Guild Wars 2

It have nothing to do with AI. I rly don´t know why u guys think so.

jalmari.3906:

because how dumb AI is -> warrior dps > all

This… < and another few characters >.

No this is just crap. Warrior dps is only average, stacking or not it doesn´t matter. Don´t tell stupid lies if u have no idea what talking about.

Guard/Ele can do more (Ele even without FGS, LH and Staff are far superior dps to warriors), thief singeltarget too. Engi/Ranger nearly the same (or more!) and they give nice support.

The problem ist, necro dps is pretty equal to others (warrior/ranger and so on), but only singeltarget, and they lack of support.
That´s the real problem, necros personal dps can be like a warrior. But gruops will be alway lower. Warriors are stacking Vul and Might, they have Banners and so on. That´s why there is no reason do pick a necro over a warrior.
But it´s not “imba dps” (which they don´t have) or stupid AI (stacking), it´s missing group support.

ranger, engi and mesmer in real play are the only classes with worse dps than warrior afaik.

robertul.3679:

Zerker war has 18k hp. A 20k will kill it. It will not do more damage than thief/ele.
Other classes are wanted, just not necro.

But you get 10-15% reduction just by heavy armor, it can survive it. And in a really offensive setup necro only has DS as an option, while warrior gets extra evade from GS and 2 blocks from off hand weapons. Mitigate damage >>>>>>>> eating damage.

And even if the average pug get the myth out of their head, that warrior damage is over everybody else DPS by a mile, its still a save choice. Durable, easy to use, gives good support and has nice damage. Why take a risk and get a [anything else]? Of course warriors still can be bad (full signet rifle warr <3), but thats another topic.

On topic: without any major overhaul necro will be subpar in pve. After getting new traits and / or skills, the balance will stand on its head and i wouldnt bet that our place in the “meta” would be better.

With a GS u can´t pick 2 offahand blocks, and shield= at least 5% dps loss (or even more).

Yes warriors can survive easier, but they can´t do everything together. 4 Warriors = 12stacks might ( +5signet +5 trait) =22 + for all warriors, and alot of vulnerablity. That´s the myth about warriors dps…and the reason why they are rly a safe choice (but not the best).

Not sure if troll or … Read it again please. Warrior has OPTIONS if needed. Necro got nothing, only death shroud. Got it?

spoj.9672:

ranger, engi and mesmer in real play are the only classes with worse dps than warrior afaik.

Speaking of busting myths, mesmer with one phantasm (which is super easy to maintain in most cases) is already more than a warrior. It’s just that it’s single target and mesmer provides very little group buffs of its own. You’re also less likely to see big numbers coming from the mesmer itself in casual play because Signet of Inspiration doesn’t affect yourself. You might be able to get pugs to 5-10 stacks of might and decent duration fury but you’re probably not getting any buffs yourself.

Norjena.5172:

With a GS u can´t pick 2 offahand blocks, and shield= at least 5% dps loss (or even more).

Yes warriors can survive easier, but they can´t do everything together. 4 Warriors = 12stacks might ( +5signet +5 trait) =22 + for all warriors, and alot of vulnerablity. That´s the myth about warriors dps…and the reason why they are rly a safe choice (but not the best).

Any group with players who are decently support-minded can get plenty of AOE might stacks without any coordination. Staff ele can maintain 6 stacks + fury, ranger can maintain 5-10 stacks + fury, engineer can get something like 15 stacks + 25 vuln, etc.

The problem is pugs don’t appreciate the benefits of stacking offensive buffs and usually operate on the basis of “if I’m alive I’m helpful” even they aren’t even doing any damage, or they just don’t realize how effective boon spreading is.

That´s why warriors are the safe choice. It´s easier to press 2 buttons (FGJ and Signet of rage) then stacking might. Stacking where? Put banners in? No other combofield before? how to continue if combat time is longer then 20seconds? Stacking too soon? And so on.

All problems that are easily solved, but we´re talking about pugs. And for pugs warriors are the safest choice. Still not the best, but try to get a puggruop with ele/ingi/ranger/thief that will maintain alot of mightstacks and fury.

I run usually with only 1 warrior, all dungeons and fractals.

Most classes can just drop their own fire fields mid-fight and blast in them. But that usually requires more self-awareness than just hammering on FGJ and spamming HB, sure.

Still, it doesn’t require any sort of coordination other than people not being at range, in which case the warrior doesn’t help that much either.

Theory craft….

I will not claim to have as much knowledge as many on this forum. However from what I do know and can theorize I personally think the following will solve many issues in general and what has been stated here.

I came at this with a concept of what would be the easiest for Arena Net to be able to implement without destroying what is already there. From some if the concepts they may as well just say screw it and work on guild wars 3 with the amount of adjustments. So that Being said, here is my idea.

Theory crafting:

Make Dagger cleave.
we can debate the adding of new weapons all we want, but that would create a series of balancing issues that can be address later. if they ever decide to add new weapons or what have you. So just take the existing piece and change the hit box for it. Having a cleaving weapon opens up a lot for Necromancer.

Spectral Wall able to reflect and or Absorb projectiles
trait it is you have to, I believe there is a "spectral mastery trait. put it there. or somewhere in the adept tier. Having a reflection wall or even just a wall that guard against projectiles will help in many regards.

Make the warhorn skills blast finishers.
pretty straight forward Give the necromancer access to blasts that make sense. Or better yet. make warhorn 4 a blast. and warhorn 5 a swiftness, Might, fury buff for all party members just like the ranger and warrior horn.

