Guild Wars 2

So, having played like… everything now, I have discovered that I like Necromancers perhaps the most. Not for the reasons I was expecting, actually, but because I can support so very, very well as a necromancer, including healing. With the staff and all it’s AOE chills, regens, boon/condition tearing and a panic button fear, plus wells, I dare say, I am not only having more fun supporting as a necro, but also am better at it than the other characters I have played.
But I see on the forums that most people believe necromancers to be weak in support. Why is this said? Is it a matter of there being something about the other classes that just makes them better- so that we are not actually weak, just not as good as others?

I’m with you. I think the necro is pretty great at support. I think part of the flak it gets is because it’s not very obvious in how it supports. The other part is people don’t understand their profession very well.

Ways I’ve found to support:
Condition Cleanse w/ Plague Signet + eta: meant dagger 4 and staff 4.
Weakness spam (really underrated condition… CPC needs more lovin’)
Blind spam
Chill semi-spam
Well Builds w/ protection

My one complaint is that the Well traits are all so spread out and in bad places. I’d like it if Focused Rituals and Well Mastery were combined so they weren’t all so spread out.

Here here. I’m with you guys.

I throw down area protection.
I throw down area regeneration.
I fear what needs to be feared.

Heck, I use Plague over the other elites. It gives you ridiculous toughness so you can pull aggro off of people, and it’s also a gigantic area of 20 seconds of getting blinded or crippled every second.

In my experience it’s not so much us being bad at support but Elementalists and Guardians being better at it with less effort required. Now that Fear is fixed there is practically nothing we can do more reliable/effective. Weakness and Plague Form can be great but they don’t require you to go all out support.

Weakness is a pretty terrible condition. In PVE its ok since NPCs don’t crit very much, but NPCs don’t dodge, so there is no point to the half endurance regeneration. In PVP, where most people are running crit heavy builds, weakness gets completely negated since only half of non critical hits are affected (does absolutely nothing to thieves since they’re all running glass cannon crit builds). The half endurance regeneration is moot since most fights are over in 10-20 seconds with all the ridiculous burst being thrown around. Its pointless to bother using this condition.

Reality check!

senate.8126:

I throw down 3 seconds of area protection on 48seconds cooldown
I throw down area regeneration, and haven’t noticed that it’s not significant healing.
I fear what needs to be feared, except what actually needs to be feared, given the recent fear nerf, which I apparently didn’t notice.

station.6421:

Ways I’ve found to support:
Condition Cleanse w/ Plague Signet + warhorn 4 and staff 4. guess you didn’t notice the daze nerf, eh?
Weakness spam, which is worthless in every instance where you’re in danger of actually needing it, like against other players or bosses
Blind spam Same as above, except against players, who will instead dodge back and murder you from range. Oops.
Chill semi-spam Very, verrry VERY semi.
Well Builds w/ protection all 3 seconds of it

I think the necro is pretty great at support… people don’t understand their profession very well.

I agree. Some don’t understand their profession very well at all.

Manticore Five.9867:

Reality check!

senate.8126:

I throw down 3 seconds of area protection on 48seconds cooldown
I throw down area regeneration, and haven’t noticed that it’s not significant healing.
I fear what needs to be feared, except what actually needs to be feared, given the recent fear nerf, which I apparently didn’t notice.

station.6421:

Ways I’ve found to support:
Condition Cleanse w/ Plague Signet + warhorn 4 and staff 4. guess you didn’t notice the daze nerf, eh?
Weakness spam, which is worthless in every instance where you’re in danger of actually needing it, like against other players or bosses
Blind spam Same as above, except against players, who will instead dodge back and murder you from range. Oops.
Chill semi-spam Very, verrry VERY semi.
Well Builds w/ protection all 3 seconds of it

I think the necro is pretty great at support… people don’t understand their profession very well.

I agree. Some don’t understand their profession very well at all.

This post pretty much sums it up. As stated before, you can make the necro to be support with your traits spread out all over the trees, but, you can do it much better, and easier, with other classes. And while many think it’s awesome that you are the last to die or something, the fact that you’re judging it on your survivability and not your groups leaves something to be desired. Id sooner take a venom thief w/ some stealth traits than a support necro in my group for wvw/spvp/fractals.

Hi there,

I’m necro since beta weekend 1, I started this profession convinced to be a useful support.

