Guild Wars 2

I’d actually be interested in seeing a skill-by-skill comparison between a blood necromancer and a water elementalist. I may do that myself later on. Actually, I’d be interested in seeing a comparison of any elemental spec and the comparable necromancer spec. I’m scaring myself a little because I love necromancer but man if you look at all the stuff Elementalist can do, well I can’t imagine a reason to keep the necromancer unless you just wanna be tougher.

@CHIPS,

I’m sorry, but it’s extremely hard to follow your post. It’s like you’re posting answers to a list of questions I didn’t post. I get the general gist (“you’re bad and wrong”) but it seems like you’re trying to respond to specific points and I just can’t easily connect my points to your counterpoints. I’ll do my best to respond but I’m just going to have to skip a few numbers.

CHIPS.6018:

1) In wvw zerg fights an ele would always use staff. Only the most crazy eles would use dagger. So that weapon switching problem is non-existent for them. They don’t need it. They just need to switch the elements at any time to be effective.

But then the fight changes and you’re SOL. One line charges the other, you need to give chase or suddenly deal with a crazy glass Thief (oh boy do they ever exist in WvW with their 10.5k backstabs) who’s jumped you, etc etc. If you’re just sitting by a wall attacking or defending, yeah, you’re just just going to sit in staff but there are situations where you feel the lack of weapon swap.

CHIPS.6018:

Corrupt Boon is the another useless skill in wvw.

I must respectfully disagree. Anyone with Stability can be rough for a zerg to take down sometimes. I find a lot of Commanders like to buff themselves up and lead the charge into a Lord’s Room. I honestly can’t count the number of times I’ve seen someone go from flying through a zerg with near-impunity to flat on the ground after pushing that single button. For some reason, killing a commander with a single “kitten you” button is one of the more satisfying things in the game for me.

CHIPS.6018:

Skill ceiling is not how hard it is to learn a profession. That is called the learning curve. Skill ceiling is how much you can potentially achieve with a profession. And the necro is very low in skill celling.

I’m aware of the difference between the two terms. I’ve just heard it said about almost everything that ends up being considered overpowered. When the game first came out, everyone said this about the Elementalist as well (“way too high skill floor, way too low skill ceiling,” to be precise). Then we figured out x/x/x30/30.

This leads me to be suspicious.

CHIPS.6018:

3. It depends on how your are fighting in said zerg. In a zerg stalemate, I often found myself kiting to the side in order to attack with scepter and maybe kill a few zerglings on the flanks. It all depends on how you play.

Feast of Corruption. Worst skill ever? I am fairly certain I could find some worse ones. xD The damage it does for a conditionmancer can actually be fairly decent compared to what everything else will hit for when you are specced for conditions. Although it is single target so meh.. xD

Any good condimancer will probably be running with epidemic. If you manage to corrupt boon let’s say a guardian who just used save yourselves, and you epidemic it, that can really hurt an enemy team.

And also, I have to severely question your understanding of WvW. 60v60 is not going to be instantaneous win or lose. Sometimes those fights can go on for a long time. And if you can land a corrupt boon and completely explode a a player, the odds are now 60v59, and your team has the advantage. The more players you can take out, the better your team will do. So I cannot understand the logic of disdaining a skill that can completely murder someone and help out in the fight. 1 player down is one less player attacking you.

I, for one, have played most of my WvW hours in T1. We were on the same server before you decided to head for the Hills (Kaineng). So I definitely understand top tier fighting and what goes on. And almost all of that time was spent on my necro. Any other class I take into WvW feels terrible compared to my necro… (Just personal preference I suppose)

4. I get very annoyed at people who just come to the forums and whine and complain. I think the devs actively avoid our section because we have such jaded necros roaming about, complaining about every single thing. All this speculation does nothing. If you want to try it hop on down to T6 (My best guess for when the video was taken based on mos.millenium.) But feel free to try it. Go on down to a low tier like T6, gather a very skilled group of mainly necros, maybe throw in 2 extra professions to recreate fully the situation, and try 25 times to hold a tower against a zerg. Because as we all know, videos like this show the 1 time it happened, and do not show the 30 times it did not happen. xD

Lastly, I have to disagree on the skill ceiling. Many people I talk to, no matter what they run, class build w/e, have the general idea that one of the classes they hate to fight is a very good necro. There is a definite difference between skill level on a necro. The good ones stand out, whereas it is very hard to stand out as an ele. Or a thief. A DD ele or a backstab thief, meh. You have faced them. They are just like the rest. Copy paste, w/e. You fight a good necromancer, and it becomes very clear just how good the necro is.

