Guild Wars 2

+1
I’ve rerolled engineer for PvP now. It has tons on viable and useful builds. I’m tired of playing conditionmancer every day.

I’m very dissapointed about the state of necros right now. I’ve played around 3000 hours (no joke) necromancer in the original Guild Wars. Both PvE and PvP. I really enjoyed its playstyle but now… we only have a condition spamer proffesion with no more use than that.

And we get no love from ArenaNet yet… I’ve just checked out the latest patch notes and everybody got some improvements but not us.

PS.: Sorry for my English if it’s bad

@natsos
I can see how it would work in pve as they can tank but not sure at all in PVP.

Fine, I’ll test it out and post after how it went.

Tukor.7514:

I agree with everything you mentioned.

I agree with everything you agree with him

Agree with agreement.

+1, rerolled a mesmer last night.

Koen.8703:

@natsos
I can see how it would work in pve as they can tank but not sure at all in PVP.

Fine, I’ll test it out and post after how it went.

Tried it out in 2 tournaments and both lost first round.
Minion AI is terrible, dmg is still weak, survability is the same as with condition spec, minions die way to fast even with the new traits.
The only moment when this build could be viable is when the minions would’nt die that fast since I have to admit when they are up you are finally doing some DPS.
Problem is their uptime is nearly non-existant, and therefor you instantly lose all the toughness etc.
Like I thought in the first place, randoms in spvp do not focus the minions down, people in tpvp do.
The only positive thing about this spec is that they take the pressure of you for like 4ish seconds.

Koen.8703:

Koen.8703:

@natsos
I can see how it would work in pve as they can tank but not sure at all in PVP.

Fine, I’ll test it out and post after how it went.

Tried it out in 2 tournaments and both lost first round.
Minion AI is terrible, dmg is still weak, survability is the same as with condition spec, minions die way to fast even with the new traits.
The only moment when this build could be viable is when the minions would’nt die that fast since I have to admit when they are up you are finally doing some DPS.
Problem is their uptime is nearly non-existant, and therefor you instantly lose all the toughness etc.
Like I thought in the first place, randoms in spvp do not focus the minions down, people in tpvp do.
The only positive thing about this spec is that they take the pressure of you for like 4ish seconds.

I agree completely, I actually tried out this spec since I was already running a minion build and I can say that its no better. Minions are just too stupid to take into a tourny, not only do people focus them down but half the time they actually dont attack. I have found that the Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm at least get damage off due to being ranged.
Also in that build the +33% scepter duration and +20% bleed duration currently dont work. I am not sure if Hemophelia works at ALL and the scepter one is questionable at best.
Bottom line is the Necro suffers from both underpowered skills, broken traits, terrible synergy within trait lines (Why is minion damage in Spite?), wonky minion AI.
Also I see these other classes stacking boons on themselves… where are our boons? Why can a warrior stack boons AND conditions while we cant do either properly? This also doesnt take into account that in a build like this DS is just an hp buffer since you dont deal any damage while in it and their CDs are still ticking so you are essentially giving them a breather if they want it.

Koen,

Necro play is not under powered in any such way, We are viable in Tourney Play. How do i know? Because i play a Necro in tourney play. though i do agree with you on Minion AI being a total piece of crap.( due to not with me no commands to stop attack, and gets bugged on ledges.). IMO Wells, are the only considerable utility viable in TPvP, Though some may disagree with this factor, considering corrupt boon, etc.. There are many ways you can make a necro strong with out being a glass cannon. In such being that there are condition/Power/tank builds people will run. Starting with 0 Life force is debatable I think that it is fair. give us 100% LF then how are we going to lose a 1v1? In all respone to the OP My auto attacks never hit less than 800.. So i am a bit confused on your understanding of necro auto attacks being weak. IMO Necros are good tourney play. Please discuss otherwise.

Tony.2150:

Koen,

Necro play is not under powered in any such way, We are viable in Tourney Play. How do i know? Because i play a Necro in tourney play. though i do agree with you on Minion AI being a total piece of crap.( due to not with me no commands to stop attack, and gets bugged on ledges.). IMO Wells, are the only considerable utility viable in TPvP, Though some may disagree with this factor, considering corrupt boon, etc.. There are many ways you can make a necro strong with out being a glass cannon. In such being that there are condition/Power/tank builds people will run. Starting with 0 Life force is debatable I think that it is fair. give us 100% LF then how are we going to lose a 1v1? In all respone to the OP My auto attacks never hit less than 800.. So i am a bit confused on your understanding of necro auto attacks being weak. IMO Necros are good tourney play. Please discuss otherwise.

