Guild Wars 2

How useful is being a tailor, jewelcrafter, or an artificer for a necro just starting out?

All of those are useful, but crafting is ultimately not very important for what it makes. You can usually buy gear on the trade post for cheaper than the material value of crafting items.

Not even for end game? Or is this like every other game where dungeon drops > crafted items?

Items bought with dungeon tokens have same stats as the highest tier crafted items.
Thing is if you do dungeons and use the tokens you are gaining Gold.
If you buy or collect materials and craft them you are losing Gold/materials.

There are so many people with maxed out crafting Professions that what extra value crafted items may have had a few weeks from launch is now either long gone or just a few silver coins.

Thanks guys much appreciated

No problem!
One note, though.
Crafting skills give a lot of exp!

In fact if you maxed every crafting profession you’d reach lv80 without killing anything.

So once you have a lot of extra Gold you can level up an alt with crafting if you don’t feel like playing through the areas again.

I wouldn’t recommend it much for anyone’s first character, however.

I like crafting… yeah it may not pay off, but its’ fun to go along in the game and collect items and make your own, rather just purchasing it from somebody you dont’ even interact with. When the best is so easily available, it takes away from progression.