In theory, I personally think those three things will alter necromancers to play within the “Group and party support” far better than before. And although I am no game developer, I think those things would not be that hard to implement. some simple cut and paste coding should achieve all of that…

theory sound???

That’s not theorycrafting, that’s just a wishlist of things you want.

Give necros a greatsword. Problem solved.

Even 30 30 10 condi burst necro has very good dps plus epidemic,(better than most classes, comparable with zerkers) but ppl u find in game don’t know so much about necro.
What anet has to do is, I think, giving necro a power based massive dps weapon for pve usage.(doing same 30k+ hit dps like a warrior greatsword) Only this can change meta/elitist player’s minds, they have to change minds of players first. This is the main problem. Beacause as I previously said, ppl only look for better dps in their parties, so few people cares about party support, heals, passive debuffs etc. This is why there’s “warrior only or go” parties in lfg. Give necros what meta players want(dps), make them wanted in parties and ta da, necro is balanced in pve. Condition system can’t be fixed easily in current situation, so we need new power weapons asap. (Also one ranged aoe weapon for wvw)

The dps is fine actually (Guang, seriously, throw out the numbers), the lack of support and our pointless control makes the necron non-favorable.
Sure you can build around healing and condi removal, but in pve thats not an issue when you can (and need to) burst down a boss in 20 second or even less.
The only place where i love to see a ton of necro is east battery defense on Teq ..

Speaking about PvE and necromancer’s utility…It came in my mind Mai Trin’s fight.

I mean, you can’t go melee her (or you can?) and there’s a ton of condition that needs to be removed (otherwise you die easly for 10-12 stack of bleeding or the burning).
But I used only my necro in that fight, so my point of view could be half-blind.

Guardian is better there too. Or mesmer with a Null field and Mantra of Resolve. Or a engi. Or a ele with waterfields. Even a bearbow is good there. ( ._.)

For mai trin we prefer to have warriors with axe warhorn and shake it off. A guard helps aswell. But really you only need one low cd condi remove for the bleeds and group swiftness to help mesmers or whatever in the barrage phase. Melee is pretty easy once your familiar with her aswell.

DS power builds aren’t that bad in either damage and survabilitg. When they lack sustain AoE damage in longer fights, they are capable of having extreme power AoE damage in short period of time, we also can pierce with LB up to 3 targets which isn’t that bad. Build generates insane amount of vun, however mostly single target, has very decent survability via very high LF sustain. I run either 30/10/0/0/30 for Reaper’s Precision, or 30/0/10/0/30 (mostly W3 spec) with reduced minion cooldown. Why minion? Well, for PvE, I usually run Spectral Grasp for chill, interrupt and mostly for LF, WoS for AoE and SpectralArmor/Well of Power/Signet of Spite/Signet of Undeath or Shade minion. Why minion? Because it’s very nice to have some little more DPS, it also helps with LF generation.
In theory, it might not click for you. Good sustain with almost pure zerker build? I do carry some valkyrie armor for vit tho.
The thing is, even in long boss fights, you’re able to easily get around 50-60% of your LF back in a matter of seconds, not counting any deaths, so you can stay in DS for days and eat very, very much damage over whole fight if needed.
I like it

Umut.5471:

Even 30 30 10 condi burst necro has very good dps plus epidemic,(better than most classes, comparable with zerkers) but ppl u find in game don’t know so much about necro.
What anet has to do is, I think, giving necro a power based massive dps weapon for pve usage.(doing same 30k+ hit dps like a warrior greatsword) Only this can change meta/elitist player’s minds, they have to change minds of players first. This is the main problem. Beacause as I previously said, ppl only look for better dps in their parties, so few people cares about party support, heals, passive debuffs etc. This is why there’s “warrior only or go” parties in lfg. Give necros what meta players want(dps), make them wanted in parties and ta da, necro is balanced in pve. Condition system can’t be fixed easily in current situation, so we need new power weapons asap. (Also one ranged aoe weapon for wvw)

Singeltarget DPS isn´t the problem, it´s ok (probably higher then warriors). Missing cleavedmg and support (dps support) is the problem.

Control weakness/freeze are usually not needed (weakness is nice in some 40+ fractals), and the necro is not rly incresing group dps. Not because the necros dps is so bad, because the group can/will lose some buffs.
Example sword/wh ranger with a cat and spirit. His dps will be lower then a warriors (the pet will die sometimes) but unique support which is increasing other party members dmg.
Or some reflexion….

And again, warrior dps ist not so high. Dps ranking “fullbuffed” means warrior place 5 or 6 of 8, behind the necromancer (singeltarget melee).

Change some PvE mechanics to make controll/debuffing a “must have”, and give necros some support buffs or a melee cleave weapon.

Changing things like this could be make a hammer/warhorn shout/debuff warrior viable too. Just for example, all classes have a balance problem. Necros problem is, they have no possibility to fit the current meta as well as the other classes.

Unless you need fear or chill specifically there aren’t really any debuffs other classes don’t do better. Poison, blind, and weakness are all easily-covered to saturation by other classes and no one’s ever going to beat engineers on vulnerability unless they get nerfed. Mesmer is king of boon removal and also minions, so that’s out too.

Probably the best way to save the necro would be some kind of boost to dark fields, minions, or chill, none of which are likely to happen.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

@OP: There are several parts where you undersell the necro:

#1: DPS. The power necro has high sustained base DPS, so much so that at full buffs the necromancer will outdamage warriors with jut their auto attack. The power necro is effective at stacking might on themselves, and have several lingering attacks that they can use to layer up multiple sources of damage at once. The real shame with necro DPS is that their only cleaves come from conditions and life blast, but regardless many people find the dagger quite useful against bosses.