What build do you run? The CD on wells is far too large for how easy they are to avoid, what weapon auto hits for 800? Staff? If so, you realize what every other class hits for right? Look at the attack speed on top of that.

To be honest I returned after some more testings, and I think we have a new build winner,wells.
Bit of gear changing in SPvP, throwing in an axe and a focus going to melee welling seems really THE BEST build at the moment.
I was amazed by my 28k life pool(without the chief bonuses) and 3k armor at the same time I could make condition on my dissapear and turn guardians into suicide machines.

Please try the following build I really wanna see how other people find it, practice it a bit for you make a conclusion.
If you need any info on how I played this feel free to reply.

Build
I was amazing by this build, if only the traits were working as intended..

Tip:Gear up for power-toughness-vitality

So I made a Mesmer today and put together a build that I thought would work decently well.. it’s probably not even ideal but performs already superior to the conditionmancer.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fgAQNAW8alwzipHVzpGZ9IipHEHFicoU0dZXJF22FC;TsAAzCpoay0koJbTumkNt6YUx+DA

It’s a bit unreal how much easier it is to play and succeed with, I’m stomping left and right and I don’t even know the class that well yet. If you have 3 illusions out, your heal will heal for 50% of your max. It’s really easy to create illusions (lol on dodge with no internal CD), 5s Phase Retreat, with the two Phantasms (Duelist + Warlock) so that means pretty much always. Your damage is just Staff ¹, it has your Burn/Bleeds while bouncing around to adjacent foes. It really is, you can just spend the whole battle focusing on what’s actually going on, you don’t have to pay attention to bleed stacks falling off as you weave between sets like you would on the Necromancer, your illusions take care of that for you by all bleeding on crits too. Not to mention you have Might and Fury up pretty much all the time just from auto-attack, it really helps with the Sigil of Earth procs.

The only shatters I’ve been using so far are the Daze and Distortion; you get another distortion on 1h sword and both of them reflect! With pistol you gain a 25s 900 bouncing Stun, Daze, Blind, superior to than any of the off-hands you’d hope to utilize on Necro while a 24s 1200 Blink and Null Field gives you all the reset you need. I went for Mirror Images so I’d have two stun breaks but Arcane Thievery is better than what Corrupt Boon will ever be. Moa Morph is lol for solo queuing but for tPvP? Time Warp will change the outcome more than Lich or Plague ever will. Team quickness is simply in another league of its own.

So how do you play? Sit in staff and drop illusions, switch to sword/pistol when you need to stun/distortion or otherwise staff some more. Blink + Phase Retreat and disengage if things ever get too hairy and the rest is all situational. They have something even better than Spectral Armor (Chaos Armor) on a lower cool down, which you can pull out multiple times by leaping into your own Chaos Field on top of the one you get with Staff.

It’s just depressing to see that there’s just no contest. Is Mesmer harder to play than a Warrior? Yea, but it’s kitten ez-mode if you go from Necromancer.

edit// if it says bad link in build, just copy url and paste it, it works that way.

Lumines I think you are in the wrong forum ^^

He’s in the right forum. He is showing how other professions can actually do something and do it better than a necro can ever do. Mesmer can do the necro’s job and it’s job at the same time.

natsos.3692:

Koen.8703:

I think I’ve spent over 350 hours pvping/theorycrafting with this class, I think I’ve tested out all of the possible builds that there are currently available.
This being said, I do agree this class has the highest learning curve, so ofcourse I’m not able to play it to the fullest, but I think I’m getting really close though.

That build is rather close to the build that I’m currently using, but the thing I wonder is that you claim to be decent with a minion build. I tried it, but I found out the minions were increadibly buggy, died way to fast, and didnt to enough relyable damage.

natsos.3692:

I can take ALL the other proffesions , just because I have the best “crowd control” effects and the highest life for a caster.
My heals are not the best, but they are enough.

