Guild Wars 2

This is my PvP perspective and somewhat PvE.

The only classes i ever play really, in rpgs are usually the ones with some sort of dark magic (WoW warlock, DA blood mage etc) but i see no point in playing necromancer in this game when other professions may do the job better. I have tried really hard to find one build that will work for me but none seem to cut it. I practically create a necromancer once a day to try to find some kind of solution but end up deleting it soon after.

My biggest concern with the class atm is that theres practically one viable build which is conditionmancer yet it suffers a huge damage loss if someone has at least one condition remover because of the reliance of bleed damage( which is basically 80% of the damage). I will admit though epidemic is one of the most satisfying abilities when placed on a huge crowd which i believe is a strong point of necromancers. Utility wise, is a concern also considering necros have no escape and almost no hard CC.

Anet should at least replace one of the DoT’s from bleed to burn damage and scale exactly the same imo. They should also add some kind of escape mechanism and maybe one hard CC. Maybe then the class would be more appealing. I really want to play Necro so my question is, why do you play necromancer?

(My intention is not to push people away from playing necromancer, it is to see how others may feel about the class in general and convince me to play Necromancer.)

In this game; Only for the name

Why do I play Necro?

Bq i like the class, and its bull thats is only one viable build. I started as condition necro, now im play a more power/bleed hybrid but working for a more power/ds focused build. All the way i have been able to win 1vs1, do good in both pve/pvp and wvw. Sure im not aiming to be the best player in the world, but i have fun. Hell i even been acused for cheating in spvp. Some players realy need to start running with condition removers!

If you realy dont like necro just reroll, 1-80 goes so fast in this game and you can Always come back to your necro.

So tired of players whineing about the class! Sure we have bugs and problems but so do other classes.

I play necro for the playstyle. I just can’t seem to get the same enjoyment from the other professions.

I have yet to play my other characters. I have 4 others lined up at character selection that i havent even logged in with. I love the versatile playstyle of the necro. I honestly feel i can do just about do anything, except for the whole burst damage thing. The necro is a DoT class no matter what build you make. Anet said the necro is about survivability, if you can survive longer than your opponent then they will either be dead or run away

Dylninja.4216:

Anet said the necro is about survivability, if you can survive longer than your opponent then they will either be dead or run away

Agreed and they did say that, however ever since bwe2 they stepped away from that statement. Not going to talk about it because ANET does not read this section on the forums.

I play necro to master DS and become OP when I do.

I just love Necromancy.
I have a pretty casual play style, so I don’t mind if my build isn’t amazing. I just love running around, making things sick and raising monstrosities as I go.
I came for the Necromancy.

Prior to actually playing a necromancer, I was compelled to play one based on ANET’s description of the necromancer and some glowing reviews by both developers and players alike. I pretty like complexities, and the necromancer sounded like one. A few weeks in, the doubts started creeping in especially when I could faceroll about just everything by spamming the thief’s heartseeker (i only know the f2 button when i’m on a thief) and the warrior’s 1kb… the forums doesn’t make it look nice either. I was either forced to roll another toon, or change my expectations of the class.

So I decided to become Batman. And Batman I did become.

I’ll try fight 10 times harder, think 10 times smarter, come back (after I die/lose) 10 times stronger. I honed my skills in spvp, rack up thousands of wvw kills, and always try to find myself 1v1, 1v2 fights. Heck if I see 3, I’ll charge in anyway (only if I see green arrows next to their level). I’m very proud of being a Necromancer, and I feel glad I still read posts of other fellow necros telling people how they enjoy playing it, and not doing too bad either.

I roll a power necro, but have a few things not conforming to the spirit of one, all for the sake of practicality in wvw, and spvp.

condition builds are great on paper, weak in practice. If there was cond/tough/vit gear in game, i’d roll my necro that way, because even with condition removal, we can always come back really fast because all of our skills have conditions on them.

right now, gear for power/tough/vit and get DS up to a usable standard. rock the dagger/x + staff and go to town.

I think that the biggest issue people have is that they try to play Necro as a Condition DPS machine by stacking Bleeds and forgo all Power and Control.

Yeah, under the ideal circumstances you’ll do a ton of damage.
It’s great vs huge swarms of monsters. Stack a ton of Bleeds and Epidemic!
I’m not denying that one bit.

…however it makes you very limited.
Going Power+Condition Damage+Vitality makes you much more well rounded.
You won’t stack Bleeds as fast, but Warriors, Rangers and Engineers do that better anyway and there’s always the 25 Bleed stack cap punishing you harshly in bigger battles.

With some power your Life Blast will actually hurt and your Feast of Corruption does more than tickles. (though it’s still not that amazing)

Also it’s just plain out more fun!
You can use any weapon combination you want!
Want a Scepter in one weapon set and Mainhand Dagger in the other?
Go for it.
You’ve got the stats for both so long as you don’t try to facetank something nasty like a Bunker Guardian or think that you are a DPS Warrior.
Hint: Immobilize prevents turning, too.

And the Staff?
It’s already great for pretty much any build and in this setup you get BOTH the raw Mark damage as well as the Bleed damage.
As an added bonus your damage is very stable because you aren’t relying on crits.