I discovered that running in dungeons do not need a support, while WvsWvsW is a zerg fest 75%-90% of time so… healing during AoE zerg fest is like attempting to dry a sea wave with a kleenex in a hand, pointless. I can not say many things about sPVP because I do not do it.

Then…fractals happens …..

Actually with the gear progression (aka fractals) I’m playing condition-DPS, with a pre made group, and I have noticed that Ele full cleric with rune and for boon duration (close to 100% boon duration) and guardian shout (condition remover), shine above all support spec, I know that ranger have most than one support specialization, but I have not seen in action someone.. so I can not say much about this.

Now, it is not matter if necro is able to do or not support, of course there is the build and gear, but when you put the necro in an environment of fractals after lev 18-20, it does not shine like the elementalist and guardian properly traited and geared for support.

I have a long experience of healing as a player in MMOs, while I’m not the best healer of the world (I’m an average player that read theorycrafts ) I know for experience that the incoming damage dictate the way you play-and specialize you character in this kind of game. Type/ Frequency/Amplitude of the incoming damage will tell you many thing about the encounter (be it PVE or PVP) you have to do.

Since after lev 18-20 of fractals everything hurt, you need to min-max everything to succeed, unless you plan to go in a fractal run do be downed or dead 90% of your time. So why someone need a necro support while we can have the best elsewhere ???

I know that this kind of thoughts are against the mantra “I want to be free to play as I want”….but hey…once “someone” introduce a gear progression….. the mantra go….. well, you know where it goes.

My 2 cents.

(P.s Sorry for grammar !!! Not a native Eng- Speaker here, I hope it is readable)

Manticore Five.9867:

Reality check!

senate.8126:

I throw down 3 seconds of area protection on 48seconds cooldown
I throw down area regeneration, and haven’t noticed that it’s not significant healing.
I fear what needs to be feared, except what actually needs to be feared, given the recent fear nerf, which I apparently didn’t notice.

station.6421:

Ways I’ve found to support:
Condition Cleanse w/ Plague Signet + warhorn 4 and staff 4. guess you didn’t notice the daze nerf, eh?
Weakness spam, which is worthless in every instance where you’re in danger of actually needing it, like against other players or bosses
Blind spam Same as above, except against players, who will instead dodge back and murder you from range. Oops.
Chill semi-spam Very, verrry VERY semi.
Well Builds w/ protection all 3 seconds of it

I think the necro is pretty great at support… people don’t understand their profession very well.

I agree. Some don’t understand their profession very well at all.

I was only talking about PVE. You can say what you want, but the above has worked very well for me and has made a huge difference in fights. Sorry, I don’t know what you’re doing wrong. I know other professions (ele and guardian) outshine in support, but this isn’t unique to necro. Rather it’s b/c ele and guardians are currently in a very strong place right now.

What I’m doing wrong is trying to explain reality to someone who can’t see how things that don’t have effect on bosses might affect your PvE experience. Yes, I included some minor PvP info for completeness but mostly the criticism was from a PvE standpoint.

Any class can handle trash mobs, but someone telling newbies to come play necro because you can use tornado or weakness on a boss needs to be sued for malpractice.

Support is not Necro’s weakness. 1v1 is.

But do you look at the numbers from that support? If we had meters like in WOW, that record everything from healing to damage, ect, people would seriously go “WTF, really?”. There is no real support in this game from a Necro. Its a little piddly help here and a little piddly help there. To see anything at all you have to sacrifice everything and even then, when you look at what you’re sacrificing and what you get, you’ll again go, “WTF, really?”

I blame it on lousy traits that deal in tiny percentages that just aren’t all that noticeable…if they even work.

I’m not really sure why people are hating on the 3 seconds of protection trait with wells. I mean yeah it’s not huge, but it’s hard for any non-guardian class to apply protection to allies. As well, it’s still a well skill. Well of Power will always be great from a support angle not because you can trait wells to do nice extra things, but because you can turn blinds and vulnerability stacks into fury and protection for every member of your team inside the well.

Zedekiel.3021:

This post pretty much sums it up. As stated before, you can make the necro to be support with your traits spread out all over the trees, but, you can do it much better, and easier, with other classes. And while many think it’s awesome that you are the last to die or something, the fact that you’re judging it on your survivability and not your groups leaves something to be desired. Id sooner take a venom thief w/ some stealth traits than a support necro in my group for wvw/spvp/fractals.