Yeah. It is very hard for a necro to 1v8. Almost impossible. But the main reason is because a necro 1v8, the necro is fighting those 8 people 100% of the time. Those 8 people are hitting the necro for the duration of the fight. Then you see a thief. He fights 1v1, and then leaves the fight. And then reinstates a 1v1. The eles we saw, they rarely engage full on. The majority of time is spent CCing, then backing up. Throwing down AoE, then disengaging. The classes that “solo” 1v8 never fight a legit 1v8. Any person 1v8 who is taking the necro approach will never achieve those results.

CHIPS.6018:

….

2) PVT ele damage is pathetic. Sure they have some decent burst damage, but once you compare it to actual bursts, a perfect ele burst is worse than single button presses on actual burst builds. Also, not everyone runs PVT gear, I’ve consistently run rare MF gear when my server flopped between tier 1 and tier 2, it served me just fine, it just requires you to not be an idiot (too hard of a requirement for most WvWers I realize).

3) Eles have attunement CD, they go 30 into arcana so it isn’t so bloody obvious when you can kill them

If you are sitting with a single weapon and never swapping, you are the same as that ele who sits in fire attunement all day.

Tier of WvW means absolutely, completely NOTHING. I’ve been in every single tier, I have played against nearly every server. Top tier servers are top tier for 2 reasons: decent commanders to organize groups, and tons of people. If they don’t have tons of people, I don’t care how good you are, you will never be “top tier”, because zerging > skill. And then you need decent shepherds to lead the sheep around to their next pasture. Lots of people online (needs to be around the clock too, need the night crew) + commanders = tier 1, that is all you need; skill be kitten

Pendragon.8735:

Yerffejy.6538:

but Anet has said that they plan to reduce AoE, so that the damage does not surpass single target damage.

How long ago was that now, 2 months ago? Is it even still on the table. Instead they just nerfed epidemic. Anet’s fear of whack-a-mole, or counter intuitive idea to
‘boost’ 20 bad things instead of nerfing lone obvious overpowered things, means balancing is moving at a snails pace in this game.

They did nerf aoe though.
They nerfed thief SB #2 (pvp only nerf) by I think 30%. They also nerfed ele fire aoe #5 by a large amount, I think maybe even for pve. It used to hit for 5-6k. In the video it is barely breaking 2k. They also nerfed eng grenades (or mines, i forget) which kitten off engineers a lot.
IMO, they shouldn’t have touched epidemic. Yay some invisible bump in the ground will now block it.
The only time i play my necro is in spvp now, which i hardly do. Too kitten support/dps for pve. Too kitten mobility/escapes for wvw.

I have an 80 ele and necro. I would never even dream of taking my necro into wvw over my ele. The classes are worlds apart in usefulness in pvp. I see necros as easy targets that provide little resistance……

Reaver.9256:

I have an 80 ele and necro. I would never even dream of taking my necro into wvw over my ele. The classes are worlds apart in usefulness in pvp. I see necros as easy targets that provide little resistance……

Odd. I see the opposite. My necro likes to target eles and get them out of the fight early. :P And I never bring my ele to WvW. hahahaha

Blaine Tog.8304:

@CHIPS,

I’m sorry, but it’s extremely hard to follow your post. It’s like you’re posting answers to a list of questions I didn’t post. I get the general gist (“you’re bad and wrong”) but it seems like you’re trying to respond to specific points and I just can’t easily connect my points to your counterpoints. I’ll do my best to respond but I’m just going to have to skip a few numbers.

CHIPS.6018:

1) In wvw zerg fights an ele would always use staff. Only the most crazy eles would use dagger. So that weapon switching problem is non-existent for them. They don’t need it. They just need to switch the elements at any time to be effective.

But then the fight changes and you’re SOL. One line charges the other, you need to give chase or suddenly deal with a crazy glass Thief (oh boy do they ever exist in WvW with their 10.5k backstabs) who’s jumped you, etc etc. If you’re just sitting by a wall attacking or defending, yeah, you’re just just going to sit in staff but there are situations where you feel the lack of weapon swap.

CHIPS.6018:

Corrupt Boon is the another useless skill in wvw.