#2: Survivability. Life Force is really easy to get in PVE due to waves of enemies that die quickly. This makes power builds extremely durable, since the majority of the time you’ll be life blasting multiple enemies in a row. Those enemies can only damage your LF pool while doing this, and then when you clean up with the dagger + focus later, you get your life force back. One added advantage to this is that a power necro, even a bad one, will have the effect from Scholar Runes on nearly 100% of the time. On a LF build you’ll have a bubble of 14k health that enemies have to go through before you receive real damage,, and this bubble resets really quickly.

#3: Group support. The necromancer is, at its heart, a debuffer, and is capable of applying plenty of weakness, chill, cripple, boon removal, vulnerability, and immobilization. The problem, of course, is that in PVE weakness, chill, cripple, and boon removal aren’t that useful. Now, for newbies who just run around ranging everything, having enemies who are constantly crippled/chilled and immobilized is a real bonus. But for those who melee enemies, this isn’t that useful. Weakness would be good, but against regular enemies it is far inferior to blind, and bosses have reduced weakness duration (just to spite us). Boon removal is situational and spotty, and Anet designs enemies with strong boons to constantly reapply those boons (just to spite us). So, in the end necromancers are left with mostly invulnerability, which they are decent at. If only death shiver was placed somewhere else…

As far as group buffing goes, the necro does have a few tools, but these tools tend to be scattered and hard to work into a DPS build. Ritual of Protection and Spectral wall provide group protection, with Ritual of Protection usually working when you need it, where you need it. The staff can provide close quarters permanent regen as well as occasional condi cleanse and blast finishers, and bone minions can provide further blast finishers. The focus also provides regen to allies it bounces to, and the Necro has a decent, low maintenance heal in Transfusion.

#4: Epidemic. Epidemic is one of the strongest skills in the game, since it is the only skill that is a force multiplier. It makes everyone’s conditions better and longer, and it makes them in a very large AoE, and it does this every 12 to 15 seconds. It is also important to note that epidemic spreads every condition, damaging and debuffing alike. Vulnerability, weakness, burning, blind, etc, all get spread en mass, doubling in intensity or in duration.

You also seem to be under a big misunderstanding with condi necros and epidemic. Condi necros can put all the conditions they want on all the targets already. Weakening shroud, enfeebling blood, grasping dead, mark of blood, tainted shackles, chillblains, unholy feast, corrosive poison cloud, well of suffering, well of corruption, well of darkness, locust swarm, Death Nova, Death Shiver… they all work in an AoE. What you are confusing is that epidemic is capable of spreading single target conditions, which have higher durations and shorter cooldowns than AoE conditions, and are assuming that all condi necros are doing is auto attacking then using epidemic a minute later. What epidemic really does is multiply all these AoE conditions, and it does this in a much larger AoE. And it does this to other classes conditions, again in a much larger AoE than they can provide. Also, other classes can’t “put all the conditions you want on all the targets”. The only class that comes close to this is the engineer, and they don’t do it in a 600 radius. The only thing the necro needs is burning, and since every other class does burning, and burning becomes redundant as soon as two or more people do it, and with so much ambient burning around (cough Guardians Eles), not having burning becomes a non issue in a team.

Could you please explain in more details how are you going to make those skills works?

1. 1 and # 2 might not an issue.,

But #3 and #4, how many utilities slot you have, and also traits slot you have, to make all those thing you mentioned to be excellent?

yes necro has to access to those skills, but they are not powerful, unless you trait them, and you wont have all of them together, which makes necros not complete at all…

Most of the necros support abilities come from their weapons, actually. When running a power build, you’ll have plenty of access to vulnerability, boon removal, with more limited access to snare (depending on build) and weakness. With a condi build, you’ll have more weakness and snares, but less access to vulnerability and boon removal.

Boon removal isn’t that big of a deal, since most of the time you’ll only put something like well of suffering on your hotbar for the short time you need it. Anyway, if you want to do everything, you can always condi bomb with signet of spite + epidemic. Problem is… it isn’t that effective, and you’re better off just using well of darkness to blind enemies, since that disables them completely for awhile.

We can only hope that future design of PvE will be more suited for us. I can see some progress already, like in Tower of Nightmares

I think Rym makes an interesting point. How slightly does PvE have to shift to make Necros more viable from a Meta perspective? Would more waves of small enemies help via Epidemic and high condition pressure with AoE chill/snare and wells? I know Warriors/other classes have cleave for multiple mobs, but is it possible for Necros in their current state with their current benefits to suddenly become desired in the meta?

Perhaps mobs that hit insanely hard in melee but need to be kited and hit from afar? In that case, cripple/chill uptime and high condition pressure with AoE condis and Epidemic could be very useful.

I always end up just hopping into WvW, so I don’t know enough about all the different fight mechanics in the game right now to really weigh in on Necro viability. I’m just thinking out loud.

Another note: if they included a fight with mechanics that make a Necro viable, would the “meta” group simply avoid that fight because it’s “too complex” for a quick pug speedrun? This is assuming they make new fight mechanics in another dungeon and not a random part of a fractal encounter. Would one such encounter like that where the meta is disrupted with a potential single fight that brings a “suboptimal” class into the fore cause an uproar because it means bringing that class “feels” necessary for that fight, but not getting that fight means you just ran suboptimally?

