Guild Wars 2

I wonder why the devs gave the necro a melee weapon “dagger” knowing that the class is too squishy to use them? Is this just bad design or are they trolling the necro class?

DS too powerful to make Necro squishy. L2P or something.

The Boz.2038:

DS too powerful to make Necro squishy. L2P or something.

Nice troll attempt, but a sad fail.

Is your a troll attempt? Find dagger incredibly powerful and effective in sPvp. Axes, instead, seems useless to me (or at least not well designed).

I love the daggers. They attack quickly, and are the only weapons the necro have that feel like they have a little bit of power.

I do agree that we are squishy as hell though.

A better question should be why are melee weapons ranged? Makes no sense.

Josher.9612:

A better question should be why are melee weapons ranged? Makes no sense.

Because proper melee weapons are AoE.

HogWash.3928:

I wonder why the devs gave the necro a melee weapon “dagger” knowing that the class is too squishy to use them? Is this just bad design or are they trolling the necro class?

I got a better one for you. Why is plague Form Condition damage but in Melee range (Condition necro’s only use range weapons), And Lich form is DD but range, when we only have two DD weapons both close range.

HappyCerberus.3178:

Josher.9612:

A better question should be why are melee weapons ranged? Makes no sense.

Because proper melee weapons are AoE.

True for other Prof, Just not ours.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

HappyCerberus.3178:

Josher.9612:

A better question should be why are melee weapons ranged? Makes no sense.

Because proper melee weapons are AoE.

True for other Prof, Just not ours.

Well, we don’t have proper melee weapons ;-)

Mushrooms can’t carry proper melee weapons :o

Jk, though I would like a greatsword like the HoX in AoC that would at least look awesome

DoctorWhy.3847:

I love the daggers. They attack quickly, and are the only weapons the necro have that feel like they have a little bit of power.

I do agree that we are squishy as hell though.

I agree. Just hate getting one shot before i can go ds

Necros are by no means fragile.
They do have Light Armor yeah.

However Necromancers and Warriors share the top spot in Health!
They have almost double the health of Thieves, Guardians and Elementalists.
Warriors also don’t have two Health bars (Death Shroud), so Necro might actually take more hits than a Warrior.

Thing is compared to Warriors Necros hit like wet noodles.
All the Life Leech and Life Force generation is meant to make up for the low defense.
Unfortunately Life Leech heals for pathetic amounts right now due to bugs…

Also some things just deal so much damage that it doesn’t really matter what Profession you are.
Eat a Thief’s burst without countering it in time or get hit by a nasty dungeon mob and pow! …you are down.

Necros Dagger auto-attack was melee but with a trait that made it ranged at some point.
I think it then became just always ranged.
Then always melee!

I like using the Dagger sometimes.
It’s not all that optimal yet but it’s good enough for PvE solo play.

LastDay.3524:

Necros are by no means fragile.
They do have Light Armor yeah.

However Necromancers and Warriors share the top spot in Health!
They have almost double the health of Thieves, Guardians and Elementalists.
Warriors also don’t have two Health bars (Death Shroud), so Necro might actually take more hits than a Warrior.

Thing is compared to Warriors Necros hit like wet noodles.
All the Life Leech and Life Force generation is meant to make up for the low defense.
Unfortunately Life Leech heals for pathetic amounts right now due to bugs…

Also some things just deal so much damage that it doesn’t really matter what Profession you are.
Eat a Thief’s burst without countering it in time or get hit by a nasty dungeon mob and pow! …you are down.

Necros Dagger auto-attack was melee but with a trait that made it ranged at some point.
I think it then became just always ranged.
Then always melee!

I like using the Dagger sometimes.
It’s not all that optimal yet but it’s good enough for PvE solo play.

DS isnt and never will be a second skill bar, it takes much less damage to take down than even half of your real hp. But that cant be really talked about till they fix all the trait/skill problems.

Andele.1306:

LastDay.3524:

Necros are by no means fragile.
They do have Light Armor yeah.

However Necromancers and Warriors share the top spot in Health!
They have almost double the health of Thieves, Guardians and Elementalists.
Warriors also don’t have two Health bars (Death Shroud), so Necro might actually take more hits than a Warrior.

Thing is compared to Warriors Necros hit like wet noodles.
All the Life Leech and Life Force generation is meant to make up for the low defense.
Unfortunately Life Leech heals for pathetic amounts right now due to bugs…

Also some things just deal so much damage that it doesn’t really matter what Profession you are.
Eat a Thief’s burst without countering it in time or get hit by a nasty dungeon mob and pow! …you are down.