I think you have to specifically consider the format (PvE, PvE Dungeons, PvE Fractals, WvW, sPvP, tPvP, etc) and also what classes you mean by “other classes”. I’ve seen Guardians mentioned, and they are face-roll easy as support. I’ve seen Elementalists mentioned, though I wonder if that reputation was before the huge nerf to rolling around in your own fields. You mention a particular Thief build. So perhaps we’re talking about a couple of Guardian builds, an Elementalist build, and a Thief build as being “great” and Necros don’t rise to that level. That leaves 4 entire professions and other Guardian/Thief/Elementalist builds that aren’t “great” and most of them probably don’t rise to the Necro level, as far as I can tell, in PvE anyhow.

Now how many of those “excellent” abilities can you fit into any one build? I would be surprised if it is more than 2 or 3. This is the same old problem….looking at the raw metadata on the descriptions of abilities (and it looks great BUT most are either/or choices…not and) instead of viable builds, cooldowns and durations. I started a thread pleading, yes pleading with the devs to show us a viable build that matches their vision of the profession…sound of crickets was the dev response.

Kravick.4906:

Weakness is a pretty terrible condition. In PVE its ok since NPCs don’t crit very much, but NPCs don’t dodge, so there is no point to the half endurance regeneration.

But it is still a huge damage mitigator.

Kravick.4906:

In PVP, where most people are running crit heavy builds, weakness gets completely negated since only half of non critical hits are affected (does absolutely nothing to thieves since they’re all running glass cannon crit builds). The half endurance regeneration is moot since most fights are over in 10-20 seconds with all the ridiculous burst being thrown around. Its pointless to bother using this condition.

Weakness can mess up bursters. It’s really funny when a thief’s backstab gets weakened and their burst is ruined. But who weakness really shuts down is the bunker builds. They tend to operate on a power+defense+no-crit strategy. Against those bunker builds, weakness turns them into total pushovers unless they’re condition types.

if you should be a support in team necro is very good at it also…..wells removing conditions, weakness, blinds etc etc.

Oldbugga.7029:

Now how many of those “excellent” abilities can you fit into any one build? I would be surprised if it is more than 2 or 3. This is the same old problem….looking at the raw metadata on the descriptions of abilities (and it looks great BUT most are either/or choices…not and) instead of viable builds, cooldowns and durations. I started a thread pleading, yes pleading with the devs to show us a viable build that matches their vision of the profession…sound of crickets was the dev response.

All but 1. You have to choose between Spectral Wall and one of the wells.

I have run a full support build and it is very effective.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Oldbugga.7029:

Now how many of those “excellent” abilities can you fit into any one build? I would be surprised if it is more than 2 or 3. This is the same old problem….looking at the raw metadata on the descriptions of abilities (and it looks great BUT most are either/or choices…not and) instead of viable builds, cooldowns and durations. I started a thread pleading, yes pleading with the devs to show us a viable build that matches their vision of the profession…sound of crickets was the dev response.

All but 1. You have to choose between Spectral Wall and one of the wells.

I have run a full support build and it is very effective.

I also have a good support necro..wells/conditions build…but that is it…….if I try and add another ability I lose a lot of the facility in the build….and when you trait for a max ability it is either an elite on a ridiculous cooldown or you sacrifice much more from a viable build than you gain.

From the example above, the 9 sec protection (which has used up a trait and assumes the wells protection bit will not be concurrent at any time and all 3 utility slots are wells) also comes down 3 secs because you lost a well…..but you also have the plague signet…so there goes another 3 seconds and another well…that means you are down to a 3 sec protection for a cost of a trait and a well cooldown of 40 secs…..but that’s not all…you have lost the abilities on 2 of the wells …and you still do not have Epidemic nor any other utility slots……LISTS DO NOT MAKE BUILDS….it starts to fall apart when you actually try and build a character with all these wonderful abilities….it can’t be done….well at least the devs won’t show us how to do it to match their stated vision of the necro.

The same can be done with many professions…just list all the goodies and there…..it doesn’t work and I wish people (especially the devs) would stop doing it because it shows a bit about what is the understanding of character building and trait synergy.

And with the structure of our abilities and trait trees it seems it is meant not to work…many abilities are mutually exclusive to many others and/or scattered over conflicting/unrelated trait lines.

That is our (well mine at any rate) main beef….the synergy of our abilities and the trait trees is woeful and seems almost intentionally broken.