I’m not sure adding such a fight to a non-fractal is the way to go, since people are going to always hunt down the dungeon that has the fastest, easiest, and most reward/minute path of a dungeon to speedrun, and I simply don’t think you can balance all the classes for that sort of thing. I’d just be curious to see what happens to the meta and the PvE community’s reaction to disrupting the meta with a fight in such a way that it hits the current “favored” classes hard and makes a less favored class shine.

Tower of nightmare was aweful. Stupid scaling and boring mechanics. It was pretty easy to solo it, and just annoying (but not hard) with a small group.
Endboss was so boring, just way to much health and cc, but no dmg. He wasn´t dangerous, just took too much time for such an boring encounter.

They have to change alot. Melee and ranged attacks for all all bosses ( u can´t balance melee and ranged combat if bosses have only 1 or 2 attacks which they can use vs all players at all positions), nearly equal range/melee dmg if this is done (melee a little bit higher in tank & spank fights).
No LoS sometimes, Mobs that have to be controlled and or kitet while others are killing something other. Rly hard to do without a trinity.

A few small things could be changed on the necro to make them fit the meta. Make furious demise group fury. Give us a cleave melee weapon. Improve vuln capabilities. Give us blast finishers on axe 3 and warhorn 4.

You give us group fury and you make us a good fury source for the group. No need for eles to take persisting flames on LH builds so they can take more dmg modifiers.

Reworking pve to make chill, weakness and fear more useful is far too big an ask to make necros viable. The best way is to get the necro some small changes which allow it to fit the current meta better. And hopefully with new boss encounters, control conditions will start to be a bit more effective aswell.

spoj.9672:

A few small things could be changed on the necro to make them fit the meta. Make furious demise group fury. Give us a cleave melee weapon. Improve vuln capabilities. Give us blast finishers on axe 3 and warhorn 4.

You give us group fury and you make us a good fury source for the group. No need for eles to take persisting flames on LH builds so they can take more dmg modifiers.

Reworking pve to make chill, weakness and fear more useful is far too big an ask to make necros viable. The best way is to get the necro some small changes which allow it to fit the current meta better. And hopefully with new boss encounters, control conditions will start to be a bit more effective aswell.

That just makes them rangers then lol, minus Spotter and Frost Spirit.

The easiest fix actually is just to give necros a unique support source. Something like GW1 marks, i.e. extra damage or lifesteal when attacking for a short time. Hell, roll the effect into the current staff marks. Signet of Vampirism is a good start but the ICD, long cooldown, and low total damage kill the actual usefulness. If that effect was on Mark of Blood on the other hand and the other marks had similar support capabilities (vulnerability on hit?) then it’d actually be decent.

Again, though, wishlist isn’t what I’m going for with this topic. I want to think if there can be a way to make necros good the way they are NOW. Not how they could be good in some make-believe world.

Yeah well new skills are the best hope. But the way i see it is fury on necros means we can replace rangers while having better aoe, vuln and blind at the same time.

spoj.9672:

Yeah well new skills are the best hope. But the way i see it is fury on necros means we can replace rangers while having better aoe, vuln and blind at the same time.

I thought people were saying Rangers aren’t wanted in PvE either. If that’s the case, I don’t think we should be aiming to take the place of an unwanted class.

And imagine if you noticed another thread on another class forum talking about wanted to replace Necros in PvE. Replacing another class is an objectively bad design decision. I don’t know what the correct answer is, but excluding a group of players due to class choice doesn’t go over well. See: this thread.

You wouldnt be replacing ranger you would be replacing one thing ranger is good at. Ranger however would still be picked for spotter and frost spirit. The reason its not commonly picked by organised groups is because not many ppl have lvl 80 rangers and the sword auto is awkward for some fights. It has the problem of pushing bosses off of los spots and makes max melee on bosses like lupi impossible.

My point is if you want blind, vuln, aoe and control conditions and higher single target dps. Necro could fill that role. Atm the lack of fury on necro means other classes fill those requirements better. Its the mixture they need to get right to make necro a more popular choice.

spoj.9672:

You wouldnt be replacing ranger you would be replacing one thing ranger is good at. Ranger however would still be picked for spotter and frost spirit. The reason its not commonly picked by organised groups is because not many ppl have lvl 80 rangers and the sword auto is awkward for some fights. It has the problem of pushing bosses off of los spots and makes max melee on bosses like lupi impossible.

My point is if you want blind, vuln, aoe and control conditions and higher single target dps. Necro could fill that role. Atm the lack of fury on necro means other classes fill those requirements better. Its the mixture they need to get right to make necro a more popular choice.

As we speak about Melee, Rangers and Lupicus… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cVWh3bKt4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Honestly, the reason why most Rangers suck that bad is a major failure in design and descreption of Rangers by ANet. Also, players who had played GW1 as a Ranger mostly. Both kind of, well, prefer ranged combat and we would really want to be those “unparalled archers” instead of – skill ceiling petting zoo class.
As for Rangers themselves – If you fight a boss with a lot of one shots, AoEs and that crap on short cooldowns, not even best Ranger will keep his pet up 100% of the time if you want pet to deal damage.
Unless you come to situations stated above, Ranger can deal more damage than a Warrior to single target and bring some helpful buffs to party. But, but. Rangers totally SUCK when it comes to any AoE. Now, most Necro specs don’t. Condition ones are superior in there, obviously, but even DS Power Necro can bring nice, very bursty and deadly AoE (WoS, maybe WoC+ major boost in damage, Shackles, Life Transfer = Tons of bursty AoE). So when Ranger might bring more buffs to party, both classes have nice single target damage (Rangers can cleave in short radius, but instead we don’t have to care about buggy, crap and dying class handicap mechanic all the time), but Necros bring better debuffs and AoE

What needs to happen to make Necro more useful is to make PvE more like Fractals and PvP. Give enemies consistent condition and boon application, while lessening enemy dependancy on large health bars and huge direct damage attacks every 30 seconds.

