Guild Wars 2

Hey guy’s,

After playing only necro from BWE1, and defending it even through all the QQ on the class, I’ve finally decided to reroll.
Keep in mind that I’ve played over 600spvp matches with necro, and around 150ish in Tpvp.

This profession seemed really fun, offering much control and DOT dmg but after playing this prof exclusivly I’ve only been disappointed.

There are so many issues, bugs, etc that simply make this prof so unrelyable in tournament pvp. And trust me, I’ve played alot of tourneys in the course of these few weeks.

Now to the issues, why this class simply isnt viable anymore in competitive play.

- There are no multiple viable builds
The only “viable” build atm is condition necro, but even this build feels incredibly weak compared to all other profs.
“EDIT 20/Sept” : Playing a full “well” build now, and it works too, so this statement is not true.

- Signets are unrelyable
Sometimes signets don’t do what they are supposed to do, only remove half the boons, or none at all.

- Alot of useless traits and spells

- Our core spell of the necro = fear is the weakest fear in game.
Compare this to the fear of thieves, warriors, ..

- Our basedmg with weapons is just way to low.
Since nearly noone is tourneys is going glasscannon, hitting only around 150-450 with autoattacks is not that uncommon. This would be fine if our dots would hit alot, but they dont do either.

- Scaling on condition dmg is broken.
At around 800ish cond dmg you hit around 70~ with each dot tick, at 1.6K you hit 104~

- Duration traits on dots are not working or not working properly.
They simply dont work.

- Starting a pvp match with 0 lifeforce instantly puts us behind on other players since we really need lifeforce to actively win/not lose instantly in a 1v1.
We need the lifeforce to be active in a battle, this isnt possible if you start with 0.
This makes us instantly weak from the start of the game.

- Mesmer pets do more dmg then us with out whole kit.
Mesmers.

- Jagged horrors are dieing way to fast.
They die in a couple of seconds, doing nearly no dmg.

- Minion AI is terrible
Attacking random targets, sometimes not attacking at all.
Most of them are dieing way to quickly too.

Lets just, OBJECTIVELY, compare to other professions.

If all other professions build glasscannon they are able to, nearly, oneshot enemies.
If we build glasscannon, we just die quicker.

If other professions decide to play another role, they can.
If we decide to play another role then support/condition necro, we fail hard.

If we decide to go dmg wise, we get outdamaged by all other professions.

If we decide to go support, we get outsupported by all other professions.
We simply lack the aoe stuns/snares/interupts. (= one aoe fear doesnt suffice)

If we decide to go tank, we get outtanked by all other professions.
We dont have the outlasting things that other professions have, aka. selfheal (note siphon life isnt a heal), lifeforce (gets drained way to fast).

In tourneys I’m basicly only decent to AOE fear enemies off a target that we’re trying to ress, and for the AOE blind on plague.

-Rant over.
Anyway, I’m probably going to play guardian/engi until they fix/buff this profession.

TL:DR: Necro simply lacks competitive tools to battle face to face to other professions, and has no use at all in TpVP.

I wish you guy’s the best playing more necro at this current state.

Love out <3

Keep it mature on comments, these are my POV’s, no need to get this thread derailed, or getting a flamewar started.

As this simply wont get us any help.

<3

Agree with all.

+1

Rolling Thief now.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with most of your statements. The necros are in a sad state atm.

+1

I’m currently rerolling a mesmer.

+1
planning to roll with ele this weekends

- Scaling on condition dmg is broken.
At around 800ish cond dmg you hit around 70~ with each dot tick, at 1.6K you hit 104~

Why is that broken? Did you expect ~140 damage with 1.6k condition damage? Conditions have a base damage based on your level too, you know?

Other than that:
yes, its very frustrating that many of our skills/traits are bad, bugged, useless or have a better version on other classes.

I’m trying a warrior now, they seem to be the No.2-easymode-class in GW2 (after guardian)

+1 for experience and reasonable statements

Engi! I’m coming soon! >.<

Totally agree. Anyway I don’t like to roll multiple characters so I’ll try to wait for some changes in this class.