I must respectfully disagree. Anyone with Stability can be rough for a zerg to take down sometimes. I find a lot of Commanders like to buff themselves up and lead the charge into a Lord’s Room. I honestly can’t count the number of times I’ve seen someone go from flying through a zerg with near-impunity to flat on the ground after pushing that single button. For some reason, killing a commander with a single “kitten you” button is one of the more satisfying things in the game for me.

CHIPS.6018:

Skill ceiling is not how hard it is to learn a profession. That is called the learning curve. Skill ceiling is how much you can potentially achieve with a profession. And the necro is very low in skill celling.

I’m aware of the difference between the two terms. I’ve just heard it said about almost everything that ends up being considered overpowered. When the game first came out, everyone said this about the Elementalist as well (“way too high skill floor, way too low skill ceiling,” to be precise). Then we figured out x/x/x30/30.

This leads me to be suspicious.

I will keep this short.

1) If you are away from you commander and you got backstabbed to death by a 10k damage thief, sorry it is all your fault. You should have been stacking with your commander and the rest of your zerg.

A zerg fight is about helping your zerg to win. It aren’t about you. And using the staff gives your zerg the highest chance to win.

2) Corrupt boon can be blocked. It can be dodged. It might get interrupted. Your game might be too laggy, both computer side and server side, to use it. And even a successful corrupt boon aren’t instant kill.

And in case you are wondering, in higher tiers the first guy that leads a zerg aren’t necessary the commander. He got “cover underlings” that stands in front of him to protect himself from harm. So you got to find that commander in the middle of a 60 men enemy zerg. Good luck with that.

I will give you a hint: Take Well of Corruption. That’s actually a useful skill in wvw.

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

….

2) PVT ele damage is pathetic. Sure they have some decent burst damage, but once you compare it to actual bursts, a perfect ele burst is worse than single button presses on actual burst builds. Also, not everyone runs PVT gear, I’ve consistently run rare MF gear when my server flopped between tier 1 and tier 2, it served me just fine, it just requires you to not be an idiot (too hard of a requirement for most WvWers I realize).

3) Eles have attunement CD, they go 30 into arcana so it isn’t so bloody obvious when you can kill them

If you are sitting with a single weapon and never swapping, you are the same as that ele who sits in fire attunement all day.

Tier of WvW means absolutely, completely NOTHING. I’ve been in every single tier, I have played against nearly every server. Top tier servers are top tier for 2 reasons: decent commanders to organize groups, and tons of people. If they don’t have tons of people, I don’t care how good you are, you will never be “top tier”, because zerging > skill. And then you need decent shepherds to lead the sheep around to their next pasture. Lots of people online (needs to be around the clock too, need the night crew) + commanders = tier 1, that is all you need; skill be kitten

Tier might not matter. But the opinions of those higher tier guilds matters. Unless they all suck and have no idea how to play.

Ask anyone from my server and they will tell you how OP eles are.

e.g.
“You can only kill them from range. They move too kitten fast!”
“Their heal is ridiculous.”
“I need to buy a rifle.” (warrior)
“I hate eles. This is BS.”
“Leave that ele. Kill his fat friends.”
“I will go in to troll them. You guys escape from here.” (elementalist)

When War Machine stack for team heal, they don’t ask for “Well of Blood! Blood!”. They ask for “Water! Water!”.

I am not going to write another long post to prove myself. I know what I am seeing.

CHIPS.6018:

When War Machine stack for team heal, they don’t ask for “Well of Blood! Blood!”. They ask for “Water! Water!”.

I am not going to write another long post to prove myself. I know what I am seeing.

You’ll actually get yelled at if you drop Well of Blood since its a light field. Then you’ll get told to GTFO of the zerg if you can’t follow directions.

Reaver.9256:

I have an 80 ele and necro. I would never even dream of taking my necro into wvw over my ele. The classes are worlds apart in usefulness in pvp. I see necros as easy targets that provide little resistance……

I have both as well, relatively new to the Ele, but the survival is ridiculous. Really enjoying the class.

What i find is with the Elementalist i don’t need to supplement my damage with skills/traits – my weapons take care of all my damage so i can focus on utilities and survivability.

With my Necro, pretty much all my skills and traits are spent to get my damage up to par with other classes. Noted, i can do some solid damage, but i think it’s a bit wonky if you ask me.

I still love the Necro – nothing beats double tapping into a zerg, dropping 2 wells and then Death Shroud → Life Transfer while i run back to my zerg.