Oldbugga.7029:

I also have a good support necro..wells/conditions build…but that is it…….if I try and add another ability I lose a lot of the facility in the build….and when you trait for a max ability it is either an elite on a ridiculous cooldown or you sacrifice much more from a viable build than you gain.

From the example above, the 9 sec protection (which has used up a trait and assumes the wells protection bit will not be concurrent at any time and all 3 utility slots are wells) also comes down 3 secs because you lost a well…..but you also have the plague signet…so there goes another 3 seconds and another well…that means you are down to a 3 sec protection for a cost of a trait and a well cooldown of 40 secs…..but that’s not all…you have lost the abilities on 2 of the wells …and you still do not have Epidemic nor any other utility slots……LISTS DO NOT MAKE BUILDS….it starts to fall apart when you actually try and build a character with all these wonderful abilities….it can’t be done….well at least the devs won’t show us how to do it to match their stated vision of the necro.

The same can be done with many professions…just list all the goodies and there…..it doesn’t work and I wish people (especially the devs) would stop doing it because it shows a bit about what is the understanding of character building and trait synergy.

And with the structure of our abilities and trait trees it seems it is meant not to work…many abilities are mutually exclusive to many others and/or scattered over conflicting/unrelated trait lines.

That is our (well mine at any rate) main beef….the synergy of our abilities and the trait trees is woeful and seems almost intentionally broken.

Look, I know you’re upset, but put the ellipses down. They didn’t do anything to you, and your rampant abuse of them is soul-rending.

You’re correct in that 9 seconds of AoE protection would require three wells, forcing you to give up plague signet. Or you could just use Well of Blood. I’d assert that Ritual of Protection can be good even with just two wells, however, especially if one of them is Well of Blood.

I’m not sure why you’re toting Epidemic as an essential for a support based necromancer. It’s a strong skill and an interesting choice, to be sure, but it’s not always the style of support (spreading around allied conditions) that people are looking for.

People realize that you can’t have every trait and skill in one build. Often what people are pointing out are really strong choices, which is all any class can ask for. Feel free to point out whenever someone recommends trait combos that are impossible or even highly impractical, but don’t try to shut them down when they list options.

Lets have another look at the example above.
“Weakness spam, which is very crucial against bunkers and low crit chance builds(makes all regular hits deal 50% less damage) and makes their endurance come back 50% slower”

We already have our utility slots taken with Spectral walk, plague signet and one of the wells (doesn’t matter which for this argument). The only way we can add weakness to that is through the utilities again, Signet of Spite and Corrosive Cloud but that means dropping the well (so no protection at all now) or our plague signet (hmmm condition transfer gone) or spectral walk (well we lose our spectrals entering DS anyway). We could use dagger5 but the build is using war horn so no go there or we can use Plague 3 on a 180 sec cooldown. So “spamming weakness” if it can even be done at all comes at a terrible utility cost or awful cooldown. Needless to say these changes to “spam” weakness would mean a respec of traits as you now have no wells so the two wells traits would need changing as well.

Again it looks good on the list but try and make it work in a viable build. The list above is very deceptive in this regard.

All I am trying to say is we need to take any list of our max abilities as just that…a list of the possibles. People keep assuming the list can be turned into a viable build with a plethora of the listed abilities. It usually cannot. As I said the abilities are usually EITHER this one /OR that one….not a string of them.

Oldbugga.7029:

Lets have another look at the example above.
“Weakness spam, which is very crucial against bunkers and low crit chance builds(makes all regular hits deal 50% less damage) and makes their endurance come back 50% slower”

We already have our utility slots taken with Spectral walk, plague signet and one of the wells (doesn’t matter which for this argument). The only way we can add weakness to that is through the utilities again, Signet of Spite and Corrosive Cloud but that means dropping the well (so no protection at all now) or our plague signet (hmmm condition transfer gone) or spectral walk (well we lose our spectrals entering DS anyway). We could use dagger5 but the build is using war horn so no go there or we can use Plague 3 on a 180 sec cooldown. So “spamming weakness” if it can even be done at all comes at a terrible utility cost or awful cooldown. Needless to say these changes to “spam” weakness would mean a respec of traits as you now have no wells so the two wells traits would need changing as well.

Again it looks good on the list but try and make it work in a viable build. The list above is very deceptive in this regard.