Since the OP focuses on structured and tournament pvp, I don’t particularly think it’s an issue with necromancer for him (don’t get me wrong, necro does have some buggy skills and traits), but I’ve noticed guardian, warrior, thief and engineer seem to excel more in those pvp than casters do- my mesmer isn’t all that great in spvp, I can barely evey get enough clones/illusions out to use mind wrack half the time.

already rolled an alt.
I love my necro, but the mechanics disappoint me

Teknobug.3782:

Since the OP focuses on structured and tournament pvp, I don’t particularly think it’s an issue with necromancer for him (don’t get me wrong, necro does have some buggy skills and traits), but I’ve noticed guardian, warrior, thief and engineer seem to excel more in those pvp than casters do- my mesmer isn’t all that great in spvp, I can barely evey get enough clones/illusions out to use mind wrack half the time.

Not at all, every class has a specific role in t/spvp and ill go into depth with this answer, this is only based on the most succesful teamsetups I’ve faced and been working with myself.
If your point would be completely true, then it would be just a fact of getting only those professions into TPVP.
However, my exp has told me, you need a decent balance of ranged and melee to decently “siege” a point. In pure bruteforce defend your point is completely valid, but there is much more going on in Tpvp

Thanks for your constructive reply though <3

I also agree. I love my necro and i love the Conditons so i dont mind leveling another class for PvE and WvW.

But for sPVP dan TPVP i think necro needs to be fixed and i will reroll Engi until the class is fixed!

+1

Already rerolled to a Warrior and its insane how much better I am doing even though I SUCK as War currently.

+1 Rerolling guardinan. Better dps and better survivability.

I have to agree on a lot of points… especially with our lack of survivability in many situations. It never made sense to me why warriors, for example, could pick up a signet skill that gave as much passive health regen as it does. As a necromancer, I feel that our health regen abilities should be slightly better than others and not have to trait for them. It just seems to fit the class more…

However, I am not much of an alt player and I am leveling my second necromancer since I wanted a Charr so much. I will stick with it and hope for the best!

I’m at lv 50 with my Necro and I kind of agree with you on this. My char eats dirt on WvW sooo bad. But when dealing with PvE I tend to do fairly well both solo and in groups. Epidemic is an amazing Elite as I ask ppl to focus on a mob and then I just transfer all the conds to nearby enemies and BOOM! They are dead.
As a proof, I have my deathcount in less than 70.

I agree with everything. Necromancers were supposed to be the tanky caster class but i think we might be worse than Elementalists when it comes to survavability. A thief drops you in seconds and your dots do not even scratch them.

Terrible terrible class.

I think that this post sums up a lot of what the competitive PvP community has revealed about the Necromancer.

It is still early in the competitive scene’s life, but I don’t know anyone who has played a lot of tourney PvP that wouldn’t agree that Necro needs a lot of help.

It sucks being viewed as the ‘handicap profession’ when I play Necro with my guild in tourneys. Literally every other Necro but me in my guild has re-rolled for PvP, and it is the consensus of the entire guild that Necro is the least viable class for PvP, and only is effective in very situational match-ups.

The Necromancer is just desperately lacking in nearly all areas when compared to all other professions.

If Anet is starting to address balance issues soon, I hope they take a real close look at Necromancer.

I agree with almost everything said, but you have a few more CC than AoE fear: DS fear, spectral grasp, lich form push and blind of plague form. But everything else is correct: we lack the dmg output, survivability is extreamly low at the start of the match (since LF), no mobility compared to other casters, minions die increadibly easy, do not do anything (maybe not the golem), problem with signets, etc.

I have played a necromancer since bwe1, currently I am on lvl 80, but is so hard to force myself to play a profession I like in every other game – for PvP I have created a war, a thief, a ranger and it was SO easy to kill people its crazy. Just created a thief, had no experience with it, but spammed heartseeker/unload = win. War: stun+100blades+eviscerate=win . Necromancers have to try so hard to do something useful in pvp (comparing to other classes) it actually makes me lough. I have read after bwe3 a post from devs, that necromancer is a class that “currently needs the most love”, but I have not noticed anything boosted/changed to benefit this class. Did you?