No. I simply cannot agree with what you just said here.
We have one AOE fear from staff, then a fear from DS, cripple and some frost effects.
Which other class doesnt have the same amounts of interupts/silences/blinds/cripples/knockbacks/.. that we do?

I don’t even know were you got this. No offence, but I think you faced all braindead people in spvp or you havent pvp’d at all. If you would have pvp’d alot you wouldnt definatly not stated that, at all.
Not going to be kitteny here, but I just wonder if you could tell me how much time you have PVP’d with a necro.
This certainly applies to tounament pvp, where the skills of players are still a bit better.
I just think you were increadibly lucky in the few matches you’ve pvp’d, but you haven’t played alot of tournaments

But if you have spended over 100’drs of hours in pvp, I beg you on my kneess, like most of this community of necro’s, if its true what you claim, to make a guide to help us all out.

The truth is, I have not spend more than 10 hours in tournaments, but I have spend over 300 hours in SPvP , WvW and PvE.
I saw people saying that conditionmaster is the best build atm but necros, but really, I mean REALLY I find it terrible.No survability, no meat shield, no damage no nothing.
Well-o-mancer is the second best build for me it can do almost anything.
Even if minions don’t even attack half of the time, they can do some pretty good stuff like immobilize,blind , cripple,charge ,poison and teleport in/out of combat.Half the time they do work, they provide you with NASTY damage, as flesh golem hits for 600-1000 , flesh wyrm for over 1k, bone minions can explode for 2k+ , devourer can hit for over 700.
When I specc with 20 points in death magic, I can reach 1900 toughness and over 2.5k armor, with a life pool of 20k and all the cripple,blind,chill I can provide while dodging my enemies attacks I can focus on keeping myself alive while applies several condition on the enemy and letting my pets do the most of damage.And I haven’t even used death shroud so far.

I really, really don’t understand how you guys can’t rule the world with a half broken necromancer, with one build you can do everything,and that is the build I spoke of on my previous post.

I might be playing with people not knowing their proffesions in SPvP, but I also tried 1vs1 with all proffesions(except engineer) and they where all the PvP guys of my guild.
The only time I had issues winning the 1v1 was once with a tanky guardian that kept healing himself until he died when I reached 50% of my HP, and one second time with a thief that kept nuking me down until I finally managed to get some range and put him in rest.

Try the exact build that I posted before,the weapons I used and the tactics I’m talking about, try avoiding all the damage you can.

I will keep talking about “I” because I just can’t see why you guys say it’s a useless class while they always spam me to go dungeon so I can use minions as flesh shields and condition the monsters to death.

I bet if they fix necromancer completly(as they should) they are going to do some nerfing eventualy.

Exactly. Not more than 10 hours in Tpvp, which means your opinion is limited and skewed. The players in Spvp are TERRIBLE. They are a bad representation of what the other classes you face can actually inflict upon you. Against organized, good teams you will be dismantled.

With 1300 condition damage I do about 110 on my dot ticks. I agree with a lot of what was said but not enough to want to shelf my Necro. I can absolutely facemelt people especially if I am being assisted by other classes.

Woe to the zerg that leaves me unattended. Especially in tower defenses.

displacedTitan.6897:

Bottom line is the Necro suffers from both underpowered skills, broken traits, terrible synergy within trait lines (Why is minion damage in Spite?), wonky minion AI.

the reason minion damage is in spite, is the same reason vampiric minions and fetid consumption are in blood. If all of the minion/well/whatever traits were in one tree, half your traits would be completely pointless depending on your build. They have to spread them out to give the other trees meaningful rewards.

They already have a known issues thread stickied, check https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-bugs-compilation-1/first The devs are already looking at Necros closely.

I am agree with all.

necro is a dead class, at this point I dont think 5% of the whole GW2 population mains one, and Im pretty sure that number is falling drastically as days pass by

tbh, after playing warrior I dont care if they fix necros, Im not going back.
nothing they could ever do will make them on par with a warrior, its simply bonkers how powerful they are

so I suppose I have to thank JP, if necros didnt suck SO HARD and he hadnt thrown the L2P at us, I wouldnt have tried the warrior and I’d have never found my true love.

tl;dr: necro is an exercise in frustration. dont punish yourself like that, its a game, we’r supposed to have fun.
reroll and life will be much brighter.

