Guild Wars 2

I’m new to guild wars. I’ve played an elementalist up until now. I do enjoy it, but something is missing. I cant even fathom what a Mesmer does so I wanted to try the other caster class. I figure the Necro is the best bet, but the few people I’ve talked to haven’t offered the most positive reviews.

I plan to solo for a long while to get a better understanding of the game, but I’m afraid all the naysayers are correct and the Necro will be detrimental in group play. I definately dont want this. It is an MMO after all.

What is my primary group role in PVE and/or PVP if one exists? What is the condition of this class as a whole? I would love to love a Nec. The idea of a dark magic artist over the typical fire/water/earth mage really appeals to me.

I don’t need any overly detailed answers. what would you say is the “synopsis” of a Necromancer?

I’ll try to help you, butI think necro is a lot of things and every necro feel it in a differet way.
I’m focus on PvE so I’ll talk for PvE only as I’m not enough into PvP or WvW to be “efficient”.
Sorry I end up writting a huge post ^^.

how I see the necro
To me necro is a tanky caster with a nice dps. We have a nice dps (not the best ofc) with a huge hp pool and a good sustain.

open world
For open world, necro is really fun to play. Pretty much every build are viable (minion master [MM], condi, DPS, heal). I’ve yet never find something that I couldn’t do with my necro, soloing events, roam or killing Liadri (boss-like event that took places a while ago).

dungeons – Fractals of the Mist
The current state of dungeon is … lets say “no brain needed”. In this scenario you need maximum DPS and … that’s pretty much it. And the best way to have it is 1) “ice bow” (Ele spell totally OP), 2) high dps, and finally 3) a way to buff your allie to do more DPS.
the thing is, forgot about “ice bow” for obvious reasons, we lack DPS in comparison to other classes (condi and raw dps together, you may find some players that disagree on this point, and several videos that prove that it is true/untrue it’s up to you to believe it or not). But the real problem to us is that we don’t provide group support to our party. We can heal, but it is not needed considering how easy dungeons are atm. We can provide vuln but so do pretty much everyone. We cannot provide might as often as others classes, only for us and “blood is power”, and no fire field. We aren’t great with blast finisher either.
So in the current state of dungeons we are not “meta”. Does it mean we cannot run a dungeon, hell no. We are totally viable and efficient. Just not as much as other classes.
FYI: I personnaly use to run FotM lvl50 on a daily base with a party with an average lenght of 50mn wich isn’t bad or too long and we weren’t meta at all and we had fun! Party = 2 DPS necros, 1 hybrid Ranger, 1 DPS Mesmer, 1 tanky guardian.

Weapons
We have fairly good weapons (daggers and warhorn) and some dramatically bad (axe).
And also some that need to be balanced a bit. But on that point we’re not alone and even the axe can be usefull sometime. I use it just because I have craft my legendary Axe and I feel sad to leave it on another char than my main.

Incoming Raid
We don’t know much about it so far. For what we know it’ll require some changes in the meta and should bring new build. Therefore I’m hoping for the necro to rise but we’ll see.

Incoming elite spec
With HoT all classes get an Elite spec, necro get the Reaper. I really really enjoyed it during the beta. It brings, at least imo, a lot of improvment to the current necro and may help us a lot. It is not better than the core necro, it is different and for players like me it fit just fit what we’ve been expecting.

My position on necro
I guess you figure it out already but I love the necro and I’m looking forward to play the Reaper elite spec.
It is a good class to play as long as you like its gameplay. You’ll find group for dungeons as long as you want to (it is not hard to create a “all welcome” lfg) but it may take 10mn instead of 2mn to get a group. Considering how “good” most of the meta players are, and how “hard” dungeons are, you won’t make a much longer run anyway in most of the case and you’ll probably gonna have more fun.
If you’re aiming for speedrun and the glory, well you may wanna go for something else. And again with incoming raids I’m not that sure about that.

Long story short
Necro is a not so squishy caster with a not so bad DPS. It isn’t meta but still able to do All that PvE can offer without any issues. Incoming elite spec (the reaper) is hella fun to play imo. So if you like the gameplay just play a necro because in the end you’re the one playing and there is nothing you won’t be able to do. But if you’re looking for speedrun necro isn’t gonna be your choice in the current meta.