Hi,

I agree with many of your statements but in regards to sPvP I don’t think it’s all that bad. (I can’t speak for tPvP – perhaps there are just much better players there.

In any case I played a while and wrote down the outcome of 1v1’s (r20).
Obviously this doesn’t prove anything, but just for fun:

Scope:
I only counted if both players started with 100% HP.
I only counted if the match went uninterrupted by other players.
First one to get downed lost.

Engineer: 4 wins and 2 loss.
Thief: 2 wins 3 loss.
Mesmer: 4 wins 2 loss.
Warrior: 2 wins 2 loss.
Ranger 1 Win 2 loss.
Elementalist: 4 wins 0 loss.
Guardian: 1 win 1 loss.

As I said it doesn’t really say anything at all, but I’m an ‘average joe’ and these are other ‘average joe’s’ I meet in my sPvP. Of course in some fights I got absolutely murdered (the Warrior and Mesmer losses mainly), but I also won some with good margin.

Even though the numbers above is a joke to draw some analyze from, they do reflect the feeling I have after playing Necromancer up to r20: Sometimes you get hammered, but more often than not you can have a nice fight that can go both ways – and even though I wish we were stronger, I don’t feel we are utterly worthless like many others seems to think.

Finding ‘fair’ 1v1’s in sPvP was quite difficult though, seeing that noone wants to defend anything and everyone is roaming.

In that regard one of the most annoying things was that by the time you could secure the kill on your opponent – chances are that you have already been swarmed by 3 mesmers, 2 theives and a ranger with a rabid boar.

Also the fact that you have to make sure you get all your spells off good and at the same time be skilled at doding stuff, as some things just wreck you, whereas others just focus on getting you in a stun/postion or whatever and press 1 button to break you.

Survivability wise I pass my Thief/Elementalist/Ranger by a long shot, except for defensive traited staff Elementalist which basically needs to be raided.

+1
I really like this post. You might post it under suggestions, too .

It sums up a lot of things which I experienced. Necro is terrible to play. So far only Death Shroud makes it playable… more or less. I really like the idea behind Necro and as my main it almost hurts me to see this class in such a state.

Having played with Engineer and Warrior a bit. Right now I am considering to reroll.

I have to agree. I don’t have much experience with other professions but I played some tournaments or random PvPs every now and then and it’s ridciculous how fast we die. We need LF otherwise we are pretty much screwed. Stability for 3s in DS and at least one stun breaker + condition removal is absolutely mandatory. The skill that converts boons on enemies into conditions is a must have against guardians but they just convert them again. Condition damage against guardians is helpfull, since they don’t have much HP but their strong heal counters that quite easily.

All in all you have to put A LOT of work in your build and play a lot of matches until you have a small change to actually do something useful. The profession is very hard to learn and even then it’s one of the worst. Professions like Thief, Warrior or Guardian have a very easy entry level so people can get better from that. That’s what’s lacking with the necro.

Thanks for keeping the thread on point and constructive <3

Koen.8703:

Thanks for keeping the thread on point and constructive <3

I was about to say the same thing. No trolling nor offensive statements whatsoever so far. Hopefully it will stay this way for as long as this topic exists.

I agree with everything you mentioned.

I agree with everything you mentioned.

I agree with everything you agree with him

It is somewhat strange to see a thread where basically everyone agrees. That can’t be a good sign for the profession.

That said, I’m also re-rolling. I don’t despise the class, but between the outright bugs and the un-fun fact that literally everyone else is better at everything than me (some of which is probably skill related, but not all) I’m just not enjoying the profession very much at all.

Also, one thought — this profession seems to have a steep learning curve. Things like condition damage (as a concept) are just not explained very well in game, and to be successful with this profession it seems like you need to understand the whole “draw conditions onto yourself and then foist them off onto your opponents and then spread them to other oppoenents” mechanic — and that’s FAR from obvious.

I don’t -think- I’m a simpleton, but either I am or this profession has some fairly serious problems.

Level 80 PVE Condition Necro, 1k Power, 1k Condition dmg, Staff/Scepter-dagger

- At 24 might stacks DS and Lich crit for 3k, warrior next to you for 27k.