Word of warning: Elementalist is in a similar, if not worse, spot right now. It looks like the magic group just gets no love…. except the “special” class that was hyped all to hell pre-launch…. the mesmers….

A good well/toughness necro can pretty much keep all of the wells up on a rotation, add to that that the traits affecting wells are not broken, they can also grant you more toughness on cast, and health on pulse. And if you pop 3 out in a row properly that is a 15 sec dark (lifesteal) combo field you keep in play, with a heal light (condition removal) for ten secs. Two of these wells do damage, one also stack up vulnerability to 10, the other converts all boons into conditions. Ok so they are easy to avoid, big deal, they take up the entirety of a point, if they are avoiding the damage and conditions from the constant well upkeep, they are not on the point to get the win. Couple this with the staff AoE condition damage, traited fear to last 1 sec longer and do damage + what you can do in death shroud which, you can weapon swap in even if your weapon swap is on cd, you are a deadly force when partnered with your team. Necro are not as bad as people make them out to be, they are just not the heavy hitting bleed you do dealth in 5 sec warriors and thiefs you want them to be. As for eles, eles have it rough but i have faced off against a few really good eles that used a rotation that could melt a face off just as easily as a thief could if you didn’t use escape utils perfectly on point.

+1 I have rerolled every other class (this isn’t a joke).
I’ve found every other class so much better in other ways.
Thing is I had fallen in love with Necro in the beta (but I think it was just because I fell in love with the Charr story rather than the mechanics of my class).

Necro is fun for the first 15 levels, that is until you notice you begin to drop off. You very quickly notice you doing poor at everything except surviving (in PVE only).
In PVP people eat through your deathshroud like gravy (even with the trait that increases shroud duration).

It doesn’t increase shrouds duration, it merely reduces the rate at which it self drops when using the abilities or just staying in the form. It doesn’t reduce the pool lost from damage, which, drops horribly fast in pvp anyways so if you specced to get that it is kind of a waste of trait points better spent elsewhere. !https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Fundamental-Problem-for-Necro-s/122873! That is how I play my necro for PvP, works great in tourneys after you get practice with it, Necro is very much a team oriented playstyle, it falls off solo but, with a good rotation, you will never need to auto attack because you will be keeping the rest of your abilities up and your enemies wanting your blood so your team can focus on killing them while they blow cds trying to kill you.

I’ve been playing more on my Ranger lately and it has been really fun.
I think I am at the stage where I doubt I will be going back to my Necromancer…

+1, agreed.

Rerolled thief today. Dont know why I waited so long.

+1
Rerolled guardian, lots of fun so far and a way more usefull class for groups.

Though i dont seriously care for the balance, i must admit i did feel otpowered in pvp. And the “builds” are just way to boring.

My Personal problem is more with the design of the whole class itself. Swinging the “wand” and stabbing with dagger or mid ranging with axe is just totally runing the concept of the Nekromancer. It ffels more like some crazed cultist from diablo 3.

Those who want to play real caster class are forced to Ele, or if want something that is not “nuker only” are forced to mesmer…that has its own problems to actually.
But since i want to play Necro i keep thinking on what could fix the boring idea of the class that got implemented.
Like pluss skill sets ( the same way enginer can equip a granade belt,) We should be able to summon weapons for pluss skills sets to. Like Ele does. Example : Scythe.
Or an “pilotable” oltar that lets us get an aoe skill set (like Enginers mortal). Or a skill that equips a book in main hand and gives another skill set for more caster or support roles.

I also agree with pets beeing useless, but i musd add : More importantly they look CRAP.
It was hard to accept the “bone minions” in gw1, but this is outrage. They are not even near a Skeleton or Zombie. And the Zombie Bunny-s are totally idiotic.

BEsides the fact on character creation we can pick from 3 tipe of necro still this wont show up at all in the game. We should have 3 skill setup tipes for those.

If you played GW1 you will know that anet always gets on top of fixes and bigs and if Necro is lacking atm it will improve in a new patch so to reoll and drop the class is a little extreme hope you comeback when they get buffed.