The truly unique things about Necros that are useful from a team perspective are the following:

1. Mass condition application, reapplication and proliferation on a scale no other class can match. A Necro built to be a Zerker equivalent Conditionmancer with say Rabid armor, is going to be doing at least 3K-4K AoE condition damage per tick on average for an entirety of a fight. More with Might stacks. That is in addition to being a heavy with 2500-2700 armor. Best part is that this area damage is doable anywhere from 0 to 900-1200 range.

2. Instead of simply stripping boons or conditions from battle, Necromancers can keep them in play and reverse their effects by converting conditions into boons and boons to conditions on a mass scale. We also have the ability to use enemy conditions against them by transfering them back. This double effect really comes in handy when converting stacks enemy Might into Weakness, Burning into Aegis, Vunerability into Protection, transfering back 20 stacks of bleed then using Epidemic etc. etc.

3. Spam AoE blinds from Well of Darkness and Plague. Well of Darkness alone is good enough to give an entire team a 5 second break from any real damage, but combo with Plague and there’s 25-30 seconds of blinds. WoD or WoD & Plague are very useful tools against groups of hard hitting veteran mobs that you can’t avoid (like Lava Elementals, Ascalonian Warriors and especially the big group of Molten Charr in Fractals, where the combo makes that fight trivial instead of running past them).

Point 2 obviously suffers from PvE mob design in most dungeons. However, Fractals and newer LS/Dungeon content use more boons and conditions, making Necro feel a lot more useful and unique in those instances. This is a trend that is in our favour and not so much for glass cannon builds like Zerkers.

Another thing I would like to point out is that the above three things can be done on one build, while also achieving comparable support/crossover with other classes. Wells can be turned into 3-4 second area protection appliers (Protection+Weakness+Chill+Blinds = Godly Damage Mitigation). A Necro with Healing power can easily heal 5K health to all within 600 range with Transfusion, turn Well of Blood into a great healing over time skill with 700ish ticks and maintain 300+ per tick area Regeneration on allies. Due to the amount of stacking still in the meta, the only downside to this is fields overriding the more useful fire and water ones due the sheer number of AoE fields Necros can cast.

Rym.1469:

spoj.9672:

You wouldnt be replacing ranger you would be replacing one thing ranger is good at. Ranger however would still be picked for spotter and frost spirit. The reason its not commonly picked by organised groups is because not many ppl have lvl 80 rangers and the sword auto is awkward for some fights. It has the problem of pushing bosses off of los spots and makes max melee on bosses like lupi impossible.

My point is if you want blind, vuln, aoe and control conditions and higher single target dps. Necro could fill that role. Atm the lack of fury on necro means other classes fill those requirements better. Its the mixture they need to get right to make necro a more popular choice.

As we speak about Melee, Rangers and Lupicus… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cVWh3bKt4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Honestly, the reason why most Rangers suck that bad is a major failure in design and descreption of Rangers by ANet. Also, players who had played GW1 as a Ranger mostly. Both kind of, well, prefer ranged combat and we would really want to be those “unparalled archers” instead of – skill ceiling petting zoo class.
As for Rangers themselves – If you fight a boss with a lot of one shots, AoEs and that crap on short cooldowns, not even best Ranger will keep his pet up 100% of the time if you want pet to deal damage.
Unless you come to situations stated above, Ranger can deal more damage than a Warrior to single target and bring some helpful buffs to party. But, but. Rangers totally SUCK when it comes to any AoE. Now, most Necro specs don’t. Condition ones are superior in there, obviously, but even DS Power Necro can bring nice, very bursty and deadly AoE (WoS, maybe WoC+ major boost in damage, Shackles, Life Transfer = Tons of bursty AoE). So when Ranger might bring more buffs to party, both classes have nice single target damage (Rangers can cleave in short radius, but instead we don’t have to care about buggy, crap and dying class handicap mechanic all the time), but Necros bring better debuffs and AoE

That link is broken. I assume its the 5 ranger lupi. Anyway position in melee on lupi is very important especially in solo or small group situations. Slightly too far out of range and you cause necrid trap. A bit closer you cause barrage (you want this if you have reflects). The problem with ranger is they cant control where they stand with sword distance wise on a boss and they can push lupi which could cause traps on players getting left behind. It can be dealt with with skill but its irritating and like i said there arent many good players using rangers properly or good players with geared rangers.

And also thats my point. Make necro give fury and they become a better aoe fury buffer than ranger. They bring different things along with the fury. Its always the combo of useful things which is important. Necro has a good combo already but the lack of group buffing is what makes them undesirable.

I personally do not care if Necromancer dps is lower than average but expect to be compensated with CC and party-supporting conditions like chill, blind, weakness, poison, cripple, and FEAR! Why do bosses have to be immune to so much of our defensive CC?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I was going to post this over on Guru but I figured I might as well address a larger audience even though I know most of the responses are probably going to be stupid as result. Nonetheless, here’s the issue:

Necros are crap in PvE.