- Tables, boxes or hands coming out of the ground, provide EPIC fights…
unless another player comes and 2 hits the thing ruinning your moment.

- That memorable moment when you stack +60% bleed, +30% cond, +33% scepter duration…
And your 8 seconds bleed last for… 8 seconds.

- You become a Lich, summon 5 Jagged Horrors, and when they are at 50% health… you go to DS, use transfusion… and it doesnt heal them.

- That glorious instant, when you use staff 2, change, utility 7, scepter 4, 2, 5
evasion roll to the enemy, ds form, ds 2, exit ds, spamm scepter 1…
…and see x24 bleed stacks for 1 seconds… the second after its 12, and then 8.

A minut later some thief out of nowhere press 3, 3, 3, 3 and gets 12 bleed stacks…

Necromancers are definitely underpowered.
Most of their traits are very bad or don’t work at all, and Axe just seems to be plain bad.

Sadly I don’t think that Necro is necessarily even the weakest Profession…
I have a low lv Elementalist and he gets downed even by common bandits if I don’t run around like crazy or have somebody else taking the hits for me.

Plenty of things need changes.
I don’t envy the guys who gotta fix all this stuff.

I agree with many of your statements, I am also planning on rerolling (probably to Elementalist, Guardian, or Mesmer). I kind of wish that I didn’t farm a full dungeon armor set or learned 250+ dyes on my Necro.

Biggest issues for me:

Damage

• Low Damage (especially on melee weapons)
• Odd and low Condition Scaling

Support

• Very restrictive group boon selection
• Minimal combo fields outside of Well build
• Virtually non-existent combo finishers (with most that we do have being a pain to use)

Builds

• Few high end, competitive, builds
• Certain minor traits are useless outside of specific builds
• Major trait layout is a bit odd in places

Miscellaneous

• Minion AI can be very cumbersome to work with
• A lot of bugs with traits and utilities, many seem to not work together as advertised
• http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/63398-necro-traitsskills-that-dont-work-as-they-state/
  (Good resource to highlight these issues)

We really need a red post here, seriously.
The Necromancer as now is the least played profession and, going in this way, we’ll end up that so few people play Necros that you won’t find them in PvE anymore.

Just tell us that you ArenaNet are aware of the issue and are working on this.
For the sake of god, the Necromances section is full of complaints and we still have no red posts, while in the Guardian section (yes, you read that right, GUARDIAN) one stated that the hammer is UP and they said that it will buffed soon.
What’s wrong with Necros?

I am done with necro for now too, on to a guardian for me.

the worst thing about this is that this just makes the problem worse as anet most likely fixes things based on tickets and when there is a mass exodus from a kitten class then the amount of tickets coming in about the problems goes way down and the necro sinks way down the priority list.

result being if you stick with your necro you will be waiting to be unkittened for a long time.

oh the kitties…..

+1 very well said

wow. glad to see I’m not the only one who felt this way. rolled necro first and found your entire list to be true. then rerolled as engi and life is good again.

hope necros get some love cuz I do like the class

Got to around rank 11 doing tournament modes, and always felt i struggeled alot harder then anyone i saw around me to do half the work they were doing.

Today I somehow got into a 1v1 Tpvp game due to some bug, where i made it to round two, going against a ranger using conditions.

Being a condimancer myself i thought, this should be easy, just always throw em back once they build up.

No dice, he basicly just ran around me while i was spamming all my ablities, healing up and destroying me. I felt i could use my abilities once in the every fight before i was dead, and he would just shrug em off.

A class spec i was basicly build to destroy killed me without any problem what so ever.

Necro is just NOT viable at the moment and it’s REALLY starting to hurt my enjoyment of the game.

I absolutely agree. After around 200 hours spent with the necromancer I can say that it just doesn’t feel powerful enough. I switched to guardian for PvP and warrior for PvE.

+1

I have been having huge considerations whether or not to re-roll. I love the idea and concepts of the necromancer…but they are so weak, frail, and bland compared to other classes that it makes me just cry :c

I really hope the dev’s do something about this soon, i’d rather not wait months for the class to be fixed up. This post and other’s around the necro form list out the big problems we have.