Safiyasha.2910:

If you played GW1 you will know that anet always gets on top of fixes and bigs and if Necro is lacking atm it will improve in a new patch so to reoll and drop the class is a little extreme hope you comeback when they get buffed.

Do you remember the paragon? He had a lot of buffs, but overall he always sucked because the core mechanic was broken. Useful Chants and Shouts were 2-3, there was no way to make other ones useful without making the Paragon overpowered, because their effects apply to the whole team.
I feel the Necro is the same. They have the Death Shroud mechanic which gives the Necro a second health bar. Pretty nice feature, of course, but too umbalanced. Giving the Necro the damage of a Mesmer or a Warrior, in the mind of the Game Designers, is like giving to an Earth Elemental the damage of a Risen Abomination (that was the first example which came in my mind, since I’ve just stopped killing them xP). Probably they don’t know that DS bar goes down pretty fast…

I don’t want my Necro to become like a GW1 Paragon

+1 After I started getting silver on events I personally started and stayed with till finish (max 25 stacks on boss = less than 2 necros), realized half my traits/skills were broken, and actually compared my condition ticks to people who weren’t building conditions… I had to leave my lvl 68 necro to reroll mesmer. I absolutely love a lot of the necro skills/traits, they’re great fun. It’s just absolutely useless. Condition damage in general isn’t in the best place, and this profession suffers immensely.

Considering JonPeters reply about Necro i´d reroll now rather then suffer through them trying to increase our build viability without increasing our effectiveness, Theyve shot themselves in the foot at first DS was supposed to be our Downed state then they thought maybe it was too powerfull to have necros have that kind of downed state compared to others so they changed it to its current incarnation and now they have NO CLUE how to balance us so we stand on equal footing dmg wise with others. So just Reroll, Good choice would be warrior since in another post the same Game Designer admitted he played it. Ergo probably will stay on the top ladder for a long time.

I’m doing very well in WvW with a dagger/focus/warhorn + staff necro going 30 spite, 20 curses and 20 blood with both well traits.

The only thing that kills me 1v1 is a 100 blades warrior that catches me off-guard. My dagger’s 3rd hit crits regularly for 2k+ (1 chain hits 3-5k) and my lifeblast can crit for over 3k. I can drop GT wells + hounds of balthazaar + life transfer and put out an insane amount of AE on a door.

The key is the WvW gear is actually really good for necros. Get precision and crit damage on runes but for main stats you want power, toughness and vitality.

With so many people running glass cannon builds a durable necro will win unless you’re not paying attention.

I haven’t played much sPvP yet though so I won’t comment.

Condition damage is a trap on a necro IMO though. The highest damage option is by far the dagger. Nothing else is even close. For AE the best option is staff and wells which power is also better for IMO.

The bleeds were nerfed too much. Until that gets changed I really suggest people run a power build.

After devs post rolled a warrior again – its still amasing how easy it is to play in 8×8, 100blades still do insane dmg with lolstorm and eviscerate. No thought needed to win, just choose a target – press charge, then 3+~+5+f1=dead. Also it is fun to actually kill mobs in few seconds while lvling, and not run around. And ofcourse it is fun to play with traits that actually work as they should…

Just recently rerolled a guardian, and I don’t know if I just have “grass is greener” syndrome but it is so much easier and enjoyable to do things.

sorrow.2364:

Safiyasha.2910:

If you played GW1 you will know that anet always gets on top of fixes and bigs and if Necro is lacking atm it will improve in a new patch so to reoll and drop the class is a little extreme hope you comeback when they get buffed.

Do you remember the paragon? He had a lot of buffs, but overall he always sucked because the core mechanic was broken. Useful Chants and Shouts were 2-3, there was no way to make other ones useful without making the Paragon overpowered, because their effects apply to the whole team.
I feel the Necro is the same. They have the Death Shroud mechanic which gives the Necro a second health bar. Pretty nice feature, of course, but too umbalanced. Giving the Necro the damage of a Mesmer or a Warrior, in the mind of the Game Designers, is like giving to an Earth Elemental the damage of a Risen Abomination (that was the first example which came in my mind, since I’ve just stopped killing them xP). Probably they don’t know that DS bar goes down pretty fast…

I don’t want my Necro to become like a GW1 Paragon

Korean teams in GW1 had all paragon GVG and decimated people so op were the chants that Anet had to nerf them to the ground I never forgotten about that. On the other side Pragons had a steep learning curve that most weren’t used to but also Paragons with henchies made pve very easy.