CHIPS.6018:

1) If you are away from you commander and you got backstabbed to death by a 10k damage thief, sorry it is all your fault. You should have been stacking with your commander and the rest of your zerg.

I’m not complaining about thieves and if I’m roaming by myself I deserve whatever I get. I’m saying kitten happens and sometimes you have the wrong set equipped for a given situation. This is much less of a problem for other professions because they get to have two sets ready at all times.

CHIPS.6018:

A zerg fight is about helping your zerg to win. It aren’t about you. And using the staff gives your zerg the highest chance to win.

Sure thing, but then the wall breaks down and suddenly you might prefer D/D. This video has a textbook example of that: their defense is finally overwhelmed and suddenly our hero is stuck trying to waste a little more of their time before getting stomped, whereas D/D could try to Ride the Lightning away (probably unsuccessfully, but with a staff his chances of escape were 0 once he was surrounded).

CHIPS.6018:

2) Corrupt boon can be blocked. It can be dodged. It might get interrupted. Your game might be too laggy, both computer side and server side, to use it. And even a successful corrupt boon aren’t instant kill.

Who cares? I use it, someone tough usually drops and gets stomped. I can’t equip it for a guaranteed kill every 40 seconds but just because it’s only like a 90% chance of a stomp doesn’t mean it’s worthless.

CHIPS.6018:

And in case you are wondering,

Spare me the condescension, I know it’s the mark of a bad commander to lead the charge like that. Most of the time I’ll just use Corrupt Boon on someone I see our zerg having a bit of trouble with and it’s an immediate turn of the tide most of the time. Sometimes it’s a commander and in those situations, I absolutely prefer to be on my Necro. When I play my other characters and I see a huge stack of boons on someone, I look at them with longing for what dreadfulness they could be.

It seems to me that we’ve gotten off-topic, the topic being that video. I re-watched it. I still honestly don’t think you can use it as an example of why Eles eclipse Necros in general. It’s difficult to parse exactly what the Necro is doing in all that chaos but he doesn’t actually go down any more than anyone else (the Warrior goes down far more often) and seems to be contributing decently. Not to put this glibly, but I think you just want another grindstone for your axe.

CHIPS.6018:

Ask anyone from my server and they will tell you how OP eles are.

Ask anyone from any server five months ago and they would’ve told you the ele was criminally _under_powered. Consequently, I find your appeal to the crowd unconvincing.

I think the problem with all the discussion in this thread is people are looking at 2 sides of the same coin.

I think some people are saying that eles are better and we should be as good, and the other saying that we aren’t bad. Eles are, in general, the strongest class in the game. Necros are bottom half, I think. But there isn’t a huge gap. So we see some people saying that we aren’t as good as eles, and others counter arguing that we aren’t bad. I think both thought processes are correct at the same time.

I would argue that we are the best WvW class for 20 seconds every 3 minutes. And the rest of the time, we’re pretty decent.

Hello ^^.

This is Zoose (the ele in the video). A friend told me there was a thread about me in the Necro forum, so I decided I’d drop by! I appreciate you sharing my video. I just thought I’d chime in on your discussion.

This is my perspective from tournament PvP. It is probably vastly different than WvW.

I play competitive tournament PvP, and in that sense the fights are much smaller as it is 5vs5. Necromancers in tpvp actually perform quite well. In tpvp our necromancers normally run support type builds that assist in damage and the Resurrection signet to get people up instantly once they are downed. This alone is normally game changing enough to win or lose a fight.

In terms of necros, they normally lack a lot of stability with their support builds or any type of invulnerabilities, so our teams normally assign a “peeler” for our necros. When people jump onto our necros, that peeler or whoever is nearby, will help pressure the attacker, so that the necro can go back to freely pressuring the other team through condition damage/boon stripping/corrupting boons/etc. In doing so, the necro is able to safely apply tons of pressure through condition damage, and if he is in trouble he has an “oh %*#! button” through Plague form.

In WvW I will agree with you when you say the necro feels much more useless as it is not always a small scale fight, but in smaller scale fights in conquest mode for nodes like in tpvp. Necros can destroy teams if played well. Although in the current meta, I believe engineers are better at condition pressure than necros because of the ridiculous HGH engineers, but Necros are not as horrible as you make them out to be here in the Heart of the Mists. ^^

Cheers!

This maybe out of topic, but isn’t it just bad strategy vs. good strategy?

I don’t know too much about eles, but I think a good strategy and offense could have trashed them easily.
I would think that it’s just sloppy gameplay and management on the other team.