I don’t even agree with half of what you said, it is kinda late right now so I will try to give just a few details.

I play a MM/Condition necro,it is good in PvE , PvP and SPvP.
My minions offer me high toughness(so survivability),immobilize,blind and charge.
My scepter/dagger combination offers me cripple, lots of bleeds,blindness,chill and weakness.

Any time I feel like it, I change to my staff and use some regeneration for myself,nasty conditions for foes, fear and plague spreading.

Because of my scepter, I manage to have 50+% of life force most of the time, so I can get away from dangerous situations and start annoying my enemies even more from a safe distance.

Yes, the damage is low, lowest than any other class.
Yes I have some broken traits and some that could use some boost.
I have played fully MM with dagger/focus and it wasn’t as good as the one I explained
I have played fully conditionmacer and it wasn’t nearly as effective as the one I explained.

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.

From what I have read, even after all these matches you played, you don’t play your character good enough.No offense intended, it is one of the hardest proffesions to learn.

I would suggest trying a build of:
20 spite(spiteful spirit,training of the master)
30 curses(hemophilia,chilling darkness,lingering curse)
20 death(dark armor,flesh of the master)
scepter/dagger
staff.

Other than that option I found wellmancer one of the best-supportive classes.
This proffesion might even need some nerfs on some builds.
Wish you a pleasant gaming experience

I have to agree with the key points of this thread. Necromancer fits a very niche roll currently. Which doesn’t help that it has a jack of all trades build set up but can’t do one select thing well or at least shine over the other classes.

Well, I’d make a big constructive post if I wasn’t so lazy and english was me native language. Tho in my experience game companies that run f2p or b2p games usually don’t care about balance much after release, so imo we will hardly see any major changes for good. Sorry Anet, nothing personal ofc, just an observation. I still love you…

In short I just can say that class is definitely broken, I can state it as PvPer with more than 12 years of experience. They messed up our traits so bad, plus some initial class design flaws. I have a feeling, that Anet doesn’t know what to do with necro, it’s like an unwanted child now .

Sure you can kill stuff as necro.., sometimes I can win 1v2 or even 3, once I’ve won 1v5 (talking about WvW), but it’s not because class is fine and complete, for sure it’s because the opponents were bad. Anyways it takes x3 more effort to achieve any result with necro, than with other professions.
Atm our only viable build is condition-mancer, (eh, some people keep saying they have great success in sPvP with dagger build, I can just smile at them… guys, try some tournaments versus good players) and the problem is – cleanses. Stacking bleeds is a hard task, while we have no reliable cc, especially in WvW enviroment.. and with a ton of AoE condition removals/transfers flying around in group battles it’s not even funny. My bleeds usually won’t last more than 3-5 sec on the target. Same goes for 1v1 situations, maybe you can kill some clueless/bad players by stacking bleeds, they won’t even notice. But any good player always carry some sort of condition removal tool, even if you manage to survive long enough (talking about lack of cc again) and stack 10+ bleeds on him somehow, he can always wipe all your progress in 1 pressed button or even with passive signet. Not funny Anet, at all.

I’m not even going to mention condition damage > bleeds damage conversion ratio, 5% it’s laughable at best. Upgrade your gear from green to orange and you won’t even get +10 damage to your bleed ticks, huh.

Anet, implement a trait that makes our conditions (ok, at least bleeds..) uncleansable,
that will solve part of class problems. Ah, sure you won’t do that.

So I’ve rolled a mesmer today..

Add me to the list of people with level 80 necromancers who have rerolled. All of my class complaints have been echoed here numerous times, so no need to repeat them.

I really hope they get a boost, both in combat effectiveness and spell effect visual flair, as I want to enjoy and return to my necromancer, but I’m tired of looking at all the greener pastures around me.

I keep wanting to try another class and this thread (as well the many others that clog up the forum) remind me to look elsewhere. v.v

I can only say that I agree with everything in the original post, a great read, hope this get the attention of ANet.