Another Necro rerolling here. I must say that a lot of the abilities appeared to be fun and useful at first glance, but in practice the numbers just don’t add up. Also it is hard to find a great build due to synergies in the trait tree being all over the place imo. As many have mentioned before, I also think that there is a definite lack of viable builds especially in pvp, which goes against the designs of having classes that can each fill multiple roles.

The abilities themselves I think are well designed as far as graphics and general concept go, but numbers have to be changed, and I think we need an offhand that compliments our direct damage builds more. We have enough minion abilities also so that we should have more control over them.

It seems to me for all classes, unless there are some really great trait abilities, that builds that use crits scale better than most other offensive builds due to scaling. Necros are one class that can use this the least effectively due to our design, and that I think is something that needs to be addressed to increase our damage.

I am disappointed because I like the intended theme of the Necro and would enjoy the abilities that we have, but we do need some changes. I would really like to go back to this class, so please get to work on it ANET!

I just started a necro today, but after doing some basic testing I can definitely say that the condition duration increasing traits Hemophilia and Lingering Curse do work. Its not reflected in the tooltip, but it definitely extends the duration of bleeds.

I have my standard scepter bleed attack up to 11 seconds in duration through runes and traits.

+1.

OP basically echoed my thoughts and what I said before regarding necro down to the letter.

I’m going to reroll warrior, since I’ve been ranged so long I decided to go melee and warrior has fantastic burst dps (something the necro doesn’t have at all) so I’m going with that for my reroll.

Just want to say that the OP echoed my thoughts exactly and I pretty much agree with all of what he had to say regarding the necromancer.

The developer saying death shroud hasn’t been utilized correctly or that people haven’t played the necromancer correctly thus far, well I lost all confidence in this class immediately. All the patches with updates to other classes and nothing at all on the necromancer also leaves a bitter taste in my mouth considering the dire shape it is in not only with traits/minions not working correctly, but the fact that a lot of them are just bad and the traits aren’t setup correctly so that we can make different fully balanced builds because right now it doesn’t offer that whatsoever.

Jon if you’re reading this, I’ve played my necro for 236 hours now. Don’t tell me, or anyone else, we haven’t used death shroud in a build to it’s fullest potential, because it makes you look blind on the issues with necromancer and it just makes you look bad.

It doesn’t function well with other almost every build you can make properly with a necromancer, making it nearly useless and only as an escape /need to live longer/ button. That is it’s only function with almost all the builds.

It only functions decently at all, with a dagger build because of the siphon trait, and that is still mediocre compared to what other classes can do.

The necromancer is dead to me until it’s fixed, and my 236 hour lvl 80 necromancer will be a bench warmer until a patch comes out to fix it.

i began considering rerolling yesterday when a thief hit me over 12x with pistol whip for 16.5k in approximately 1 global.

I then roamed WvW some more and ran into a rifle engi who I completely outplayed, but just could not do anything to it’s health.

I went into the Mists to test out some direct damage builds, maybe a cool dagger dagger lifesteal build, and basically wasted 2 hours of my time.

I realized I liked scepter dagger dishing out a lot of cripples, fumbles, blinds, and average bleed damage, but switching to the staff was a chore because of the long durations. If staff had shorter durations and an auto attack skill people actually liked, I think I would fall back in love with my necro. If the #1 auto attack for staff did a bleed I wouldn’t feel so terrible about everything.

Already re-rolled, working on my warrior now since it seems like ArenaNet is going to take the round-about way to figuring out some classes/builds are clearly better than the rest. Warrior already destroys my necromancer and he is only at level 32. Better AOE, better melee, better traits, and almost no bugs. I have yet to figure out a warriors weakness because so far they have everything. When I see necro doing 12k damage on a single target with death shroud like a warriors kill shot can, then I might come back. Until then the necro is shelved.

I agree with basically everything the OP writes.

Necromancers lore has always seemed to be about controlling undead, fear, poison and life drain/siphon/leech (in general).

