Guild Wars 2

I’am a “spvp friendly” player, i just play a few hours for week. In these days of season the attention of the community is obviously focused on WvW. So in pvp there are just that players we can call “pvp hardcore”, and when I log in pvp they literally destroy me. This isn’t a cry post, i just need advice to play as a necro cause i know i’am an inexperienced player, I’m ever the first focused guys and altough I play a quite solid spec (spectral build), there’s nothing i can do when they decide that i have to look the ground closer.

1) Practice makes perfect
2) youtube video’s are you’re friend.
3) with the rune rework a few more ‘builds’ will actually have a core mechanic through their runes that the build works off of.
4) Don’t waste life force for no good reason.
5) Don’t use evades/dodges when you’re not taking horrific damage. Save them for when you are taking horrific damage.
6) Know what builds to avoid. Duel sword condi warriors/pistol whipping thieve’s/decap engineers should be avoided for the moment. They are problematic and not often worth the time invested when you could be somewhere somewhere else gathering more reasonably obtained points.
7) if a map sits on 8 vs 8 hotjoin..exit and look for 5 vs 5 maps.
8) SoloQ is an ugly beast currently with alot of the above stated builds running rough shod over it currently. Beware of that when you enter it.

A few things I learned from getting beat up a bit as a condi necro:

Use the minion summoning trick (summon minion, swap utility) to build DS in the 10 second window before the gate opens. It makes your first big fight much easier, as starting with 0 DS makes you very vulnerable.

Don’t be the first one to charge in for a fight. You can’t survive being the main target for long, especially at the start of the round.

Learn to notice when you are the target. I don’t mean notice as in ‘oh, there’s a dagger in my back and half my health is gone, maybe I should dodge’. I mean notice as in ‘hey, that thief’s stealthing while running at me and I have half my health left from a recent fight so he’s probably coming to backstab me. I should drop a staff mark on my feet so I’ll know when he’s close, that way I can pop death shroud before he bursts me.’ Even if you’re wounded, you can win some fights through good foresight alone.

Always think ahead. Your biggest weakness is your lack of mobility and escape. If you see someone guarding a point alone, don’t just attack them, look around – what is your safest escape route? Can you fight them in a spot where you’ll be able to see if they have help coming and pull out before you get 2v1’d?

Conserve your death shroud. If you get caught out alone by 3 or 4 people, sure, popping DS will let you live for a few more seconds. But you’ll still die when it’s over, and then you’ll just respawn with an empty tank, making the next fight miserable.

If a specific class is giving you trouble, play it. Look up its skills and traits. Research what its meta builds are so you’ll know what to expect and what main abilities to watch out for.

Spvp is all about positioning, put quite simply, that was likely the most important realization I came to. Where you are standing matters almost more than anything else, because it effects how and when people will go after you. As a necro you are almost always a focus target, so you need to pick very carefully when to engage and when to wait.

Hardest thing for me to get used to.

Thank you for the answers guys! I know I still have to learn a lot, but it’s so frustating when you fight bunkers (decap engi, guardian, mm master and so on), which are annoying by themself, and then comes the burster one than chain cc you and go trough your entire LF in 2 seconds.

I think you would learn a lot more by playing with or against a skilled necro in game.
This way it’s a lot easier to kitten where you have room for improvement.

Coming from a mesmer, I always call target on necros first in a group fight for two reasons:

- You guys tend to hurt multiple people alot if left alone (similar to grenade engineers)

- You guys go down to focus fire quickly since you tend to have poor movement abilities and no stability

As mentioned above by another poster, stay on the edges of a group fight so that you can run when you are focused. Having a tanky build can help you avoid being targeted first as well.

As necro you should mostly focus on groupfights, ye you can 1v1 quite good but any team with decent communication will be able to snowball of a solo necro as you alck ways of disengaging once teh situation is unfavorable to you, so you shoudl only 1v1 when you realy knwo what you are doing. Some pointers for teamfights:

1.) Stay on the edge of the fight as long as you are on high health, and run towards your teammates when you are going down (preferably the guardian)
2.) When you are being focused surviving is more important than delaling damage
3.) There are 2 basic modes of fighting you have to use accordingly, one is focusing their priority targets, the other is peeling for your teammates. Obviously the hard part is knowing when to do what, so for the start focus on peeling as it will help you get better at seeing whats going on in general.
So if for exampel your mesmer teammate is being attacked by a thief just switch target on that thief and make him therefore switch into a defensive playstyle (or die) so your mesmer can deal dmg freely once again.
4.) Focus your AOE abilities on downed targets (obviously), also on your downed teammates if you cant afford to go in for a rezz yourself or while runnign tehre to rezz.
5.) Interrupt heals, rezzes, stomps or set up bursts with your fear/corrupt boon