Skill ceiling and learning curve aside, even the average player/class can be a monster when following an excellent strategy. One of them knew what they were doing, the other doesn’t.

Now I know a big problem is that Necros can’t heal or deal damage as fast as the eles in the Vids, and I think that’s what CHIPS is trying to say.
I get that we aren’t built as good as the eles in that respect, we’re a versatile class that can adopt many builds, but cannot outclass most other classes in a specific build. However, we can outmaneuver other classes with a bit of quick thinking (btw this is for all classes, not just necros)

Zul.1506:

This maybe out of topic, but isn’t it just bad strategy vs. good strategy?

I don’t know too much about eles, but I think a good strategy and offense could have trashed them easily.
I would think that it’s just sloppy gameplay and management on the other team.

Skill ceiling and learning curve aside, even the average player/class can be a monster when following an excellent strategy. One of them knew what they were doing, the other doesn’t.

Now I know a big problem is that Necros can’t heal or deal damage as fast as the eles in the Vids, and I think that’s what CHIPS is trying to say.
I get that we aren’t built as good as the eles in that respect, we’re a versatile class that can adopt many builds, but cannot outclass most other classes in a specific build. However, we can outmaneuver other classes with a bit of quick thinking (btw this is for all classes, not just necros)

Well, nobody heals better than Eles because we have the skills to do so XD. I think Necros can do a lot of things “just okay”, but yeah they don’t really excel at anything, but if that’s your type of playstyle a little bit of everything then I think Necros in the right hands are really devastating. As soon as the crazy HgH engis get toned down then I think Necros will be okay again in the condi pressure department.

Also, this was in like Tier 6 or so WvW. The other players weren’t exactly the best, but at the same time, we set up our choke points pretty well, so yeah. My other teammates are/were top tpvp players are the time as well, so it makes it much easier to play vs that zerg. It’s a lot about communication and making the proper decisions that makes that video look good, not really the classes. We had thieves and warriors in that group as well. Melee warriors haha

Yeah, Water attunement is a deadly healer! I believe that you can heal and cleanse conditions everytime you enter Water? Hard to beat that!

I do think that Necros do need a buff, but I don’t really mind the way they are now, I have the most fun out of my Necro actually at the moment (I find my Mesmer to be the least in terms of fun :P ). It’s kind of the underdog class, which everyone overlooks, and it’s always fun to see people surprised when I do well in tpvp or dungeons

I think they should just buff more classes to be on par with Rangers, Eles, Engis atm.

I don’t think that this has much to do much with Necros being bad healers.
Rather it shows that Elementalists have OP heals.

Guardians for example have great heals but they need to heavily focus their builds around it whereas (from what I’ve heard) Elementalists don’t.
Or have you ever seen a Guardian output insane damage while putting out massive heals?

From what I’ve heard Eles are nearly as mobile as Thieves, deal high damage and are as hard to kill as Guardians.
I don’t know how much of this is true, but I know at least a few good Eles who rip people into pieces.

Necromancer’s Well of Blood actually heals for very high amounts if you spec heavily into Healing Power.
I think that the problem is that Necro doesn’t have all that many healing skills to use the stat with.
Regeneration becomes much better with high healing power, though!
I haven’t ever actually ran Healing Power on a Necro so I’m just theorycrafting here and saying what I’ve heard from people who have ran it.

I know that Necros do have ‘Mark of Blood’ which regens and can be easily traited so that you can basically give out perma-regen. But the problem isn’t that at all (I think.)

Regeneration is basically a heal-over-time, it’s good to have it on, but it won’t give an instantly massive heal. On the other hand, eles CAN do that. Their Water attunement skills give a lot of access to good direct-healing skill, alongside the incredibly useful Water combo-field, which can give massive AoE heals when applied with a Blast finisher.

Necros, however, aside from giving good heal-over-time has no immediate heals and our support combo field, is Dark. Which can be used to combo into life-steal, which is a mediocre heal that requires physical projectile combo and area blind with a blast finisher I believe?

LastDay.3524:

Guardians for example have great heals but they need to heavily focus their builds around it whereas (from what I’ve heard) Elementalists don’t.

That’s kinda the wrong way to look at it. It’s not that Eles don’t have to focus their builds around good heals so much as that it’s really hard to build a decent Ele that doesn’t have good heals. Water and Arcana are just so necessary for the class to function at a baseline level that you can’t go without speccing into them very heavily.