I am astounded by the nonexistent pet UI and responsiveness as well as terrible pet health, utility, damage, and the design of the pets themselves. The flesh golem Is just a charr body model with a different skin. I get a sick feeling every time I see a jagged horror spawn because they decay before they enter battle and I know it is a worthless trait skill. Shadow fiend’s haunt is kinda, sorta ok and it would be a nice skill if it teleported back to its original spot after blinding or feared itself to get out of melee/AOE range. Bone fiend would be ok if it had maybe double its life. Bone minions need a tiny health boost and they need to realize their target immediately and get there FAST FAST FAST. Flesh golem is an ELITE skill and it needs a movement speed boost and its base health doubled.

Necromancers aren’t very scary. More creative ways to fear. More fears. Longer fears. When a necromancer is downed, the fear should be aoe. Perhaps Reapers protection should be a trait skill choice in all lvl 10 trait trees replacing some of the many worthless choices. Pets could have a 20% chance to fear. Sigh

Poison, thieves do it better and maybe they should. I’m not sure how to make poison more except maybe making it harder to remove or easier to stack? Thieves have incredible burst dmg, invisibility and are more mobile. Necormancer dots just seem pathetic. Get rid of necro bleeds alltogether and stack that poison. Bleeds are a thief/assassin/ranger/warriors game.

Life siphon as exists is insignificant, irrelevant and a waste of a whole trait line and weapon set.

Signets, what…the…heck. Great concept but I think they were executed poorly. I love passive skills but the bonuses are super weak. The cool downs are waaaaaaay too long on the active portions of locust, spite and plague. Signet of undeath should revive not only downed but also dead allies and it would be an incredible skill and make for some epic battles. I think either buff the passive or decrease cool downs of active.

I may be criticized for this but I believe the whole concept of death shroud is ridiculous and should be totally removed or completely redesigned with a whole new set of skills. Or perhaps make it an elite passive that makes the necromancer “ghostly” and could be immune to fear and has an aoe endurance regen inhibitor and a 10% chance to fear on hit or something. Completely reimagine it. If you can’t reimagine it then give it a 25% chance to resist CC and a 20% speed boost.

Necromancers should always be the hardest class to master so they got that part right but there is just no end reward for mastering the high learning curve of pressing 5 buttons to every other class’ 1 button. The fights are too fast, incoming damage bursts to heavy, enemy CC too strong and necromancer mobility to weak to not reward a fast mind, coordinated fingers and many more hours (relative to other professions) of practice.

I apologize for the terrible grammar, spelling and sentence construction but these posts are difficult to compose on an iPad.

Sorry but I don’t see where all the “skill” is in playing necro or really any class in this game. I can see how skill cap would improve for people who learn animations/to interrupt heals etc, but this is general, not for a particular class… There is a very limited number of abilities, most of which have long cooldowns. Mostly in games I can learn some trick/ combo/ useful information by watching video or stream. IN this so far.. nothing. The most you will get is a good trait build or gear set up.

I don’t feel necro is underpowered I just think most classes can fill the same role & bring more to the table. The comments by the devs seem to indicate they have no idea what to do with the class & it’s not encouraging. I was looking for something with a lot of tricks, something which is a pain and hard to kill. So far pretty mcuh every other class I have tried meets this better & can do more burst dmge at the same time.

I am unsure what to reroll. I usually play rogue/warr but melee in this game is not very visceral! and fun! due to cast times & those classes have been polluted by scrubs. Stylistically I liked necro the best. My inherent -I play easymode classes- radar has finally failed me in this mmo. What happened. I should have played warrior.

All I gotta say is I’m really enjoying my lvl 11 warrior, lol.

+1 rerolled Guardian, my second choice.

I have a fully exotic geared (cleric) necro. Play a well drain healer-tank with him. Did all the PVE dungeons and lots of WvW/ PVP. Already I can tell that my 34 Guardian is scaling and tuned far, far better.

On a purely cosmetic note, I also find the necro power the most boring of all the classes to watch – all being just variants of green mist/ flies or slashes. Wells are a bit more visually appealing, but they only change the symbol not the effect. Again compared to the guardian, who has a rather explosive display of pyrotechnics and lights, they’re simply unentertaining to watch for hundreds of hours.