I think xadine gave a good description of PvE situation. I will just emphasize on a point (s)he said: necro is not meta… and for most practical purpose it does not matter. The “meta” concept really only makes sense to the top 5% players. If you mostly play casually, all classes are sufficiently well balanced to work fine. Actually, for casual PvE, necro is one of the best classes I believe because it does not rely as much on the party to survive and do damage.

For PvP, one build is actually considered “meta”, and there are a few other good builds, in particular good builds for beginners (minion master) which are still good even for non-beginners

For the role, necromancer is a tanky and steady source of damage but has also a lot of team support by “debuffing” the enemy: applying weakness to reduce its damage, applying blinds to negate the next attacks, applying vulnerability to increase damage against the enemy and one thing almost unique to us: corrupting boons into conditions. This last role actually is the main reason why the main PvP build is considered “meta”: it nullifies many of the offensive and defensive boons that makes some enemies so strong (elementalists in particular). The reason why those strong abilities do not help in PvE is because the current PvE content does not use boons very much + most bosses are immune or not very sensitive to necromancer’s debuffs (blinds/weakness/ etc…)

Finally, a small word about world vs world (WvW): necro is also meta here on big group fights thanks to his very strong area of effect damage and boon removal (wells).

But I cannot stress that further: all classes are sufficiently well balanced that your priority when starting the game is to find a class you like, more than finding a class that works supposedly better than the others in high-tier end game content.

Have you WoW before? If so, the Necromancer feels a lot like the Death Knight. While the specifics may change between builds and specific balance concerns, the following is the general design and feel of the class.

The Necromancer is monstrously durable, but has very few ways to avoid damage. Hits that would down any other class can simply be shrugged off by a necromancer, but hits that another class could avoid, we have to simply tank the damage. We have lousy burst damage, but great sustained damage. While someone like a Thief or Mesmer will try to burst someone to death in a second, and retreat if that doesn’t work, a Necromancer will instead use its heavy array of slows and snares to keep an opponent from escaping while we slowly grind them down. We have terrible mobility, but great crowd control. We’re designed to be the class that can’t initiate a fight well, but once actually in a fight, we’re impossible to get away from. We’re also the kings of condition manipulation and boon corruption. We can pull conditions from allies to ourselves and transfer those to enemies, and we can also transform enemy boons into harmful conditions.

If you want a fast, agile class that can jump out and rapidly kill someone, look elsewhere. If you want to play the slow, lumbering juggernaut that shrugs off blows and grabs its foes to grind them to dust, or someone to twist your foes attacks and defenses into weapons of your own, then you want a Necromancer.

Captain Unusual.9163:

stuff

Very impressive prose . You are good at selling it

It really depends on what area of the game you’re interested in to be honest. Necromancer is absolutely bottom of the barrel in terms of PvE related group content but in WvW it is top tier for zerging.

Without focusing on one specific area of the game, I’ll state what the Necromancer is as a whole.

It is a mobile debuffer and self sustainer. It has potential to deal very heavy damage but only with long wind ups which means low DPS. High damage attacks, low damage per second. It can control boons quite effectively and has good access to soft CC like Chill, Cripple and Immobilize. Necromancer requires a great understanding of personal position. In pretty much any content, you should always be aware of where you standing. With low access to stability and no way to withstand focus fire (no blocks/invulnerabilty) you can’t afford to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Also, a tip for the profession’s mechanic, Life Force/Death Shroud: learn to manage it well. I can’t say exactly how that is because it depends on the situation. But much like you would try to sustain your health as an Elementalist via regeneration and small heals, you want to sustain your Life Force via Spectral skills and weapon skills that grant Life Force such as dagger auto attacks and staff auto attacks. Running out of Life Force or having none is like having no clones as a Mesmer or no blocks/blinds as a Guardian. You are a sitting duck so you don’t want to put yourself in that position.

Hi digi, welcome to guild wars.

I was in the same boat as you about 5 weeks ago, new to the game, really liked the idea of necromancer but was worried about the negative comments here on the forums.

I decided to stick it out anyway and glad i did, necromancer is flat out AMAZING!

