Guild Wars 2

I’m still pretty new to necromancer. I’ve been trying to play a power build using dagger and axe main-hands. The main professions I normally play are Thief and Ele (D/D). Both of them rely on being very mobile and very fast. The Necro is neither of those things.

Ultimately that’s fine since it has a higher HP pool, but the two things that bug my the most are the fact that all of the skills take so long to cast and there are so many projectile related skills. The lack of mobility is also quite annoying, but that would be easily overlooked if the other problems didn’t persist.

For cast times: This causes me so many issues in sPvP because the style of the game is fast paced. There are so many ways to CC me. In fact, sometimes it feels like I’m stunned, knocked down/back, or crippled about 90% of all my fights. I have a hard time getting any of my skills of to set up any combos. Getting more than 1 or 2 skills off in succession feels like the maximum I can ever do. On top of the fact that vigor is so easily acquired on most other professions and projectile blocking skills as well as normal blocks prevent the skills from connecting.

And then after the long casts I have to deal with very finicky projectiles. There are so many skills that SEEM awesome, but in practice they are so flawed. The projectiles move slow, are easily out maneuvered, and sometimes just plain don’t do what they say they do.

Taking a look at some of the skills I’m referring to-

Deathly Swarm: Awesome idea for a skill, but takes forever to reach the enemy. I feel like it misses far more times than it hits.
Enfeebling Blood: The 3/4 cast time doesn’t seem like it should be an issue, but even after that cast time, the skill does not take effect immanently. It takes another 3/4+ before it ‘lands’. You have to basically gamble to where you think your opponent is going to move to have any hope of this working.
Reapers Touch: It some fantasy world this applies regeneration to me and my allies. Not in this reality though. The bounce distance must be microscopic. Even when it eventually hits, the health gain is laughable.
Spinal Shivers: This one hits instantly when it’s cast, but takes 1.25 seconds. By itself, that’s fine because the effect is really nice. But when combined with the other long, slow skills, it just adds to the sluggish feel.
Unholy Feast: The second that this takes to cast doesn’t sound like that long, but when you are trying to use it for the retaliation against a melee opponent, it feels like an eternity. All for a measly 3 seconds retaliation. The only time this skill makes any sense is during a group fight when no one is paying attention to me so I can at least get a longer duration if I don’t get CC’d first.
Life Blast: Nothing wrong with this skill but like spinal shivers, when combined with the other skills each 1 second cast feels longer than the last.
Dark Path: Great idea for a skill, but in reality it’s so easy to dodge because the projectile is so slow.
Spectral Grasp: Another great skill in concept, but is also another projectile. So many times this skill has been blocked, dodged, or evaded.
Consume Conditions: That 1.25 second cast feels like it takes 2 hours when in the middle of a fight.

Why do all these skills have be projectiles on top of the long cast times. It adds up to make the necro feel very clunky and almost gimmicky.

What are you guys thoughts?

It’s pathetic really and we haven’t even brought up that sad excuse of a staff Autoattack.

It’s just not fun to use a lot of these skills, since they are so stupidly telegraphed that anything that moves with some speed will be missed, and God help you if your enemy has an interrupt. In conjunction with bad mobility and lack of stability options, this just makes it not very flexible.

I was really attracted to the big hits I can put out with Axe/focus, but focus skills are stupidly clunky and it’s not like axe is any better. It doesn’t mean it’s bad. But it sure cuts down on the fun factor.

Also, I didn’t realize Dark Path is a projectile, lol.

Agreed. I think out of all the complaints leveled against the necro profession, the most valid ones are the long cast times for relatively weak skills and the excessive (and seemingly inexplicable) use of projectiles.

radsaq.8269:

Agreed. I think out of all the complaints leveled against the necro profession, the most valid ones are the long cast times for relatively weak skills and the excessive (and seemingly inexplicable) use of projectiles.

To be fair, we have tons of ranged attacks that are not projectiles (every land weapon skill but Reaper’s Touch, Deathly Swarm, and Necrotic Grasp is not a projectile, though they may be ranged. Underwater, spear has 2 projectiles, but projectile-hate is much lower there) Truthfully, out of all the ranged professions, necros are the least projectile reliant class. We just happen to have a couple skills that are projectiles.

Dark Path and Deathly Swarm home very well, my complaint is the fact they ride on the ground, so they are not very helpful in WvW scenarios or some dungeons.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

radsaq.8269:

Agreed. I think out of all the complaints leveled against the necro profession, the most valid ones are the long cast times for relatively weak skills and the excessive (and seemingly inexplicable) use of projectiles.

To be fair, we have tons of ranged attacks that are not projectiles (every land weapon skill but Reaper’s Touch, Deathly Swarm, and Necrotic Grasp is not a projectile, though they may be ranged. Underwater, spear has 2 projectiles, but projectile-hate is much lower there) Truthfully, out of all the ranged professions, necros are the least projectile reliant class. We just happen to have a couple skills that are projectiles.

Dark Path and Deathly Swarm home very well, my complaint is the fact they ride on the ground, so they are not very helpful in WvW scenarios or some dungeons.

The projectiles that we use cast for a long time, have long cooldowns, and have a very slow movement to the enemy. This makes for very clunky combat in such a fast paced game.

This is almost completely related to off hand weapons, though there are others as you mentioned.