There should be something in the trait lines to make Lich form last longer in duration too. That would at least balance out DPS specs a bit. There also needs to be a leech power that passes life onto the group, instead of just stealing it for the necro, and not just in specific instances (transfusion).

For tanking the protection duration (3 seconds, really?) needs to be buffed on wells. Even with four wells equipped, and perfect timing you have almost 1/2 your downtime spent without viable mitigation.

Pets. Well they just suck. They die too fast, do comparatively less damage compared to other classes and have terrible AI. They need to be reworked to receive healing from the necro’s siphons to be of any use.

Anyhoo, those are my thoughts. I’m hopeful that the class will improve, so I’ve parked my little necro till they do!

i said before and ill say it again… give us bug fixes better pet ai and an PET UI so we can real control them… as it is now its just headless chickens runing all around and hit when they like or hit what they like… thats not acceptable for a pet class…

These threads are depressing. I’ve only went into spvp and wvw once and it all felt like a complete chaotic cluster, so I’ve avoided it until I get to 80. Too many effects, too many explosions, wells, cicrles to keep track of, without knowing which are bad and which are beneficial. Targeting isn’t as precise as WOW. Feedback as to your buffs and debufs arent as well represented. Yeah I said it. But it’s still new.

In pve I’ve never felt underpowered, never have any problems getting gold in every event and can take on 3 mobs a few levels above with little problem, when using ALL my skills. I’m specked conditionmancer. You can wipe out mobs but you have to rotate everything at your disposal.. Yet, I can watch a warrior run into a group of mobs, do the spinny thing and one other skill and everything is dead and he’s at 1/2 health when he’s done. Balanced? Doesn’t appear so.

Im hoping things get fixed by the time I hit 80. I’m 50 now, so another few weeks, unless leveling slows down. I certainly won’t struggle to compete in PVC, when other classes appear to have it so much easier. If Anet claims we’re harder to play then shouldn’t the reward be greater with more effort compared other classes where you can be powerful without thinking or using as much strategy? THATs balance. If a warrior can be more effective using 3 buttons, compared to us using everything and swapping weapons and using all our utilities, then something is waaaaay off.

I wish I never read the forums and stayed in blissful ignorance:)

natsos.3692:

To be honest I returned after some more testings, and I think we have a new build winner,wells.

Build

Tip:Gear up for power-toughness-vitality

I like this build because it also synergies well with a MM build as an alternate (it uses the same trait trees that MMs need).

I wish I never read the forums and stayed in blissful ignorance:)

Exactly my thoughts. I actually like my necomancer, but I always thought that my skills work as intended and my traits are well balanced. Of course I saw that my damage is absolutely laughable compared to all other classes, but I thought that will work out if I ugrade my gear from yellow to orange.

Now that I know that half the things I specced are for nothing, it leaves me with a very bad feeling. Maybe I reroll another class, like most necromancers do at the moment.

Josher.9612:

I can watch a warrior run into a group of mobs, do the spinny thing and one other skill and everything is dead and he’s at 1/2 health when he’s done. Balanced? Doesn’t appear so.

I think a majority of necroes would trade DS for that spinny thing. Seriously.

Agreed. I also rolled ele to start then necro because I like casters but both have been a huge disappointment. Ah well, mesmers cool so hopefully it doesnt get nerfed leaving us with no viable casters.

ele blows 2. My first 2 toons were ele and necro and both were a disappointment. I like casters so looks like I’ll be a mesmer. Hopefully it doesnt get nerfed thus leaving us zero viable casters. So far the play what you want how you want isnt working out so well is it?

Tried since launch to work with Necro. As a disclaimer, I only really play WvW, but I’ve put together a full set of exotic 80 gear for a power/precision wells build. I’ve also tried out conditionmancer, spectral skills and a minion/conditions hybrid build; none of them were as useful as the wells build. Even the wells build did not seem as useful as anyone else using most any other profession/spec.

Finally over the weekend I tried out a backstab/shortbow Thief at level 20 in WvW. I have to say I can’t imagine wasting more time trying to develop my Necro; it feels like ‘throwing good time after bad’.

As a Thief I have at least equal group and personal utility, exponentially better time-to-kill, far better on-demand mobility and survivability… and I get to dress my character in sexy leather armor.