Unless youre planning on running pro comps in pvp, or want to join a guild that focuses on skipping half the content through exploits to achieve a speed run, then necromancer is perfectly viable in all game modes…let me explain.

It is a very VERY self sufficient profession, described as the master of conditions. At first i thought great, melt faces with poison, bleed and burning. Not the case, it is a master at managing conditions, no other class can transfer, corrupt or play around with boons/conditions like we can. Although you may not be able to buff your whole party with crazy amounts of boons, you can still provide them with important boons/skills to survive. I play a lot of spvp, and some of my traits allow me (and nearby allies) to siphon health during attacks and prevent them from bleeding out, a very underrated aspect i think. There are options to play as a solo roamer and more of a support type necro too, think minions and signets, two very different playstyles. I would definitely recommend playing one, and stick it out until about level 30 before it really becomes beast mode. You can also jump into the pvp lobby to check out all unlocked skills you will get later in the game.

One tip from a fresh leveller…minions for levelling are great, walking around the world with your own death squad is a lot of fun, and you just wont die!

Hope this settles some worries you had, enjoy the game

Some really comprehensive posts above, I’m with the folks who gave the Necromancer a positive review. Like 2 weeks ago I returned to the game after a really long break. I bought GW2 back when it launched but never really played it. My one and only toon was a lvl 50 Guardian.

After coming back I wanted to start from scratch in order to re-learn how to play and after reading that Necros get to use a GS soon I was sold.

My Necro is currently lvl 44, I play with Dagger/WH + Staff with a mix of signets/wells and minions and let me tell you its the best fun I’ve had in a long time in any MMO. First of all this guy can solo things which used to down my Guardian. Champion elite mobs can be soloed with some good ability management and of course Shroud, veterans are a joke and even those toxic group events can be solo managed to an extent. Keep in mind this is all done with a fledgling Necromancer, build far from complete and gear is mostly from drops.

To summarize, I also read the forums and I saw all the negative posts about Necros, how they can’t be meta etc etc but thats beside the point. First, you gotta try it yourself before you listen to other’s opinions. There is a certain bunch of people, call them elitists if you want, who regardless of which game it is, always look for the quick and easy way to complete content. If you’re one of them you probably wont like the Necro. On the other hand, if you play rpgs because you like to immerse in a rich world playing the class that feels right to you, then by all means do give this one a try.

Wow, I wasn’t expecting such a kind, open and positive community. I don’t often see that in MMO forums. I wanted to try the necromancer out before responding. I’m still a baby, but I really like what I see. I think the Ele will be shelved for a little while so I can explore the Nec further.

I really digging the durability. This was a large gripe with the Ele. I played a mage in wow and I got used to the extremely high levels of map manipulation this archetype offered there. In spite of the Ele’s abilities I often find myself in melee combat. I wasn’t expecting this. The idea of swinging large, lightning infused, melee weapons around seems counter productive no matter how great the damage is. On a positive note, I’ve learned to dodge well.

The life force element is great. The Ele’s 4 attunements and weapons feel more cluttered than dynamic. I’m certain this is my lack of experience and I’m sure I’ll feel differently as I progress, but I felt more at home with death shroud right off the bat. It’s still early but I don’t think I’m progressing any slower with the necromancer. I’m not worried about pulling that extra monster and I’m having a dramatically easier time with the elite monsters. The monsters with copper and gold circles.

I’ll have to do more reading to fully grasp the content in this post. I’m still a little confused about the differences in pvp vs wvw, conquest and open world. For now I’m going to enjoy the scenery and slowly explore theses game modes. I’m in no rush to get to the end. I doubt I’ll ever be in the top 30% let alone the top 5% and I’ve never heard “meta” used to describe one’s skill level is such a way. I imagine I’ll keep playing both caster classes, but my gut tells me I may be more Necromancer then Ele.

Thank you again for the great info. I’m sure this won’t be the last you’ll hear from me.

OP, you should really try out that Mesmer.

It has fantastic mechanics that you don’t see in every other game.

As for the necromancer. It is a low powered caster (who only does decent damage in melee), and has a transformation built in. The transformation exists to cover up lacking mobility and defenses.