Necros Dagger auto-attack was melee but with a trait that made it ranged at some point.
I think it then became just always ranged.
Then always melee!

I like using the Dagger sometimes.
It’s not all that optimal yet but it’s good enough for PvE solo play.

DS isnt and never will be a second skill bar, it takes much less damage to take down than even half of your real hp. But that cant be really talked about till they fix all the trait/skill problems.

Actually the Necromancer used to be the most overpowered Profession.
Reason?
Death Shroud.
Good players utilizing it in Arenanet’s tests were almost invincible.
The Necromancer was always meant to outlast everybody else but they went overboard with it.

It’s probably also why Necro feels so weak now…
Arenanet is worried that they repeat their mistakes and Necro becomes unstoppable at top levels again.

Funny thing is I beta tested Mesmers and Necromancers and they had the opposite problem then. Seems like they went overboard in both directions.

Daggers do big damage. Have you actually used them?

My theory on why they screwed necro pets over against mesmers is that the minions would all run out and kill all their illusions ~instantly and there were a lot of sad face masks running around.

meh… the real question is why you have to be on top of the enemy to get the regen off of Mark of Blood and even then it doesn’t work half the time. Kinda useless since staff is your ‘ranged’ weapon =/

Why do we even have regen? Aren’t necros all supposed to be about leeching health?

LastDay.3524:

Actually the Necromancer used to be the most overpowered Profession.
Reason?
Death Shroud.
Good players utilizing it in Arenanet’s tests were almost invincible.
The Necromancer was always meant to outlast everybody else but they went overboard with it.

It’s probably also why Necro feels so weak now…
Arenanet is worried that they repeat their mistakes and Necro becomes unstoppable at top levels again.

This, mostly. Necro just had the misfortune to be at the bottom of the universal MMO buff-nerf cycle when the game went live.

I played around with a PvP Necro during one of the invitation-only betas, before the BWE’s started up, and ye gods… With a vampire dagger build, you could routinely come out of 2-on-1 fights nearly unharmed. Even 3-on-1, I could usually finish off at least one person before they managed to chase me away (provided they didn’t have another Necro or a support Guardian helping them stay up- and that didn’t mean a loss, it meant a stalemate). It was utterly broken. If you died at all, it was because you’d decided to hold a position at all costs and half the enemy team came to visit.

I figure the class will start to slowly pick back up again as the cycle turns, that’s just how these things go. What we’re currently seeing is Necromancer at its nadir.

Yeah I agree if you think a not nerfed necro was squishy than you never played one, the nerf was justified they just overnerfed it. In one of the first beta test you could build necros in a way that you need a whole raid to actually kill them. I remember that I was able to jump into a 20 man zerg in WvW do some damage and come out alive just by running away into my own zerg. It was really OP.

actually the reaosn why DS was OP on BW1 was because we could generate LF very fast, DS itself was very tough and if you use all LF IN DS, DS will have no CD so you could use Blood is power and enter again on DS (you will do no damage but was almost impossible to kill you).

problem now is that DS isnt great (in fact for condition build is very bad), now DS isnt tough (LF go down very very fast if someone atack you), you cant generate LF quick and you dont have that 0 CD DS, they nerf everything at once and nerf more things for conditions builds.

nope, DS as it now dont make any Necro tough because when ou enter on that form you are in fact very vulnerable, cant remove any condition, lool, you dont even know what conditions you have, so you can leave DS and see 10-15bleeds on you that you got a fear/interruptt and you are dead.

plague and lich form, i wonder why the hell we cant finish someone when we are on those forms, mesmer already made our elits useless.
moa by far the best elite of entire game, not just disable a enemy elite but it mean you will gonna die, are 10s that you cant do nothing just run (you cant because you are gonna be crippled/chilled etc) and you will be dead for sure on tourneys, so a necro pop a plague elite, mesmer counter with moa and kill me, that is a really usefull necro elite.

on tornaments any good mesmer if see the other team have a Necro with no golem will just wait until he pop lich/plague and moa him

.the fact we need to leave the lich/plague form just to finish someone is ridiculous IMO

Having played a necro that has out-tanked and outlasted both guardians and warriors in pugs and guild groups, I’m honestly at a loss as to why some people are finding necros squishy. (Low damage, absolutely; squishy, what?) I use axe/dagger and dagger/dagger with a staff in my inventory for specific situations.

