necros have.

@Nixxez
Jon is technically correct in saying that life force is used as a secondary health pool. But this isn’t the correct mindset for players to properly capitalize on it.

Consider death shroud to be more like a “power word: shield” from WoW (I know, come at me), and instead of mindlessly spamming it every time it’s available (or in this case, with the limitation of remaining life force), use it to prevent a large amount of incoming damage that would have been otherwise hard to recover from.

It still operates as a “secondary health pool” by diminishing like one when receiving damage… but it’s usefulness would be better compared to a defensive utility.

@Asmodean
I agree entirely that the justification for how well a class can do cannot hing on it’s success in supporting other players. That would lead to an extremely boring and passive play-style (although some may find that more appealing). But hear me out:

Whereas a ranger may be able to stack 25 bleeds on a single target, we have the ability to stack 12-15 bleeds across six targets (totaling 72-90 stacks). The necromancer is not designed to be a support class, unless you consider any aoe-centric character “support”.

To further validate this, take a look at the necromancer utilities. Outside of pets and Blood is Power, all of our damaging utilities are AoE. Does this mean they are the most effective AoEs in the game? Hardly. But the class is designed around area of effect damage and presence nonetheless.

@Tony
See, this is exactly why the necromancer is so difficult to balance appropriately. Imagine taking a character that specializes in AoE damage and debuffs, with large amounts of survivability, and then giving them the effectiveness to 1v1 like a thief.

Can we 1v1 successfully? Yes! In fact, we can specifically build for it. But unfortunately, we will never be able to compare to the professions that are specifically designed to do so.

I’ve had a great amount of success with my necromancer in 1v1 situations, so I will agree that there’s a great deal of potential- But the game’s life is still in infancy, and I’m sure most of the people complaining about necromancer “damage” or “effectiveness” in pvp is on the premise that we are specifically designed to do so.

Tony.2150:

@ Swadow.6213
Sorry, I do not care for paragraphs though i may use them now since you decide to insult me.

SO your telling me that i dont get into groups? Just because i dont run the signet you saw on twitch.tv, Im a champion phantom btw. I know what im doing and i dont get kicked out of groups. Every tourney ive been in i get added on friends because they dont see necros played like i do. For your info.

When i VS thieves and warriors. Im in there face because that is my build. I run power/crit necro and im good at it, plus it is my playstyle. Dont come around bargining in like you know everythign about necro. I have never dissed another build. Only i have said anything is to people who complain. Curious of what i do I will post my build.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.1.4.13.18.24.24.33.33.106.108.109.121.129.2.2.6.302.310.312.0.0.0.0.0.0.350.353.0.366.367.0.30.0.0.20.20

My build^. paragraphs doing alright for you?. Because i have no trouble continuing why you are so stubborn to see only few spells are useful in pvp. Get out the box and Learn.

Interesting build. Have something similar, will have to give that a try. Or at least my version of it.

Much like you I also get added to friends lists all the time. I have had opponents contact my guild to complain about me.

Necro is not easy, it really is not. People play them in PVE and think that they are a cake walk, than jump into PVP and get rolled.

People also just think Ele is harder to learn because of having more buttons to press and that’s just not true.

Are Necro’s UP? Yes but only because we have so many abilities and traits that are not working correctly right now. We have a lot of bugs and that is making it harder to make good builds. Or i should say for good builds to be effective.

The problem this game faces right now is that some Prof are way too easy to play well. And by well I mean get ~80% of the power out of them. Time will fix this but until then, the easy Prof will be the FotM.

We also don’t know how top play will turn out. If the harder Prof are even a little more Powerful than the easier Prof you will see them in top play. They might be absent in Play Now but that hardly matters.

If on the other hand the Harder Prof are equal in Power than they really will have a problem. Time will tell.

Kayotik.5790:

@Nixxez
Jon is technically correct in saying that life force is used as a secondary health pool. But this isn’t the correct mindset for players to properly capitalize on it.

Consider death shroud to be more like a “power word: shield” from WoW (I know, come at me), and instead of mindlessly spamming it every time it’s available (or in this case, with the limitation of remaining life force), use it to prevent a large amount of incoming damage that would have been otherwise hard to recover from.

It still operates as a “secondary health pool” by diminishing like one when receiving damage… but it’s usefulness would be better compared to a defensive utility.

