- The only profession without access to Vigor
- The only profession without a cleave style weapon attack
- The only profession that has active weapon abilities that do no work on downed players
- The only profession with a weapon projectile that takes 4s to travel to max distance
- The worst profession at damaging objects
- The lowest damage profession in the game
- The profession with the fewest combo field/finishers in the game
- The only profession that has abilities that hinder ourselves
- The only profession without burst movement weapon attack or utility
In addition to the above list, the Necromancer is the only profession that has a bugged core class dynamic, minions… and 9 supporting traits. If those 9 traits were simply blank, and left as empty place holders, they would have the exact same practical use as they do now. There is a reason there are no videos posted showing Minion Master Necros winning in sPvP or WvW.
Minions themselves are also fundamentally flawed. The minions’ damage output is static, and they do not scale with gear. As ANet has decided to begin placing Ascended gear in game, this spec (even if it were working properly) would ultimately fall behind anyways. Even without bringing up minion AI, there are a slew of problems inherent to minions that must be resolved before they are brought into line with where they ‘should have been’ at launch.
There are 5 traits that bolster all Necro damage by a percentage (%), all of which have no impact on condition damage. The condition damage itself is all focused on a single debuff, bleed. If this one condition stack is removed, all of the necro’s condition damage is effectively reset. Poison does damage, but with it being changed from stacking in intensity to stacking in duration, back in beta, this is no longer a source of consequential damage. And of the 7 weapon loadout configs, there are only 2 attacks in the necros weapon sets that actually apply poison.
There are also abilities that require the necro’s FEET to have LOS on the target or they miss, or are obstructed. Dagger 4, Deathly Swarm is easily the most frustrating in both PvE and PvP. This is commonly seen when standing on a ledge above your target, or vise versa. Spectral Grasp requires your target’s feet to be visible in order to trigger the pull, and even then, the pull rarely ever moves the target full distance, almost always stopping halfway or less when vertical elements are in play.
The irony involved with a slew of abilities is laughable. A power signet that has an active ability to apply short duration conditions… srsly? Another signet that states, “transfer conditions from allies to self” but instead copies the conditions to the necro instead of removing them from allies. A damage cap placed on our elite Lich Form, making it deal less average damage than other professions using their regular weapon attacks… it’s okay for a rifle warrior to F1 someone for 16-30K+ dmg on a 10s cooldown (seen in a tsunami of screenshots and videos including this…) but Lich form cannot be allowed to actually kill anyone any more? The mesmer has 5% toughness given as condition damage minor trait, and +condition damage signet, but ‘The Attrition Profession’ has no +condition traits choices or utilities? Other professions can stomp players with haste, stealth, stability, and even invulnerability… but the necro has to exploit in order to DS stomp?
I’ve put so much time and effort into the necro profession… the 6+ different sets of gear/weapons/accessories for various types of builds, all the while min/maxing the different traits/boons/etc only to see limited builds and versatility when compared to the other professions. Watching the necro community wait with high expectations on the Nov patch, only to be disappointed by the lack of design enhancements. Then the Dec patch, hoping yet again to bring the necro profession in line with the others… wow… did that patch fall short of every expectation.
Is that the point of the necro profession? To get the community to fall in love with the idea that is ‘the necro’, but not actually bring into fruition a balanced and fully featured deliverable? If so, you’re spot on ANet.
- The only profession that truly isn’t ready for a released product.
TLDR: Read the above post.
(edited by Quillixx.7034)