Guild Wars 2

Never played necro, as the title says what do they do best? DoTs? Also can I get a new player guide?

Depends what area of the game and what the numbers on you n the enemies side is, what are you interested in?

In Spvp, converting boons into conditions & otherwise removing boons from enemies.

After that they can be raw burst damage spec, or condition spec.

In WvW, mainly to remove boons as said above, but also for AOE burst damage.

In PvE, they don’t really do anything that someone else can’t do better because there is no real need for boon removal, bosses cannot be burst down in the duration of a well & conditions are pretty much crap.

PvE Dungeon Support.

Short answer : classes don’t have “roles” in this game

Long answer : Depending on how you build yourself through gear and trait, you will be able to fill absolutely any kind of role with all the classes. On the other hand, all classes have weakness and strenght in their ability to fill these roles. For example, necromancers lack the abilitie to buff allies and most of the support capacity that he have been granted with are a variety of small heals. While it’s appealing when you come from another game, you quickly understand that this kind of support is underwhelming in GW2 because in this game you rely more on boons than on heals.

Rym.1469:

PvE Dungeon Support.

Usually in full settlers trait heavy into Blood magic And death magic.

Rym.1469:

PvE Dungeon Support.

PvE Leech*.

The necro’s role is rolling other class. :*

spoj.9672:

Rym.1469:

PvE Dungeon Support.

PvE Leech*.

If it’s a team prone to dying or not a smooth run it helps save the day and/or makes things run much smoother. If it’s a team with no problems (vast amount of teams are in this category), it is leechy in the respect that things would go faster with a DPS oriented build and just as if not more smoothly. Although to be a leech you really need intent to do so and actually not contribute anything to the team (like sitting in a corner afk). You’re still adding something to the team even if it’s not optimal.

To help answer the OPs question our intended role was or is to be the light armored attrition class with little to no mobility, but a lot of weapons, utilities and our death shroud to give us the advantage in our “zone of control.” That’s supposed to be accomplished with the following:

- Easily applied area condition damage and soft crowd control at 0-900-1200 range, while having access to condition transfers back to enemies. (Staff Marks, Scepter and Dagger OH).

- DPS power weapons and offhands designed around mid/close range fighting, that have easy access to boon hate, life steals and better LF gain for more DS uptime. (Axe, Dagger Main, Focus and Warhorn. Staff AA).

- Utilities skills that mostly focus again on applying conditions, soft cc, boon hate and gaining LF. A lot of these utilities are pulsing or when it comes to boon hate, can convert boons into conditions or vice versa for allies.

The implementation of this rather complicated role has left something to be desired for most, but can be made to work. AI design in PvE definitely limits the role of a boon/condi/soft cc controller and DS not quite fulfilling its intended attrition role as other mitigation mechanics do, continues to limit necros performance and what we’re “best” at role wise.

Once HoT comes out, it will be “teaching Mallyx Revenants what condition manipulation really means.”

The role of a Necromancer is to control the flow of buffs and debuffs in a fight by removing buffs from enemies, removing debuffs from themselves and allies, and debuffing the enemy; sometimes all at once. In doing so, Necromancers stay in the thick of the fight, sustaining themselves with a large HP pool and abnormally large amounts of health gain, supplemented by life force which can temporarily substitute for their health.

Not going to address how well we fill that role, but regardless our role is controlling debuffs (conditions), and removing buffs (boons) from enemies, all the while using sustain tools to keep ourselves alive.

Our role is attrition. smirks

spoj.9672:

Our role is attrition. smirks

Honestly, if we had better access to Weakness and we get strong access to Slow, I can see a major attrition style emerge. When you have weakness, poison, slow, and chill on you, you aren’t doing anything well. Everything you do is slow and less effective.

The issues on Necro attrition really come down to replenishing actual health (and life force in condition builds) and just not being able to weaken our opponent quite enough to make up for our own overall low values.

Yeah and even if we got better hp sustain we would still be bad at attrition. A high hp pool is not suited for an attrition based class (unless we got warrior heal signet 2.0, but then we would be op at dealing with both burst and drawn out fights). A large hp pool is better suited for burst absorption not attrition/sustain. Also a lack of damage avoidance does not make sense for an attrition role either. Same for high cooldowns and long cast times. Literally nothing in the necros design suggests attrition.

spoj.9672:

Yeah and even if we got better hp sustain we would still be bad at attrition. A high hp pool is not suited for an attrition based class (unless we got warrior signet 2.0 but then we would be op at dealing with both burst and drawn out fights). Its suited for burst absorption.

Large HP pool is suitable for absorbing burst. Good restoration of HP pool (regardless of how large) is good for attrition.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

spoj.9672:

Yeah and even if we got better hp sustain we would still be bad at attrition. A high hp pool is not suited for an attrition based class (unless we got warrior signet 2.0 but then we would be op at dealing with both burst and drawn out fights). Its suited for burst absorption.

Large HP pool is suitable for absorbing burst. Good restoration of HP pool (regardless of how large) is good for attrition.

Completely true. But only assuming the HP gain is scaled according to HP pool. Say two classes get 100hp per sec sustain. The class with the lower HP pool has better sustain. Assuming they can stay alive with their lack of burst defence. Ideally an attrition class has a lower to moderate hp pool (Hello engi!). Which is why for sustain builds its best to stack healing power and toughness and not vitality.

Also i love how necro has the highest HP pool in the game but also some of the weakest base heal skills in the game. Necro being attrition is such a bad joke. Cant help but smirk everytime its mentioned with seriousness.

Large HP doesn’t make us not good at attrition either. We also have a lot of what is effectively healing on a lot of our skills (life force generation). The problem is some of our builds don’t have the conditions to also help with sustain.

Bhawb.7408:

The role of a Necromancer is to control the flow of buffs and debuffs in a fight by removing buffs from enemies, removing debuffs from themselves and allies, and debuffing the enemy; sometimes all at once. In doing so, Necromancers stay in the thick of the fight, sustaining themselves with a large HP pool and abnormally large amounts of health gain, supplemented by life force which can temporarily substitute for their health.

Not going to address how well we fill that role, but regardless our role is controlling debuffs (conditions), and removing buffs (boons) from enemies, all the while using sustain tools to keep ourselves alive.

This perfectly sums it up. Essentially, the role of a Necromancer is to keep buffs from getting out of control. No Necro’s in a group fight is generally going to mean your enemies can stack as much might, protection, swiftness, regeneration, etc. as they want.

Usually end up being thief bait

Necro’s “role” is something like an aggro magnet and tank. Think of it as a dark paladin. The profession is not supposed to jump around, evading damage. You use Death Shroud to soak it up as best you can while laying on the damage as quickly as possible.

The only way to disengage from a fight is with Necrotic Travesty so I tend to play the profession as if there is no escape, knowing I will be targeted as an easy mark.

Imo, what a necro does best is being a condi roamer & being a key-point to several group fights

I’m a speed hump.

I tie up two or three enemies in spvp, leaving the rest of the team to do something more useful.
I run into the zerg in wvw. Giving the rest of my party a chance to get away.
In pve, I struggle to do enough damage to get a gold, event medal.

I use mine to command SW. Probably the best suited for handling the husks