Are you using your life drains, especially those in the trait lines, to full effectiveness? Might extra points in the Death Shroud trait help you? Have you considered using a minon-master or a condition-master setup, whichever you don’t currently use? Both are effective, but if one suits your personal playstyle better, that could make all the difference.

Also, and I hope this is obvious, but it needs to be said for some people: are your weapons and armor upgraded to near your level? Your gold gear might have been stellar fifteen levels ago, but even white gear might be better now.

Hate to sound like a kitten, but maybe you need to learn the mechanics of the game first? I’ve had no issues running explore mode dungeons on mine; you just have to know when you can mix in some melee and when you need to pull back and fight from afar.

Enfeebling Blood (Dagger #5) => 10s Weakness AoE
Corrosive Poison Cloud => 10s Weakness AoE, followed by
Deathly Swarm (Dagger #4) => 6s Weakness

That’s enough to get someone started. If it isn’t, then someone might need to build up an understanding of the game’s mechanics and principles with different weapons or a different profession first.

In terms of theme I think I would’ve prefered daggers to be ranged like Axes, with daggers just being a sort of Athame or w/e.

Considering Daggers are sort of the “Blood” weapon of necro’s it’s surprising it doesn’t have bleeding, and more of a support/heal aspect.

harvard comma.5197:

Having played a necro that has out-tanked and outlasted both guardians and warriors in pugs and guild groups, I’m honestly at a loss as to why some people are finding necros squishy. (Low damage, absolutely; squishy, what?) I use axe/dagger and dagger/dagger with a staff in my inventory for specific situations.

Well yes, you will play against people that have no idea what they are doing, but any solid player will stun you immediately when you enter DS. If you spec for stability, you will have a 3 seconds window you can exploit, but I just find that very short (but yeah, most people will burn their stuns on you in this time window).

If you are going for conditions, DS will actually get you killed. Stun→surround→burst out of DS and out of life.

What’s funny is it takes us having to weaken a player to hit for as much damage as we hit by with our so called hardest hiting ability. (FOC)

HappyCerberus.3178:

Well yes, you will play against people that have no idea what they are doing, but any solid player will stun you immediately when you enter DS.

The initial post did not specify a PvP setup. PvE does exist, as a primary playstyle for many players even. Even if the OP’s intention was a PvP critique, “it exists for PvE players” is a valid response to the question.

If you’re in a situation where you enter DS on the verge of death and your opponent still has their stuns and bursts in reserve, you’ve already made your mistakes.

OP If you don’t see how they are useful you have yet to explore a couple extremely effective necro builds.

Too squishey? Is this a joke? We are one of the most tanky classes in the entire game…

there is only 2 builds you can go as a necro and both options lead to poor damage.

DS tank build aka meat shield

condition build and look like you are doing something.

Dagger is EXTREMELY powerfull and an excellent weapons as main hand and off hand. It use almost all the time and if you can’t find how it can be good please don’t come here and claim it is bad and/or that we are too squishy to use it. It’s actually quite easy to stack a bit of toughness while permanently putting Weakness on ennemies to make you way less squishy not to mention the dagger is meant to melee-retreat-immobilise-then syphoon at medium range and redo the cycle again so you’r not always in melee range.

Anyway I really don’t see how we are squishy or wy you complain on dagger when our biggest issueis clearly the terrible Axe.

They just need to give a massive buff to life steal. That would make main hand dagger my weapon of choice thanks to the fast attack speed and dark pact.

Sebyos.4089:

Dagger is EXTREMELY powerfull and an excellent weapons as main hand and off hand.

This is true but incomplete. You forgot to add:

…in the hands of a thief.

Nope very good weapon for both Thieves and Necros. With 1400 condition damage I actually do a lot more damage with Dagger/Dagger than Scepter/Dagger. Guess how.

It’s funny because they give us a line with precision and condition damage, fury on DS, Enfeebling Blood on DS IN MELEE RANGE, Bleed on crits and Bleed duration yet people are focused on either full conditions or full power/crit, but they don’t mix crits and conditions lol.

I just tried using a dagger for MH on my newbie little lvl 15 Necro, and I love it! It feels like I kill things faster. And I don’t find us squishy at all! Compared to my Ele, my Necro is like this wall of unkillable tanky-ness, it is wonderful.

This is an odd question to answer.

Mostly because whether the Necromancer is squishy is wholly dependent upon your trait setup.