To put it differently, Eles only have one viable build and it just happens to be the build other people complain about. If ANet takes that build away without providing alternatives, Eles will drop out of usefulness entirely. Much as I would like to run a glass cannon DPS staff build with offensive utilities, you just can’t do it. You’ll get one-shot by boss AoE attacks in PvE, random AoE in WvW, and backstab thieves in sPvP.

You can’t compare the support and organization of this team who are clearly knowledgeable in their builds as well as on voice chat and very coordinated, to a necro support build. We could have done the same thing as a team composed of support necros with similar organization. That zerg was bad bad bad and the team was good, all there is to it. I know for a fact I can hit higher healing numbers on my necro than that ele did and provide protection to my team at the same time. I may not have the burst damage or burst heals they did, but if the team was mostly necros instead of eles, you wouldn’t need as much burst healing. I am pretty impressed with them though. For one, they have mastered staff on ele and aren’t running cookie cutter d/d spammers, and two, they were very well organized and maintained control over the situation even when things got a little thick. Lots of people would have just bailed.

New video from them. No necro this time. They are now in FA and fighting against TC in tier 2 wvw.

Thoughts? Put your necro in that ele’s shoes. How would you make a difference? Would your necro have done better than that ele did?

Well… again the award for most inefficient zerg goes to those tarnished coast guys.

If I was in this group as a necro:
My dps would have been higher than the ele’s. But my positioning would have to be very different. When the portal pops up behind him he chills right next to it for a couple secs before he ports away. This would have killed a necro probably.
So.. I bet the weakest link in this party was the warrior. Replace him with a debuffing necro and you can pick a lot more people out of the crowd.

CHIPS.6018:

New video from them. No necro this time. They are now in FA and fighting against TC in tier 2 wvw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOkNiQIUIp8

Thoughts? Put your necro in that ele’s shoes. How would you make a difference? Would your necro have done better than that ele did?

To break it down tactically, I don’t see the necro contributing more than the ele except for maybe group CC + heals + boon strip to keep the opponent disrupted on charges (aoe fear aoe loss of stability into fear) or pinned in AOE fields longer (aoe chill). Does this stack up to solid heals and solid aoe damage? I think it could with a targeted well build, yes.

Losing the ele would have made that group not work with the amount of aoe damage and heals it was left with however. Further, a necro may have died when the ele dropped mist form…(I like to think equally skilled necro would not have died though.)

I would instead point out the two lesser contributors of that group those being the warrior (pretty sure I saw single target rifle damage and group stability from the charr war) and the thief (I couldn’t see the thief much so I assume aoe shortbow damage and insurance against wipes via shadow refuge). Dropping the warrior would remove a crucial group stability buff and so probably a better option would be to replace the thief and the necro would contributing a lot to that group with either a ground target well build or condi/epidemic or some mix thereof.

The thief could be a venom share build which might make the contribution level a little more equal between a necro and thief though? I’d still place the necro higher than a venom share.

I would not think the necro could replace the ele.

Try this Build :
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjQaZ6Vaea8bKAJFPf9kiuHPSBxDTVocA-TsAg2CrIuRdj7GzNybs3MAZBycBA

I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get an interesting video with 7 necros. In my mind it goes something like…

Start fight
Apply conditions
Coordinated single target + staff fear with total duration of about 20s
Epidemic fear forever everyone dies with 25 bleed stacks.

Maartac.9457:

Try this Build :
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjQaZ6Vaea8bKAJFPf9kiuHPSBxDTVocA-TsAg2CrIuRdj7GzNybs3MAZBycBA

Yes, wells are awesome. So awesome you might consider IV (Ritual of Protection) as your Death Magic master trait. That’s a 12 seconds aoe protection.

You can also use the 10 points of SR, which don’t seem to serve any purpose, back in Death Magic to get both the trait you chose and Ritual of Protection, or put them in Blood Magic for Vampiric Rituals. That’s what I run.

But yeah, concerning the healing… with perma aoe regen on staff#2, regen on focus, aoe channel heal on ds#4, well of blood… I see plenty of green numbers. If you find yours too low, consider investing in some healing power gear maybe?

You can’t really compare ele and necro, they are so different in every way…

Also, there are plenty of alternatives to well builds (epidemic, …), and many skills bring a lot to wvw combat. Signet of undeath, for example.

CHIPS.6018:

New video from them. No necro this time. They are now in FA and fighting against TC in tier 2 wvw.