There is an effective role for every other class in this game except for the necro. That doesn’t really help the necro’s desirability since there is basically nothing they can do any other class can’t do better:

1) Bad DPS. That’s both burst and sustained. Daggers + minions output okay DPS (slightly higher than warriors) on a single target but the conditions for reaching that damage are much more difficult to meet and due to minion AI and unsustainable cooldowns on summons (as opposed to mesmers who can just resummon phantasms quickly) there’s no way to necros to operate as an effective minion AI class. Well burst DPS is average at best and compared to other classes with much higher burst potential (thieves, guardians, warriors, eles) wells are nothing special especially given the severe sustained DPS loss after the initial burst.

2) Bad survivability. Despite having high health and the extra Death Shroud life pool, necros get screwed in a lot of “one shot kill” fights because they lack vigor or other defensive cooldowns. Necros are pretty much always the first down on a slow Alpha kill because they’re the only class that can’t avoid the spike burst more than three times in a row and Death Shroud isn’t enough to absorb all that damage. On top of that, being tanky doesn’t even help the group because you can’t hold aggro in this game.

3) Poor offensive support. Despite having a bunch of skills that allow the necro to buff itself (i.e. Blood is Power) the necro lacks ways to buff up other players. That means that all you’re doing is mitigating your own bad DPS at best, compared to the ranger and warrior. who also have relatively bad DPS but make up for it by boosting the rest of the team’s DPS significantly via area buffs like spirits, banners, and might/fury.

4) Poor defensive/utility support. Guardians, thieves and mesmers have, by default, tons of reflects, condition removal, block, blinds, stability, etc. to buff other party members, while engineers and elementalists pump out raw healing numbers like nothing, even on a full DPS spec. These aren’t always necessary (sometimes they are) but they certainly don’t hurt. By comparison, the necro has? A blind on long CD (readily accessible by many other classes), another long-CD one-shot AOE condition removal. A small, long-CD AOE heal? Is that it? I don’t even know.

And no, before anyone brings it up, Epidemic isn’t a useful skill in the PvE meta. Spreading a few conditions around to multiple targets doesn’t help when other classes can put all the conditions you want on all the targets by default and can do so much more reliably without relying on another player’s conditions.

So let’s talk gimmicks that can give this class a role that doesn’t make me automatically go “dude just take a mesmer/thief/engineer for that” when i hear it.

tl;dr I’m pretty sure this class is bad, prove me wrong.

first, everybody have a wall text of complain on one class or the other, yours is special because?
second, u down right sound like you havent played the necro class at all, prove me wrong.
third, so u dont like the necromancer! sooo??? who said one is supposed to like every class? who said u r supposed to have a good reason? I dont like mesmer, never liked them, not even in GW1, they look effeminate and I dont role like that, dont care how useful some ppl say they r , dont care even if the class was broken and somebody sends me an email with the perfect solution to fix them and make them useful and perfect I wouldnt do it, because I dont like mesmers !!! I also hate the guardian because he is a like a successor to the monk and I hate monks!!! in GW1 they always rage quite and on top of that they were necessary and scarce I remember waiting for hours for a monk to show up, I love the fact that anet pulled such effort to ditch the traditional trinity, I dont miss monks.

a lot of ppl (not many though) kick @ss with the necro, shame on u if u r one of those jerks that kick necros (and thief) out of the party because u think the class suck.

What do u want to say?
Who iam? Probably one of the best non-math theory crafters, and one of the uhm…150? best EU players? Did alot dungeons solo, including Arah and im a teamplayer, not a shiny soloplayer.
I´have all classes lvl 80, all classes at least full extotic (zerk), played all classes in most of the dungeon (my mains guard/warr/engi/ele in all). Tested most common meta builds, and created some of the most used builds.

I like my necromancer, i play my necromancer. But i can still see some big balance problems.

Molch.2078:

Okay Nemesis, let me get this straight: Every class but Necromancer is usefull in PvE, therefore PvE is broken?

This makes no sense, sorry.

Um… No…
The only classes that are useful in PvE are warriors and guardians. Everyone else just fills in, so e suck slightly less than necromancer but I would never call them fine. The issue here is truly the lack of the trinity. GW2 is one of the first successful MMOs to pull off a PvE system without defined roles, therefor of course it’s a little hard to balance.

Most of the reasons people give for PvE being broken are totally right. Warriors and Guardians are not punished enough for being in melee range it’s true. But think about what would happen if they made PvE really challenging, people would rage quit. ( if you played the aitherblade or molten alliance dungeons you know what I mean.)

It all comes down to having a trinity, at one point casual player only had to “master” one aspect of the game and no matter how hard it got there was usually someone there to pick up the slack. If you were simply not that good you just played a less crucial role (like dps) and others made up for your crappy playing. In GW2 everything is so face roll easy that the only “viable” builds are pure dps monsters.

The few times anet had made some challenging content Necromancers OWNED!

So thats why we use eles, thieves, mesmers and rangers in record setting speed clears? Because warrior and guardian are the only useful classes in pve. Makes sense…..

Stop applying pug belief to the actual meta. The actual meta has a use for all classes except necro. Engi is debatable because its generally not favoured in record attempts but it definately has its uses.

Heres some videos which will hopefull teach you something about class usefulness. All contain only 0 to 1 guardians and only 1 warrior in the group.

13.6 second lupi – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNt0_8gR-J8
TA Forward path – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHif18HZKYI
COE path 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co3xjA-0EsA
COF path 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQ-39_C8LI

If you’d like to see some more theres plenty.
http://gwscr.com/records

spoj.9672:

So thats why we use eles, thieves, mesmers and rangers in record setting speed clears? Because warrior and guardian are the only useful classes in pve. Makes sense…..