All I am trying to say is we need to take any list of our max abilities as just that…a list of the possibles. People keep assuming the list can be turned into a viable build with a plethora of the listed abilities. It usually cannot. As I said the abilities are usually EITHER this one /OR that one….not a string of them.

I’m assuming you mean this list:

station.6421:

Ways I’ve found to support:
Condition Cleanse w/ Plague Signet + eta: meant dagger 4 and staff 4.
Weakness spam (really underrated condition… CPC needs more lovin’)
Blind spam
Chill semi-spam
Well Builds w/ protection

(PS: the quote feature helps people understand exactly what you’re referring to and in what context!)

And you’re right, the Necromancer can’t do all of these ideas simultaneously. I’m not seeing where people are claiming that they can. I would agree with Station in that you could easily focus a build on applying weakness though, between CPC, dagger 5, and something like the Curses grandmaster trait that gives a chance to apply weakness on each critical alongside the trait that casts Enfeebling Blood when you enter Death Shroud.

Personally, I have issues with the idea that applying weakness to multiple foes is a solid supportive option. It’s more on the Control end of the scale in my opinion, and the value of weakness in actually reducing damage is questionable.

But I think that whether it can be done or not is beside the point, since most of your post was about how it hems out other options. It does hem out other options: I’d be really interested to see who you think is claiming that Necromancers can do everything at the same time.

KirinDave.6451:

Weakness can mess up bursters. It’s really funny when a thief’s backstab gets weakened and their burst is ruined. But who weakness really shuts down is the bunker builds. They tend to operate on a power+defense+no-crit strategy. Against those bunker builds, weakness turns them into total pushovers unless they’re condition types.

Except it doesn’t. I don’t think you understand how weakness works. If a hit rolls critical, weakness is completely ignored. Weakness is ONLY applied to 50% of NON critical hits. And your thief example is also rendered invalid since they have a trait that guarantees that any attack from stealth will have a 100% critical hit chance. Again, if a hit is a critical hit, weakness is not even factored. Name one burst build that has less than a 60% critical hit rate.

Further more, typical bunker builds involve a lot of condition removal as well. Its why they’re called bunker builds. Guardian and Elementalist bunker builds especially. You won’t keep weakness, let alone any other condition, on them longer than 2-3 seconds tops.

Weakness is called lackluster for a reason.

Necromancer is not meant to be a healing/protection class. It can do some of those things, and not too, badly but the profession should be played for its condition damage. It is kind of like an old turbo for an engine – it takes a moment to build up power but, once it does, it helps limit mob movement, spam damage to crowds, crimp the mob’s outgoing damage, and improve the mob’s incoming damage. All of those things help the team make short work of a boss without taking too much damage.

A Necromancer and a Guardian on a team together are a great pair for support. Add in the ranged support abilities from other light and medium classes or damage buffs from Warriors and fights become more controlled and less risky. No profession is indespensible but Necromancer can definitely help speed the progression through a dungeon. It is a very good support profession but more for damage than healing or protection. First focus on the staples of Necromancer skills – bleed and poison. Then, see what else you can do. Fear was great until it got nerfed for bosses. Having an instant interrupt really helps prevent players from getting downed. Cripple is very good, too, when kiting a mob, or to prevent a boss from jumping all over the ranged teammates. Well of Power with its conversion of conditions to buffs may be the Necromancer’s best buff even though it is not always useful enough to slot. With a Guardian and Warrior on the team healing and buffing each other, a Necromancer can keep all the conditions up and still drop Well of Blood AoE heals to make sure the heavy classes stay topped up on health and in control of the mob’s position.

Of all the different builds for a Necromancer, and there are several that work as opposed to other professions, a wells spec is pretty reliable in dungeons. Solo PvE can use almost anything but power/crit builds require some skill in dodging and seem like a wash with minion master and its unreliable AI. Do whatever you like in wvw.

Necromancer has good vitality along with its focus on condition damage. Make the most of it.

One more thing to remember; when the PvE boss decides to break with the close range players and chase after the Necromancer, that may mean the spammed conditions and heals are adding up to quite a lot. ;-)

I really don’t understand how people can say necromancers should only be played for their condition damage. Necromancers are actually not that good at stacking bleeds, which is the primary source of condition damage. The only thing that we can do condition wise that other classes cannot is transfer and spread conditions from one object to another. My warrior, thief, ranger and engineer do condition stacking way better than my necromancer. As a result, they do far more condition based damage. What they can’t do is transfer those conditions to another target. Thats where necromancers shine.