Oh hey, my server’s fighting both those guys right now!

CHIPS.6018:

Thoughts? Put your necro in that ele’s shoes. How would you make a difference? Would your necro have done better than that ele did?

It’s nonsense to compare two professions directly like that. They have different jobs. I could show you a video of a plumber fixing a sink and then asking you angrily if your carpenter could do the same thing.

My necro would’ve been very helpful. Different helpful, but helpful still.

(Also, this video was taken before the most recent patch, which nerfed Mist Form. It’s still a good spell but not as crazy as it was in this video.)

I ran a Staff Ele in WvW for the past 6 months, and I’m now getting settled into a Necro. Just keep in mind that the grass tends to be greener on the other side.

The only thing disheartening about that video is how badly disorganized that army is. O.o

I don’t see how Necromancers can accomplish the same thing as those Ele’s in that video, especially with the nerf to epidemic.

Having used a Necro in WvW, I can easily say that a necro would’ve contributed meaningfully to either of those situations. For Necros have a lot of tools on hand that can really add up to the fight.

I myself use a 20/30/20 staff/scepter+dagger carrion necro, and my utilities constantly switch from wells to spectrals to corruptions. And depending on whatever I have, I can always contribute to a situation like that. Firstly, since I main the staff, I can lay down marks, one that gives regeneration and 15 (3 × 5) 16 second bleeds every 4.8 seconds. One that creates a poison field and chills. One that is a blast finisher, and one that flees. The marks, being plainly visible, creates a denial area that no one person wants to cross, so without coordination they’ll get the timid effect and won’t run forward. If we’re retreating, I can lay down marks right at my feet to discourage anyone chasing me.

If I’m running wells, I can throw down multiple wells onto one location, creating a pulsing high damage patch. With chilling darkness, well of darkness blinds and chills, nearly fully disabling anyone inside. Well of corruption is the big one, though, since it can remove stability and let other stun fields work their magic. Well of suffering is pretty good for damage as well. These wells also have that defensive aspect to them that marks do.

Alongside of marks is plague form, which can tank a lot for a long duration.

If I’m running spectrals, I can lay down spectral wall on any location to give my entire group protection. This is good for rushing, but in a defensive situation like that it is useful at point blank to give constant protection and also an ethereal field to combo off of. Also there is spectral grasp, which can be used to grab any stragglers from the opposing group and take them out one at a time.

If I’m running corruptions, it is a bit harder, but I can use BiP + Epidemic to do some high long-term damage. If any of the runners during the push happen to be loaded with a ton of conditions, then I can use epidemic to spread those conditions, killing and disabling enemies very quickly.

Now, the necromancer doesn’t have any super high damaging over the top AoEs like Meteor Storm. But, with all of their skills, the necromancer can lay down great long term damage and sustained AoE damage.

Having over 300 hours on my elementalist, I can say I have never had anyone stand in my meteor shower long enough to be hit by 3 meteors in WvW. The players they are against are just awful, just downright awful. The are standing in all the AoEs. It would be similar to people standing in your Well of Suffering, and just ignoring the damage they are taking. Most of his healing is coming from his teammates dropping blast finishers in his water combo fields.

His damage would be ridiculously low against competent enemies. I’m lucky if my AoEs get two pulses on more than 2 enemies, because people just dodge roll out the second they see that red circle. You also have to consider that this is the situation staff ele excels at. Basically dropping AoEs that are extremely easy to avoid, but have high damage.

It’s clear that necro needs an escape skill like teleport or mist form for wvw zergs…

I main a Necro in WvW but I levelled an Ele from 7 to 80 in WvW. I’ve played way more hours on the Necro than the Ele but I feel I help the zerg better with the Staff Ele but I get more loot bags with the Necro. While I switch utilities on the Necro depending on what I’m doing, I’ll switch weapons on the Ele instead so they both seem similar to me.

Since Necro isn’t one of the preferred classes in WvW, there are times when we have several Necros in the zerg, the other side doesn’t adjust well. Everyone by now recognizes Eles stacking Lightning, Water and Fire. Also Mesmer portals, veils, null fields and temporal curtain are easily seen and accounted for. There’s no counter for a Necro mark that hits a player when it’s cast. With all the AoE and animations going off the Necro Wells just disappear into the ground.