Anyway more on the topic:
I like playing a Necromancer because playing as one I get to Control the course of the battle.
I can easily Cripple, Chill and Immobilize to make fights much easier for my allies.
I can also remove their Conditions without speccing much at all into it or turn them into Boons.

When people start wiping in a Dungeon or in WvW a good Necromancer is among the first ones to res others safely and the among the last ones to get Defeated.
AoE Cripples and Chills and a massive Health pool do wonders for survivability.

The ability to use Death Shroud at extremely low health to run into an easy position for a res doesn’t hurt either.

Low health, heal on cooldown and possibly on fire as well?!
Activate Death Shroud, run to your backline guys and you’ll fall on your back where it’s easy for them to to get you back into the fight in less than 10 seconds.

Necromancers have many problems, a zillion glitches as well.
Despite this I just enjoy playing them a lot.

OP, I think you really have to talk about playstyle, not just builds. How do you use Death Shroud and Plague? What weapon sets do you run? What kind of gear do you have — or do you simply change traits but keep the same gear?

Personally, I’m loving my Necro. It’s the deepest class I’ve tried so far (Elementalist, Mesmer, Thief, Engineer) in terms of skills and their uses. Heck, Death Shroud alone has several different uses, depending on the situation.

I’d also echo LastDay’s comments that a more balanced play style is more powerful. The biggest downside of Necros are these forums, which have the highest ratio of whine-to-info of all forums. And the largest number of ridiculous consensus “truths” that aren’t true. People who left a WoW Warrior and picked up a GW2 Warrior moved up in the world. People who left WoW Warlocks (or Diablo Necromancers) and picked up a GW2 Necromancer are often disappointed. (Though my favorite WoW classes were Warlock and Druid.)

I don’t know… It’s fun for me.

I’ve tried pretty much every other class while I was in the Beta… and none of them clicked for me, aside from Engie and Necro… Since I didn’t get to play Necro that much during the beta, my main was an Engie when the game was released… Soon after I started a new character since my friend was able to convince me to make an alt, which became my necro and loved it more than the engie. So in the end, Necro became my main, sold/transfered/deleted my Engie (lv55, mind you).

At the moment I have a Warrior alt, that’s only 11, and I’m already bored of it…

I play necromacer ONLY because I played necromancer in GW1 and liked it a lot, I thought necromancer would be pretty much similar in GW2 but I was wrong and when i realized it I was already 50+

Necros in general used to be the kitten who fights with death magic and have the death’s power, the underdog. Considering that i always like this playstyle since Table RPG, i took Necro at the first look.

I played Elementalist extensively until I got kinda bored with the class. It was really awesome, and had loads of builds that worked well (no matter what the class forums say), but I just wanted something else.

On a whim I rolled a Necro just to experiment with the class.

Wow, what a breath of fresh air!

The class can take a beating! The imagery is awesome. The skills seem to work pretty well (besides minions, which are mediocre). The damage is good enough to get by, most of the time. But at the end of the day, I love this class because it can tank damage like a beast! In WvW that is an amazing talent to bring to the table! Everyone wants to be the gank master supreme, but I prefer to be that guy that JUST…WON’T…DIE!

For me I started with the class because I “thought” it would be fun and cool. At first I was ok with it….but noticed issues with the skills I had just being Bleh….then as i got more knowledge about the game…how many glaring bugs we have.

At this point Ive tried a a ton of bulds and equipment set-ups, and roughly feel commited to the class given how much time ive put into it. With working around 10 hours a day…bothering to re-roll a new profession is meh…just wanna make work what I got.

What I will say though is the class isnt as bad as people say…it has its upsides…and i can see where we can be a very much competitive profession. Of course…there is other times where i shake my head and wonder how this class can function properly given how it was constructed.

I play in hopes that:
-I can find an Arah group and get my full Arah set
-Minion AI and mechanics are fixed

There’s several power builds that are pretty viable too. It isn’t just conditionmancer or bust.

I feel the same as OP: being a PVP only necromancer makes you feel limited to one build only or one of its many little variants (aka, the Conditiomancer). Sure, you can try other builds, but they always feel like they’re sub-par and that you’re doing nothing that another class couldn’t do better. :/
I play Necro because I have a feeling that we, as in the community, are missing something about this class. There has to be a way to make it freakin’ amazing, something that probably is escaping the grasp of most people in here, and I intend to find out what it is.

Adore the necro concept and for the large part its potential in this game. For me it is the support role and the playstyle that demands a lot of attention. BUT I am having lots of troubles getting the max out of my necro given the current joint impact of bugs and poor trait/skill design/synergy (both incidental and intended). I have tried alts but they don’t seem to offer me anywhere near the “involvement” that a necro demands.

I have stopped playing till some of the bugs/trait issues are fixed…….I just find it so disappointing and frustrating that the issues have been going on as long as they have.

Given some improvement in the issues in the future I will come back to my necro but until then I will just read the forums looking for patch notes etc.

Mmm I love the huge HP pool and great survivability, but I started with necro mostly for the minions honestly. I’m still terrible at managing condition skills + DS and pulling aggro by myself so having a small army doing stuff for me feels pretty awesome. The AI is crap and it’s not all that efficient but I enjoy the play style immensely. I’d love it a lot more if they’d throw a few buffs our way and fix the AI though. 8Y