Meanwhile, I don’t have any problem ripping groups of mobs apart in PVE and beating people in PVP as a power based necromancer. What necromancers really have a hard time at is mobility. Mobility is king when it comes to survival. Its how thieves can go pure glass cannon and still survive so easily.

Kravick.4906:

KirinDave.6451:

Weakness can mess up bursters. It’s really funny when a thief’s backstab gets weakened and their burst is ruined. But who weakness really shuts down is the bunker builds. They tend to operate on a power+defense+no-crit strategy. Against those bunker builds, weakness turns them into total pushovers unless they’re condition types.

Except it doesn’t. I don’t think you understand how weakness works. If a hit rolls critical, weakness is completely ignored. Weakness is ONLY applied to 50% of NON critical hits. And your thief example is also rendered invalid since they have a trait that guarantees that any attack from stealth will have a 100% critical hit chance. Again, if a hit is a critical hit, weakness is not even factored. Name one burst build that has less than a 60% critical hit rate.

Hmmm. So maybe Weakness should be modified to make 50% of crits miss, and to make non-crits trigger in a short-duration self-chill. That would make it pretty powerful. Then make Weakness more of a Necro speciality (as Confusion is for Mesmers), and we’re good to go, right?

0/30/20/20/0 is a very powerful support build running Greater Marks and Ritual of Protection in Death magic, Ritual Master and Ritual of Life in Blood, and Focused Rituals in Curses with Withering Precision and Weakening Shroud.

Both dagger and focus off-hands work very well for support. Dagger for the condition transfer and AoE weakness (in PvE, Weakness is a huge deal since virtually nothing has a high crit chance), Focus for Vulnerability stacking and Regeneration plus boon removal. Scepter or axe is probably your best bet for main-hand: Scepter for poison (most annoying bosses heal) and constant damage output, Axe for vulnerability stacking and more chance to proc Barbed Precision and Withering Precision.

Other weapon should be a staff. Seriously, a staff is way too good for support.

Healing should be Well of Blood. This skill with this trait setup is an extremely strong support skill, only outclassed by Healing Spring IMO (and the healing Guardian book, but that’s an elite).

Take your pick of Wells (and swap depending on the situation) with Signet of Undeath (if there is a decent chance of folks going down). Your elite should probably be Plague, just because you can mitigate ridiculous amounts of damage in there.

Reason why you go Ritual of Life over Mark of Evasion is that when you revive people, you revive them in the best possible situation (3.6 seconds of Protection plus pulsing heal) Mark of Evasion only helps if you yourself are on the front lines, which is when you would be getting the most benefit out of hitting death shroud (for Enfeebling Blood) and dropping a Mark of Blood when it’s up.

I play a Necro and a Guardian (also a Thief in wubwub)
As most people here have said in this thread, Necro is fun and all, but it’s PvE support options just don’t stack up to the ease, reliability, flexibility, and power of Guardian or Ele support options.
They aren’t necessarily bad, just inferior, so it’s better to play to some other role or niche.

To the handful of people saying “Well they’re good to me! I do just fine!” that doesn’t really help the class get better; frankly I encourage everyone (regardless of main really) to make alts of other classes and play them to level 10 or in SPvP a bit, so that they understand fighting with and against those classes and have some understanding of their mechanics.
If you’ve played a Shout Guardian, you understand how much easier it is to constantly cleanse debuffs, provide constant boons, and actually revive people in the midst of super deadly Fractal mechanics by applying Focus 4 and Aegis repeatedly

Kravick.4906:

What necromancers really have a hard time at is mobility. Mobility is king when it comes to survival.

What do you mean? A scepter necromancer is as mobile as anything else in this game! the only problem is using wells while moving (because the enemy is also on the move)

Aenesthesia.1697:

Kravick.4906:

What necromancers really have a hard time at is mobility. Mobility is king when it comes to survival.

What do you mean? A scepter necromancer is as mobile as anything else in this game! the only problem is using wells while moving (because the enemy is also on the move)

Mobility, as in abilities that teleport, leap, shadow step, charge abilities, backwards movement abilities, etc. Ride the Lightning, Savage Leap, Bladetrail, Burning Speed, Earthshaker, Death Blossom, Heartseeker, Bulls Charge, Leap of Faith, Rush, Swoop, etc. Most, but not all, of these abilities also have a hidden evade mechanic not tied to endurance. They also allow the player to travel great distances avoiding combat, or closing the gap, if necessary. All we have is the wurm shadow step, which has a cast time. The wurm cannot be used as a gap closer because of this cast time.