Fix my class.

Koen.8703:

Hey guy’s,

After playing only necro from BWE1, and defending it even through all the QQ on the class, I’ve finally decided to reroll.
Keep in mind that I’ve played over 600spvp matches with necro, and around 150ish in Tpvp.

This profession seemed really fun, offering much control and DOT dmg but after playing this prof exclusivly I’ve only been disappointed.

There are so many issues, bugs, etc that simply make this prof so unrelyable in tournament pvp. And trust me, I’ve played alot of tourneys in the course of these few weeks.

Now to the issues, why this class simply isnt viable anymore in competitive play.

- There are no multiple viable builds
The only “viable” build atm is condition necro, but even this build feels incredibly weak compared to all other profs.

- Signets are unrelyable
Sometimes signets don’t do what they are supposed to do, only remove half the boons, or none at all.

- Alot of useless traits and spells

- Our core spell of the necro = fear is the weakest fear in game.
Compare this to the fear of thieves, warriors, ..

- Our basedmg with weapons is just way to low.
Since nearly noone is tourneys is going glasscannon, hitting only around 150-450 with autoattacks is not that uncommon. This would be fine if our dots would hit alot, but they dont do either.

- Scaling on condition dmg is broken.
At around 800ish cond dmg you hit around 70~ with each dot tick, at 1.6K you hit 104~

- Duration traits on dots are not working or not working properly.
They simply dont work.

- Starting a pvp match with 0 lifeforce instantly puts us behind on other players since we really need lifeforce to actively win/not lose instantly in a 1v1.
We need the lifeforce to be active in a battle, this isnt possible if you start with 0.
This makes us instantly weak from the start of the game.

- Mesmer pets do more dmg then us with out whole kit.
Mesmers.

- Jagged horrors are dieing way to fast.
They die in a couple of seconds, doing nearly no dmg.

- Minion AI is terrible
Attacking random targets, sometimes not attacking at all.
Most of them are dieing way to quickly too.

Lets just, OBJECTIVELY, compare to other professions.

If all other professions build glasscannon they are able to, nearly, oneshot enemies.
If we build glasscannon, we just die quicker.

If other professions decide to play another role, they can.
If we decide to play another role then support/condition necro, we fail hard.

If we decide to go dmg wise, we get outdamaged by all other professions.

If we decide to go support, we get outsupported by all other professions.
We simply lack the aoe stuns/snares/interupts. (= one aoe fear doesnt suffice)

If we decide to go tank, we get outtanked by all other professions.
We dont have the outlasting things that other professions have, aka. selfheal (note siphon life isnt a heal), lifeforce (gets drained way to fast).

In tourneys I’m basicly only decent to AOE fear enemies off a target that we’re trying to ress, and for the AOE blind on plague.

-Rant over.
Anyway, I’m probably going to play guardian/engi until they fix/buff this profession.

TL:DR: Necro simply lacks competitive tools to battle face to face to other professions, and has no use at all in TpVP.

I wish you guy’s the best playing more necro at this current state.

Love out <3

Yep i give up. It is clear that ANet does not want anyone to play a Necro. All other Prof get fixes and we are still stuck with so much that is broken.

natsos.3692:

I don’t even agree with half of what you said, it is kinda late right now so I will try to give just a few details.

I play a MM/Condition necro,it is good in PvE , PvP and SPvP.
My minions offer me high toughness(so survivability),immobilize,blind and charge.
My scepter/dagger combination offers me cripple, lots of bleeds,blindness,chill and weakness.

Any time I feel like it, I change to my staff and use some regeneration for myself,nasty conditions for foes, fear and plague spreading.

Because of my scepter, I manage to have 50+% of life force most of the time, so I can get away from dangerous situations and start annoying my enemies even more from a safe distance.

Yes, the damage is low, lowest than any other class.
Yes I have some broken traits and some that could use some boost.
I have played fully MM with dagger/focus and it wasn’t as good as the one I explained
I have played fully conditionmacer and it wasn’t nearly as effective as the one I explained.

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.

From what I have read, even after all these matches you played, you don’t play your character good enough.No offense intended, it is one of the hardest proffesions to learn.