Even before the recent nerf to retaliation I rarely saw a zerg use Light fields. I’ll have to try to convince the group I run with to give it a try, but I think they tend to wait and let the other zerg waste all their high cooldown skills first and then attack.

Other than the Camp Supervisor with pre buff Righteous Indignation, I’ve never seen anyone call out for a dark field. Another thing I will try to research is whether a Might stacked zerg, Venom Share Thieves, all using projectiles through a Necro Dark Field (Lifesteal) will melt a door before getting wiped by one AC.

This thread is a great example of ignorance meeting mass hysteria…

I honestly can’t be kittened going into too much details, that would inevitably be ignored or overlooked, but I’ll say this: What you saw in that video is an “elite”, coordinated, team destroying a ridiculously brain dead mini-zerg with absolutely no coordination or direction. It’s the age old “brain over brawn” to a T. If at any point the zerg had just used some semblance of coordination (such as stacking to limit AoE effectiveness and spread out stability and protection), hell if they had just rushed them as one blob, they were dead.

What you saw the elementalist do in that video could have been done equally with a well Necro, which is a surprisingly similar build (with, nonetheless, some differences – some pros and some cons)… Or a naked ranger’s pet for all it matters, since the enemy group seems to have the combined IQ of rotten lettuce…

PS: There is a necro in that group, which you’re all tactfully neglecting to notice, apparently.

ProxyDamage.9826:

PS: There is a necro in that group, which you’re all tactfully neglecting to notice, apparently.

This has been mentioned quite a few times now. how about actually reading the posts in this thread before babbling nonsense?

@Swamurabi:
what exactly is this damage-nerf to retaliation anyway? ive seen the april-update notes where it was stated that retaliation does the same damage as it does in spvp. but was retaliation-damage different in spvp in the first place?

theres nothing about that in the wiki.

all i saw in the previous patchnotes was something about retaliation only stacking 5 times now. (which i dont understand either, since it only stacks in duration, not in intensity).

please help me out with that, the wiki-description is pretty much all i know about retal.

RashanDale.3609:

ProxyDamage.9826:

PS: There is a necro in that group, which you’re all tactfully neglecting to notice, apparently.

This has been mentioned quite a few times now. how about actually reading the posts in this thread before babbling nonsense?

Uh… Did you? There are like, 2 people mentioning it, and everyone else seems to be turning a blind eye going “OH A NECRO COULD NEVER BE IN A SITUATION LIKE THAT!!!”….. uh…yes, they could… they are… There’s one right there…

Gonna link a video for you of a small group wiping 2 zergs from 2 different servers one after the other from the perspective of a Necro.

Fun fact: This guy used to play an Elementalist for the group, then he swapped to Necro.

The above is not the best video to show the strengths of the necro, other than, marks are great! Don’t get me wrong, that group did well to shut down those numbers, but now imagine that the necro had actually used epidemic more than once, or wells, given that he was power spec, or plague form, or lich form, or…. If anything, it shows that a good group even at its laziest can still take out the uncoordinated masses.

RashanDale.3609:

@Swamurabi:
what exactly is this damage-nerf to retaliation anyway? ive seen the april-update notes where it was stated that retaliation does the same damage as it does in spvp. but was retaliation-damage different in spvp in the first place?

theres nothing about that in the wiki.

all i saw in the previous patchnotes was something about retaliation only stacking 5 times now. (which i dont understand either, since it only stacks in duration, not in intensity).

please help me out with that, the wiki-description is pretty much all i know about retal

I saw the same update notes as you, there was nothing that mentioned a difference between sPvP and WvW until this last patch where they were made the same. As for wiki, it’s anybody’s guess if the formulas in wiki are accurate, since there’s nothing in any tooltip about combos and their effects. We shouldn’t have to rely on exhausting tests aka (Necro having 1/3 HP in downed state) to know what’s going on in the game.

But as for the video, if you believe the formulas from wiki where a blasted water field gives 1320 + 0.2*healing power of blaster, when you combine that with Ele’s Healing Rain (2080 health, 6s water field) and a Guardian with a traited Mighy Blast with 4s cooldown, it’s easy for just 2 skills, Mighty Blast used twice, to heal everyone in an area for over 5k. Add a second guardian and it’s over 7.5k. Add a second ele and every 20-25 seconds you can get 7.5k health spikes. This doesn’t even count the 3.5k healing from the Eles other water field skill, Geyser, if it’s blasted twice or each individuals own healing skill.

There’s no other skill any other profession has that can compare to a blasted water field.