@Asmodean
I agree entirely that the justification for how well a class can do cannot hing on it’s success in supporting other players. That would lead to an extremely boring and passive play-style (although some may find that more appealing). But hear me out:

Whereas a ranger may be able to stack 25 bleeds on a single target, we have the ability to stack 12-15 bleeds across six targets (totaling 72-90 stacks). The necromancer is not designed to be a support class, unless you consider any aoe-centric character “support”.

To further validate this, take a look at the necromancer utilities. Outside of pets and Blood is Power, all of our damaging utilities are AoE. Does this mean they are the most effective AoEs in the game? Hardly. But the class is designed around area of effect damage and presence nonetheless.

@Tony
See, this is exactly why the necromancer is so difficult to balance appropriately. Imagine taking a character that specializes in AoE damage and debuffs, with large amounts of survivability, and then giving them the effectiveness to 1v1 like a thief.

Can we 1v1 successfully? Yes! In fact, we can specifically build for it. But unfortunately, we will never be able to compare to the professions that are specifically designed to do so.

I’ve had a great amount of success with my necromancer in 1v1 situations, so I will agree that there’s a great deal of potential- But the game’s life is still in infancy, and I’m sure most of the people complaining about necromancer “damage” or “effectiveness” in pvp is on the premise that we are specifically designed to do so.

That’s not really a problem. Theifs are very good at aoe, and can be good at 1v1, they just can’t be both at the same time. All Prof can be good 1v1 or aoe. So i don’t see what your getting at

@Kayotik.5790
i do agree with Angry. my build isnt just effective to1v1. Its just power/crit. Meaning i can 1v1 means i can outplay the other class. All classes can 1v1 eachother just depending on how you play. NO class has a real upper advantage on 1v1 pvp. People are complaining that condition does no DMG…. its not suppose to be dmg build its suppose to be condition build. people watch twitch.tv too much to decide what they want to build. its very annoying. seeing people claw at you because “condition is the only tourney pvp spec”.

stop saying Condition isnt DMG its sustained dmg the opposite of Burst DPS the problem with it is we apply bleeds and maintain them the slowest compared to Engineers thiefs rangers warriors and mesmers, Wich becomes a huge problem when in groups because of the Bleed cap, other classes apply and maintain their bleeds faster and maintain them better then we could ever do atm. And power/crit build isnt viable compared to the other profession your doing way less dmg then others even when they are specced for survivability. atm The DPS of the Axe is pathetic and so is the dagger spec compared to any other profession using a power/crit Spec, Try it on any other profession and see the huge diffrence.

Demonical.1039:

stop saying Condition isnt DMG its sustained dmg the opposite of Burst DPS the problem with it is we apply bleeds and maintain them the slowest compared to Engineers thiefs rangers warriors and mesmers, Wich becomes a huge problem when in groups because of the Bleed cap, other classes apply and maintain their bleeds faster and maintain them better then we could ever do atm.

Part of the problem is that your talking about PVE and we were talking about mostly PVP.

Is it odd that many other Prof can out put bleeds faster and more than us? Ya its a little odd, not sure what they were going for with that. While we don’t apply bleeds as fast or as much we do apply Poison and in PVP and some PVE encounters that is very important.

No one is saying that the 25 bleed cap is not a problem. It is a very large problem that needs a fix. But you also have to understand that this problem only really shows up in world PVE (WvW) large group encounters. And really there should not be a max cap in PVE. In PVP it makes since but not in PVE.

Well compared to other posters on threads. Conditions is dmg. Yes but to all these posters Condition IS DPS. IM trying to clarify the difference… Condition dmg is sustained dot dmg. and people are saying that necros have no DPS. Trying to use correlations for people. Sorry for the misunderstanding. To your Saying of “try another class power/crit”. I dont have a problem face to face with those classes, my knowledge of my class and the use of my skills allows me to beat them Right infront of there face.

@Demonical
I really do hate to quote myself, but:

Whereas a ranger may be able to stack 25 bleeds on a single target, we have the ability to stack 12-15 bleeds across six targets (totaling 72-90 stacks).

Granted, this would be a perfect scenario in which there were 5 targets within range of the primary target. But which other profession is capable of applying over 70 bleeds in less than 10 seconds?

Imagine, if you will, being able to build and maintain stacks as efficiently as single target-oriented condition building professions. Now, multiply that by 6.

Condition damage is far from low…. As I said earlier, it’s primarily designed for AoE.

Edit: Of course, this also means we are the most affected by condition removal. However, I’d consider pressuring multiple targets into popping condition removals simultaneously to be a successful play-style.