Stop applying pug belief to the actual meta. The actual meta has a use for all classes except necro. Engi is debatable because its generally not favoured in record attempts but it definately has its uses.

Heres some videos which will hopefull teach you something about class usefulness. All contain only 0 to 1 guardians and only 1 warrior in the group.

13.6 second lupi – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNt0_8gR-J8
TA Forward path – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHif18HZKYI
COE path 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co3xjA-0EsA
COF path 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQ-39_C8LI

If you’d like to see some more theres plenty.
http://gwscr.com/records

Completely true, but that’s mostly all “old content” designed poorly around just dodging and doing a large amount of damage. Necros have the least mobility and no cleave. This was a bigger issue when Dungeons were the only PvE endgame, but Fractals and LS is now considered the “endgame.” Especially with the new update and difficulty added to Fractals.

The vast majority of groups looking to do Dungeons and Fractals just don’t care that much about meta. They are in fact pugs that just want a general group with the right consistency of classes more or less (like 1 guard and warrior with 3 optional), or Guild groups that just take whichever guildies volunteer. The extreme minority are people looking to put together the most optimized and fastest groups, save for 1 or 2 dungeons like CoF where it’s common. That’s because the time spent doing so may be longer than the actual time you save (1-2min).

There’s a difference between usefulness, the average meta and fully optimized groups for the fastest speed clears meta. I don’t really care if Necros are seen as a useful class for running speed clears of poorly designed and easy dungeons doable by any class/party makeup. I care that in the most difficult fights and areas, that Necro has a place and they do, mostly. The only hard content Necros struggle with is Arah and no new content has been designed in a similar way, because it was bad design which again favoured skipping vast amounts mobs, mobility, gimmicky bosses with too much health and zerking them down with gimmicky tactics/tricks.

The worst thing that could happen to any class is that they become useless and unwanted in the hardest content, because then they hit a content wall and can’t progress like others. So far I have never been kept or had a hard time completing any content. Speed clears can be left to optimized classes that are based on spike DPS and lots of mobility. It really isn’t hard to setup a farm alt character for CoF and other similar dungeons. With Exp Scrolls and about 5 gold you can have a Zerker whatever class.

Most updates in living story and fractals have been very good for Necromancers as Anet has learned to use their own game mechanics better.

All that said Necros could definitely use a boost in the weapon department with some cleave. That’s one of the main things holding back Zerker Necro from dealing with trash mobs better. The mobility will never be there. It just isn’t part of the class mechanics. However, DS and our more defensive abilities should be tweaked to compensate.

Balekai.6083:

However, DS and our more defensive abilities should be tweaked to compensate.

I’m of the opinion that we need a more reliable way of filling our life force bar. Warrior and Thief have similar class resources, but they both have baseline regeneration (Adrenaline on attack and Initiative over time) without any gimmick (stuff dying nearby) PLUS skills and traits. We rely solely on cooldowns and traits to fill ours, which puts us at a disadvantage in single-target boss fights and if we don’t/shouldn’t/can’t use weapons that are most efficient at generating Life Force.

And it’s been said 32198057 times but being locked out of our utilities and ability to revive while in DS is a travesty. Is there any hope whatsoever of ever having access to those things?

Ogii.6958:

Balekai.6083:

However, DS and our more defensive abilities should be tweaked to compensate.

I’m of the opinion that we need a more reliable way of filling our life force bar. Warrior and Thief have similar class resources, but they both have baseline regeneration (Adrenaline on attack and Initiative over time) without any gimmick (stuff dying nearby) PLUS skills and traits. We rely solely on cooldowns and traits to fill ours, which puts us at a disadvantage in single-target boss fights and if we don’t/shouldn’t/can’t use weapons that are most efficient at generating Life Force.

And it’s been said 32198057 times but being locked out of our utilities and ability to revive while in DS is a travesty. Is there any hope whatsoever of ever having access to those things?

I think that’s a really good idea to have LF fill naturally over time even if its small. The whole point of DS was attrition, but we can only use it reliably maybe once or twice during an encounter unless highly specced for it. Even then it can be DPSed down so quickly that it can be less effective than 1-2 secs of invunerability other classes have. Whatever can be done to make DS feel more like a real option and non-counter intuitive (preventing heals, not being able to res people or intereact with things etc.), the better. The utilities i’m on the fence about though, but I wouldn’t complain if we had access to them while in DS and wouldn’t think it’s OP.

A more extreme idea for DS could be turning it into a GW2 form of Protective Spirit (a 10 second enchantment preventing incoming attacks from doing more than 10% of health) from GW1, rather than being a kitten version of the old GW1 Aura of the Lich (An elite enchantment that halved health and incoming damage, but healed when it ended like Dealthy Invig trait… but for half your health and lasted 45 seconds with access to all skills).

While in Death Shroud normal damage would be capped at doing a % of total health. Maybe tweak it a bit so damage is capped at % of total health per second, so it truly mitigates multiple sources of spike damage. I wouldn’t connect it to lifeforce, because investing in SR and SR traits would make the damage mitigation less effective in DS, not more.

For example say it was 10% of health just like GW1 Protective Spirit. If you had 20000 health and 10 people attacking, you would only be able to receive 2000 damage per second and all hits/damage in that remainder timeframe is nullified. The Necro still wouldn’t have access to healing in DS and the LF bar would still degenerate. At the very most, you would get about 5-10 seconds worth of damage mitigation from DS in high DPS fights instead of…0. This would completely solve the uselessness of popping into DS that’s supposed to be the main attrition mechanic of the “attrition class,” and having it instantly burned down, compared to other classes with invunerability and they can’t be touched for the duration.

