Guild Wars 2

Okay, so I understand that in the current meta the Necro is bad, I get that. My boyfriend is trying to argue that they have the ability to do well with a power build, but they don’t provide group support I read?

Can someone in detail explain to me? I am tired of trying to search through the forum. I admit myself I have a level 80 in everything but ele, and the necro does feel a little ‘whacky’ in dungeons. I just don’t know though if it deserves all the hate, if someone has their facts straight I would love to see it please! Again I’ll probably agree they’re not the best right now, but… why?

No support – which roughly translates to, not being able to let the party DPS harder than most or any other class out there (since our only source is vulnerability)

Selfish DPS, all of our traits only grant us boons such as might and fury…

And generally wrong mechanics in the “meta” game, Necromancer’s are meant to be classes that excel in Control and Conditions (not doing the most Condi dmg, but the best way of turning it into weapons), but sadly neither of those are useful at all…

Necromancer is fine though, it is, to me, the lackluster of encounters… Sure, Anet should not brute-force to take a Necromancer along with a party for a specific encounter, and they done an excelent job in making encounters not too much reliant on certain set-ups (though reflects would disagree), but this has led to encounters locking out classes, rather than embracing their strong points without crippling others…

So, to generalize group PvE content, especially dungeons/fractals, PvE is about two things: dealing lots of damage, and providing group support/buffs to increase said damage.

This means the main meta builds are generally good DPS. Based on the old DPS chart, which is a bit off now, Necromancers had about 9k DPS in a fully buffed group sans vuln. At this same level of buffing (which, realize that Necromancers contribute exactly nothing to) Rangers were basically the same, and just around 9k, Thieves were over 13k, Ele generally ranged from 10-13k (depending on S – LH or Staff), Warriors from 9-11k, etc. Basically, the only things that were not at least as good or better than Necro DPS were PS warriors, reflect mesmers, and fractal guardians (hammer).

However, DPS isn’t the only thing that is important, and in fact on the DPS front while we aren’t totally awful. So then you look to group support, and you realize we have literally nothing someone else can’t do.

Rangers – bring nearly identical DPS, however they bring Spotter (a party-wide precision buff) and Frost Spirit (I believe 7% average DPS increase?)
Warriors – bring banners regardless of build, boosting group DPS. in PS they also bring 25 stacks of group might, and in builds that bring similar to higher DPS than Necro, they still bring banners
Elementalists – have two main builds for dungeons, one brings tons of might plus permafury, the other gives near perma fury and perma fire field (for might stacking), and both of them have higher DPS
Engineers – higher DPS, helpful fields, blast finishers, lots of vuln

And others are similar situations. Basically every other profession brings some kind of support. Reflects, blast finishers, useful fields, AoE fury/might, lots of vuln stacking, unique buffs like spotter or banners, all while dealing the same damage as Necromancer, yet bringing these things that Necro doesn’t.

At the moment, Necromancer is objectively the worst profession for PvE because of their complete lack of group buffs. Basically the only time they are worth bringing is if your other option is bringing a second of a profession whose group buffing doesn’t stack and has worse DPS.

they lack support. They can’t stack might like the other professions can. Trying to support a necromancer is also lacking seeing as they can receive healing while in death shroud. Their two damage options for weapons are lacking. The dagger can’t close the gaps between foes and although its damage is fine, it doesn’t compare to the melee damage the warrior, ele or thief can output. Their Axe’s range and damage are both problems. Seeing as the damage is both too low for its range and does next to nothing against mobs. Their wells are on too high of a cooldown to make them comparable to weapon skills that provide similar damage. Their boon stripping is top notch but rarely do boons matter and when they do the boons are reapplied much faster then the necromancer can strip and punish them. In terms of tanking the necromancer lacks there as well. Without Stability, invulnerability, blocks, and so on the necromancer has to face tank most attacks and when they do they can easily go down with the massive damage output from most boss. Compare that to the warrior, guardian or even mesmer who can avoid large chunks of damage without breaking a sweet or even having to change their build from zerker to do so. On support, the necromancer has 3 blast finishers which 2 belong to minions and one requires a foe to trigger it making them unreliable. Their combo fields are also undesirable as well. One Light, several dark and one chaos. When healing they are out preformed by Engineer, Elementalist and guardian who can provide large healing without specking into it while the necromancer can’t do so. Even when it comes to condition removal, although the necromancer is great at removing conditions from themselves they are out classed yet again when removing conditions from allies. Well of power being their best while plague signet seems to be problematic seeing as its a bit too slow on the condition transfer and can often just harm the necromancer more then it helps your allies. Putrid mark was nerfed into the ground so that isn’t viable to help allies anymore. The necromancer has no way to stop projectiles like the thief, guardian or mesmer can. Not to mention that blind, one of the necromancer’s main way to stop damage, has no effect on most(if not all) bosses and even some mobs. The boon the necromancers provide to their allies the most is also the worst boon in the game(arguably), regeneration. And although the necro can also apply quite a bit of protection again its out classed by the guardian who can do it more frequently and much better. The necromancer’s best aoe damage build is also lacking in a PvE setting seeing as how little value damaging conditions have in PvE.

The biggest problem by far is how selfish the profession is. It works great when roaming solo. Few mobs will be able to overwhelm you. But when in a group they provide little to nothing in comparison to other professions.

okay, this is what I thought, but it’s nice to have all this info in one place for me to have organized and see, thanks a bunch!