Necromancers stacked with toughness and vitality can easily facetank alot of content, and the higher power of the dagger compensates for that. Alternatively, if you want to stack power and crit while running with a dagger, it’s powerful, yeah, but you’ll need to innovate a way around not taking as many hits.

My only complaint is the lack of small aoe utility on the necro weapons in general.

Alkirin.7394:

This is an odd question to answer.

Mostly because whether the Necromancer is squishy is wholly dependent upon your trait setup.

Necromancers stacked with toughness and vitality can easily facetank alot of content, and the higher power of the dagger compensates for that. Alternatively, if you want to stack power and crit while running with a dagger, it’s powerful, yeah, but you’ll need to innovate a way around not taking as many hits.

My only complaint is the lack of small aoe utility on the necro weapons in general.

All Prof can face tank most PVE content in this game.

somsom.5201:

Hate to sound like a kitten, but maybe you need to learn the mechanics of the game first? I’ve had no issues running explore mode dungeons on mine; you just have to know when you can mix in some melee and when you need to pull back and fight from afar.

It’s not about learning the mechanics of the game, I’ve never had any issues doing explorable mode either, but that’s because I had a party of other players with me. When it comes to holding its own, the necro fails miserably.

Of course if you play really well and time everything perfectly and do everything right you’re in decent shape, but for you to have to do all that hard work (mixed with luck), when another class manages to get equal or greater results just by walking up to you and pressing a few buttons, then there’s something wrong with the necro.

As it is it’s too riddled with bugs and that’s the worst part, but bugs aside most classes can easily do what we’re meant to do best without half the effort and dedication.

Delryn.7235:

somsom.5201:

Hate to sound like a kitten, but maybe you need to learn the mechanics of the game first? I’ve had no issues running explore mode dungeons on mine; you just have to know when you can mix in some melee and when you need to pull back and fight from afar.

It’s not about learning the mechanics of the game, I’ve never had any issues doing explorable mode either, but that’s because I had a party of other players with me. When it comes to holding its own, the necro fails miserably.

Of course if you play really well and time everything perfectly and do everything right you’re in decent shape, but for you to have to do all that hard work (mixed with luck), when another class manages to get equal or greater results just by walking up to you and pressing a few buttons, then there’s something wrong with the necro.

As it is it’s too riddled with bugs and that’s the worst part, but bugs aside most classes can easily do what we’re meant to do best without half the effort and dedication.

Not counting the bugs. I would say the problem does not lie with the Necro but with the face roll Prof. It is bad game design to have such a large gap between the easy to play Prof and the hard Prof. Games that do have a gap, make up for this by having the harder to play Prof also have a higher power curve. Meaning that at max skill level the harder Prof are just flat out stronger than the easy ones. GW2 is not following this. They have just made the Harder to play Prof, just harder to play.

Before someone comes on here and says we just have not reached that skill level, i say bull. Ele have reached that level and look what they can do. The top Ele are showing just what the prof can do. To a point that you have to wonder if they really need the buff so many are asking for. We have not seen this for the Necro. So either the Necro is much harder to play than the Ele and the top players just have not reach that point yet, or there are some problems with the Necro.

Like i have stated many times before, a large part of this problem is that the Necro has so many bugs that its keeping us from trying many builds, and its keeping the power level of many builds low.

Example:
Close to Death: 20% more damage when foe is below 50%.
Now is the tool tip right or the ability? If the tool tip is right than all builds with this trait are doing 10% less damage.

There are many examples of this. Sadly its a wait and see.

IF Close to Death became 20%. Im sure theres gonna be a bunch of people complaining on other profession threads.

Tony.2150:

IF Close to Death became 20%. Im sure theres gonna be a bunch of people complaining on other profession threads.

Thiefs have the exact same Trait and its 20% not 10%. And Thiefs do way more damage than we do. I don’t think it would be OP.

Oh and they should be complaining. You know how a Prof is UP, not a single other Prof kittenes about it. No one with any Prof or build fears the Necro. Not a one. Even condition Thief’s that we own (well some of us) don’t fear us, why?

Hehe but you know how this community is…. lol.

And btw Angry Flying Squirrel i would like your feedback on
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-Rework-Thoughts-and-Ideas/first#post231101

@angry

The human mind does work in funny ways. And I see where your coming from. Nobody cares about the UP class at all. But the assumption that we suck when we don’t (besides class bugs) and than the turn around to eating them alive. Mind = Blown