Necromancers have no mobility that counts.

Necromancer’s lack of mobility is a serious issue for the profession. Supposedly, the higher vitality and Death Shroud supposed to make up for that but it does not, really. Spectral Walk is an aweful skill and Flesh Worm is only marginally better but without the swiftness buff. Even Fear is a somewhat lame knock-back. Signet of Spite is also a problem because duration is so short while cool-down is so long.

However, Necromancer has a variety of conditions to apply and can transfer, multiply, convert them to boons, or convert boons to conditions. If only it could be better at those things. Too many other jobs have a bag full of conditions to apply so Necromancer is not really needed for conditions except for the variety and stacking them higher. The power builds that I have tried just cannot match other jobs. The trait tree scatters things around. It is like the developers decided to make a Necromancer, then added some Guardian, a bit of Warrior, found out it was too strong and gave all the other jobs skills and counters so that it became a hodge-podge profession.

Necromancer still does AoE and still manages conditions better than most classes but not quite enough to give it any clear advantages in situations where AoE conditions are important. The pets are kludgy, too, as if the devs realized Ranger was the pet class so Necromancer pets had to be less controlable and less powerful so they nerfed the original reanimated dead concept to be clearly inferior to Ranger.

Balance is the word we keep hearing from the developers but Necromancer is a job that can do a half-way decent job at a lot of things but is really good in very limited situations. The Necromancer is a light armor class built around magical curses and undead pets but many players find it more effective to play close and medium range. Why? While we are considering that, consider also why the Ranger is a medium armor class but players almost always play ranged. The different jobs have become muddled and, in some cases, confused, or confusing. Necromancer is one of, if not the, most confused profession. All of that flexibility sure makes for variety but not consistent play.

Ultimately what it sounds like people are saying is that while a Necromancer can support, and do fairly well, there are other classes that do it more easily and to greater effect.
Honestly, that doesn’t bother me. I am looking for a class that uses condition damage, summons, and can support- not necessarily at the same time. The fact that I’m not quite as good at it doesn’t bother me, only the fact that it’s completely inneffective would.
I understand what people are saying about not being as good as other professions, and I see that as a valid point when you are trying to get into a dungeon party or doing PvP, and are not selected because a guardian/whatever is avaliable. However, I just wanted to know if it could be done and was viable. I like supporting sometimes, and it sounds like the Necromancer supports fairly well- enough to be useful anyway. That’s all that really matters to me.

No, what people are saying is that a necro can make futile gestures in the general direction of support but not actually affect the group survivability meaningfully. It’s the equivalent of blowing your daze horn at a boss, having no effect, and then congratulating yourself that you’re the best supporter EVAR.

So if you want a build that throws around tiny healing numbers and 3 seconds of prot while the ele or guardian carry its dead weight through the dungeon, yes you have a “viable” support build.

in terms of support, manticore sums up what a lot of our "support has been reduced to recently with the defiance patch.

otherwise, for support-like things that the necro can do…
aggro-swap with high-aggro skills like life transfer, wells, spamming marks, and AoE blind.
picking up the life-transfer trait in the blood magic line gives a nice 2-3k AoE quickheal when you use DS4.
Shroud-ressing is a dungeon must.
if you’re REALLY built for regen, spamming well of blood and Staff2 and mark of evasion trait can help supplement regen uptimes. but really, guards and water ele can smoke you.

Its just another GW2 myth like Thief’s are OP or there working on the Minion AI I’ve been playing full support Necromancer in sPvP recently and i think its one of there most effective builds.

We have a stupid amount of condition control and removal and also have an amazing burst-heal that really turns fights.

My particular favorite is showing up to a midway fight and dropping Well of Blood giving everyone healing, regeneration from dwayna runes and condition removal from the light field then Deathshroud life transfer for a 2.7k AoE heal and then Well of Power for condition removal and life stealing combo field all while stripping any remaining conditions with plague signet.

I would dearly liker to try a build other than well bombing conditionmancer. This really is an innocent question Ascii…..are the numbers you are seeing the “norm” given they are based on several parameters all lining up? It would seem to be a “healmancer” of sorts. What other utilities can you fit in with that?