Not sure if it was mentioned, but our poor access to stability, and no invulnerability skill is also a problem. Lots of bosses in PVE have massive attacks, that can sometimes one-hit KO a character. Almost all of the classes have access to either block, invulnerability, or evade. Necromancers have Death Shroud, which doesn’t scale with the damage taken. If you take a truck load of damage, it spills into your actual healthpool, and you’re dead. This didn’t used to be this way, but they removed the ability to absorb one-hit kills, leaving us as the only class I think that cannot do this.

Why did they do this? Because the devs are insane? I do not know. I really don’t know what the game designers are thinking. Our class is such a mess.

Oh, and our downed skills are rubbish too. A downed necro, is a dead necro. We don’t have skills to teleport away, or revive ourselves, unlike some other classes.

Well of course you can dodge anything, but it does make us unbalanced in comparison to other classes that have equal access to dodges, yet also have invulnerability on top of that (which is equal to having an extra dodge).

What Anet could have done to balance this, is to give the light classes without invulnerability better stamina regeneration, so they can dodge more than the heavies. But this balancing philosophy seems to be completely lost on the balance team.

And I wouldn’t call the downed state ‘fluff’. A chance to come back to life is rather an important thing in combat, wouldn’t you agree?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Not sure if it was mentioned, but our poor access to stability, and no invulnerability skill is also a problem. Lots of bosses in PVE have massive attacks, that can sometimes one-hit KO a character. Almost all of the classes have access to either block, invulnerability, or evade. Necromancers have Death Shroud, which doesn’t scale with the damage taken. If you take a truck load of damage, it spills into your actual healthpool, and you’re dead. This didn’t used to be this way, but they removed the ability to absorb one-hit kills, leaving us as the only class I think that cannot do this.

Why did they do this? Because the devs are insane? I do not know. I really don’t know what the game designers are thinking. Our class is such a mess.

Oh, and our downed skills are rubbish too. A downed necro, is a dead necro. We don’t have skills to teleport away, or revive ourselves, unlike some other classes.

These One Hit Wonder Bosses are just a fantasy. They actually don´t exist. Not even in fotm lvl 50. U can even tank Crushers smash with enough defense stacking.

No active defense and/or no endurance gain except sigil of energy is a problem. Sigil of Energy is usually a “must have” that means necros will lose another 5-10% dmg compared to other classes.

Defensive Support and CC can also help.
HotW or Fractals for example.

Bosses have alot live and do good dmg. But even there Necromancers don´t shine.

They have frost, but they lose alot of dps to bring “permafrost”. They have only 1 bad source of protecion for allies. And Condi/Boon switch is on extremly long cooldowns.

Another problem is the lack of a real waeponchoice. Diffrent weapons can give u (or your party) diffrent advantages for diffrent situations.

For example a guardian.
Hammer>nearly same dps then GS but permaprot for the party, awesome in HotW and fractals.

GS>usually the meta weapon, pull, blind, “aoe burst”.

sword/focus>for blind/blocks and more dps in rotations

mace/focus>only less then 1% lower dps then sw/f but heal+block+reg for allies. This can help for runes of sholar buff or the squishy elementlists in your party. Good for fractals for example.

Scepter>long range and rly high dps vs targets with big hitboxes (best dps guardian weapon if the target is big enough and doesn´t move).

Necromancers have…..

Dagger…..a little bit heal for u but rly low dps on this skill. A singeletarget root.
WH…a little bit more dmg and 1 cc….
Focus…a little bit Vul (not even perma because of – 50% vulduration bosses have)

Yeah..that´s it. Boring to play, and not rly usefull.
I rly like my necromancer. But i can´t play her 1000+hours like my guardian or warrior. Just because it´s to boring to use the same MH weapon 99% of the time in both weaponsets….

Norjena.5172:

These One Hit Wonder Bosses are just a fantasy. They actually don´t exist. Not even in fotm lvl 50. U can even tank Crushers smash with enough defense stacking.

A couple do. The most notable one is Kudu in CoE story mode. One of his attacks deals damage equal to your health * your armor, which, unless you have some special damage reduction effect (Protection, Frost Armor, Signet of Judgement, Inquest slaying-potion, or a Weakness proc on Kudu), means you are downed 100% of the time from being hit with it.

I’ve never had an issue staying alive on my Necromancer. You can face tank a lot of attacks that would kill other people, and if that fails you have DS, which fills up really quickly in PvE even against bosses.

The few times I have had issue is usually skipping certain content like in AC, and the only reason I had issues was because I was mistiming my dodges and didn’t take any stun break.

Undodgeable attacks are unacceptible design wise when considering the necros current design. Mai trins pistol shot and the champion orrian warriors blade trail are both undodgeable. Theres probably a few more. But those ones stand out. Hopefully anet wont add more.

You can make up for the inability to avoid those attacks with help from teammates or face tanking in DS. But i dont believe thats an acceptible justification to allow such attacks which hard counter the necro. Obviously the main issue with necro is what Bhawb mentioned. Nothing special, no worthwhile group utility and average DPS. But that lack of defensive options also contributes to the necros overall poor state in PvE. Its bad across the board. However some issues are more important than others.

Yes, Bhawb and Spoj are totally right, the group utility really is the biggest issue (I wanted to mention the other issues just to paint a complete picture of our current state).

DPS-wise, I think we’re fine. But we really need something to amplify the damage of our team, other than invulnerability. Frankly, what we might need is GW1’s Spiteful Spirit.

If they don’t provide much support in terms of outgoing effects, then cant they be used as a front line trash mob tanky class? I’m thinking of a vampiric build, though :/

What I can only think of as group support, is well-timed debuffs and boon removal. Occasionally the odd AoE spike, but it’s harder to maintain.

Debuffs and boon removal don’t mean much when the trash mob group should die in a few seconds. Same with being a tanky build to grab aggro. DPS and offensive support to increase that DPS rule PvE.