Is doing easily sustained damage of 2-5k DPS while also nerfing the mobs damage, mobility, healing and disabling them useless?

I get the desire to support the party more, and I’d like a couple more options there (and yes, some stability/vigor would be brilliant) but being the walking nerfbat to everyone else is alot of fun, and taking on mobs in a PvE setting with a condition facemelter necro is trifling. My main’s a guardian and I play alot of Ele, Thief and Engi too, and I always find good reasons to bring my Necro along everything except for open world stuff, where condition builds suffer.

Living story endgame content? Fractals harder? My sides.

spoj.9672:

A few small things could be changed on the necro to make them fit the meta. Make furious demise group fury. Give us a cleave melee weapon. Improve vuln capabilities. Give us blast finishers on axe 3 and warhorn 4.

You give us group fury and you make us a good fury source for the group. No need for eles to take persisting flames on LH builds so they can take more dmg modifiers.

Reworking pve to make chill, weakness and fear more useful is far too big an ask to make necros viable. The best way is to get the necro some small changes which allow it to fit the current meta better. And hopefully with new boss encounters, control conditions will start to be a bit more effective aswell.

Every control condition necro has thief can do better (besides vuln) while providing stealth, more dps (maybe yes no ok), might stacking and some fury.
It seems necro is the jack of all trades filler class that no one at arena net knows how to fit into pve.
Blast finisher on axe#3 and horn #4 would be welcome (prefer on horn #5 for wvw) while providing cleave would be huge. On top of group wide fury (and maybe vigor, deathly invigoration anyone) and I would say I agree with you all the way. Probably move furious demise to grandmaster minor trait, give blood tree a decent damage multipier, and I think we have a recipe for success.

Given that we’ve established all the make-the-Necro-viable-in-end-game-PvE permutations in the first page, I’m going to “dream” at little here, no offense meant to GK.

Also, given that the format of PvE is likely to sway from the ALL TEH DOMAGES!!1! meta, I’m going to “wish” along those lines.

The Necro’s sold as the “Master of Conditions,” but it’s obvious from the beginning that it doesn’t hold that spot—at least not in PvE. What I’d like to see are more traits like Terror that play on Conditions. Rather that being the master of applying or manipulating them, I’d like the see the Necro be the master of turning the ConD into something even more powerful. Particularly Chill.

Fear > Terror (Control + DOT)
Chill > Added % damage to chilled enemies (party wide?)
Poison > Striking a poisoned target gives Life Leech (party wide?)
Weakness > Striking a Weakened target gains a stack of Might (party wide?)

You get the idea. I’d happily settle for a couple of traits that added bonus damage to Chill, or stacking a certain duration procs an immobilize, that kinda thing. These would have to be handled deftly, but it’s something I’ve been mulling over for a while.

robertul.3679:

Living story endgame content? Fractals harder? My sides.

Fractals 40-50 feels more of a challenge than any Dungeon except Arah for me. That’s not saying much though hehehe. In the future Anet plans to extend Fractals with more Fracs and higher difficulties. So it will eventually be the endgame content where you actually require the highest tier gear/infusions in order to complete. Normal PvE dungeons only require Exotic, if not rares in many instances.

Living Story is what we have become enslaved to doing every 2 weeks and is worth hurting your sides laughing about if you ask me. So in a way it’s also PvE endgame, just temporary content. If they plan to implement the Dragon plots via LS after Scarlets done then it will officially be “endgame” content.

Again, the more new PVE content/endgame Necros are useful in, the less Necro viability matters in older PVE content/endgame as it becomes less and less of a % of the game.

I keep getting these memos late. PvE no good for Necro? Daggers bad? I run daggers and Signets, with scepter and focus/focus as a second set and I kill in waves. Add the new healing signet and spec for shroud and you almost never die (I had a veteran and 6 reg mobs on me, while being constantly interrupted before my first death).

Sorry guys, but I’m rocking PvE and WvW with no issues. shrug

Raiff.6742:

I keep getting these memos late. PvE no good for Necro? Daggers bad? I run daggers and Signets, with scepter and focus/focus as a second set and I kill in waves. Add the new healing signet and spec for shroud and you almost never die (I had a veteran and 6 reg mobs on me, while being constantly interrupted before my first death).

Sorry guys, but I’m rocking PvE and WvW with no issues. shrug

I believe you but the new healing signet is not the one keeping you alive, at all, even blood fiend would do a better job of doing that

Azzer.8137:

Raiff.6742:

I keep getting these memos late. PvE no good for Necro? Daggers bad? I run daggers and Signets, with scepter and focus/focus as a second set and I kill in waves. Add the new healing signet and spec for shroud and you almost never die (I had a veteran and 6 reg mobs on me, while being constantly interrupted before my first death).

Sorry guys, but I’m rocking PvE and WvW with no issues. shrug

I believe you but the new healing signet is not the one keeping you alive, at all, even blood fiend would do a better job of doing that

The new healing skill is really niche. Basically for when you want BF for the healing over time, but don’t want the risk of losing it due to BF death. It’s a gimpier BF with 100% uptime (if you’re getting hit), that can be built around with other siphons, regeneration and/or damage mitigation. If only Anet left it the way is was it would have been great. Even if the passives were given a 0.5s-1s CD and left everything else the same.

I experimented with it a bit in various builds and sometimes it’s kind of nice (enjoy SoS on my soldiers wvw wellomancer zerg build), but most of the time not so much.