I would suggest trying a build of:
20 spite(spiteful spirit,training of the master)
30 curses(hemophilia,chilling darkness,lingering curse)
20 death(dark armor,flesh of the master)
scepter/dagger
staff.

Other than that option I found wellmancer one of the best-supportive classes.
This proffesion might even need some nerfs on some builds.
Wish you a pleasant gaming experience

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.

I agree with most of what you said (except for the condition scaling: Every point gives you the same amount of benefit; it works the same way with power, with precision, with any stat, and it works the same way for every class). As a mostly PvE necromancer, I’ve been doing a lot of guild runs, and while we are still figuring out the optimal team composition for dungeons, it is almost certain that it will not include necromancers. Many have started elementalist alts (we already have mesmers and warrriors), and we will probably go either 2 eles – 2 mesmers – 1 warrior, or replace the warrior with one of the two non-necro casters. It’s sad when I stack up precision, power, and prowess on my character, start critting 3k with 20 stacks of might in DS, and the warrior next to me quotes numbers many times higher on his chain. Yes, in what is essentially my super-power mode, I deal a fifth and sometimes a tenth of the damage of other players’ best hits.

Let’s talk elites for a second. Mesmer has time warp, which is…crazy. It doesn’t double damage for everyone for 10 seconds, it does even more, since it lets our strength runes stack up insanely. It turns 60-90-second encounters into 15-20-second ones (10 for time warp and 5-10 for mopup). Ele has the greatsword, which has an insane chain (can’t quote numbers, since I neither have an 80 ele yet, nor am I the one using the second sword, reserved for the warriors in the team). Necro has Lich Form, which, for a DS build, isn’t much of an improvement, Flesh Golem, which is a permanent extra 1k DPS (great, but doesn’t compare to the team stuff of other classes, and is single target), and Plague, which is terrible at stacking conditions – the bleed duration is laughable – but excels at protecting the team with blind. Except nobody needs blind or any form of protection, since an organized team can excel by dodging and crazy killing speed. Plague also doesn’t block certain attacks (fire breath for example), and, due to having to spend its duration near enemies, you can’t/shouldn’t get away from them either.

Really, I haven’t used Plague past my second run, and our guild leader, the only other necro around (a condition build to complement my DS), mostly rolls with golem as well. At first we argued that Plague is better than Lich, everyone agreed, we started using it. As we learned the dungeon, nobody even cared about blind any more, and number-crunching got us to use golems, while swapping to lich for a single encounter.

The lack of a good multi-target DPS elite aside (but please buff Lich somehow), traits are also a huge problem. Everyone knows this, but I’ll repeat it: The only really great tree is Curses. This is tree where I want to take more selectable traits than I can. The other trees are horribly mismatched, (so for a power/crit build I need to go deep blood if I want good wells? No thanks, I’m already running 10 Spite for the max Curses/Soul Reaping.) Seriously, there are 6 – 7 good traits in Curses, Soul Reaping has trouble getting something useful in the second slot, while Spite is about choosing between no utility and little utility. And don’t get me started on the 5-15-25 bonuses, or on the bugs (for the record, it’s funny that while all 3 of those in Spite are nearly pointless, the 5-point one is the best (without even being about improving DPS…in the damage tree)…I mean, you get 40 power/condition damage when hit and about to die for Spite, while Curses gives you 2-22% flat damage boost at the 25). Spread the GOOD traits around (I have to question the presence of a wells trait in the precision/condition tree), don’t force me to get a toughness boost (coupled with the useless jagged horror) to increase my staff damage, and boost the wells traits to make them actually improve the skills (and, while on it, don’t make me go in the PvP-centric Blood tree to get a mostly PvE improvement).

We are all former GW1 speedrunners (mostly DoA, with UW/FoW etc “for teh lulz”), and used to leveling multiple characters just to be able to play any role in the group, but as it stands, I doubt the necro will even get a spot. I’m still playing mine parallel to leveling the ele because I’m confident rebalancing will come, and because I see absurd potential in Epidemic, but we are currently mired in mediocrity.

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.