Guild Wars 2

I’m not that expert of Necro.
But i must say, there’s one thing that stroke me very soon when leveling my Nec.

Traits are plain bad – or – really bad displaced.

That’s one of the biggest and harder to tackle problem of the class, imo.

(ah, and under the “Dagger” thing in the OP: it’s a meele slash, make it hitting AoE cleave like everyone else, kitten getting in meele for a light class must be much more rewarding, due to the risk – Mes has cool skills like boon removal and BFrenzy, Ele D/D spec..well, we all know how good is it. Dagger nec is plain unrewarding compared to those 2.)

Andele.1306:

Necros are pretty easy to start playing, even to play ok, but trying to master timing of DS, control over cooldown rotations and life force maximization is like asking a person that doesnt know how to open a web browser play SC2 vs a pro/max settings comp, virtually impossible, but the better you get at its usage (and staff usage since i still think the 2 are just made to work together), you get just as big of power jumps as you have invested.

Skill ceiling in the way I was using it was judged by effectiveness of what you can achieve by max skill input. We can choose a different word if that will move on past this word issue.

I don’t want to get into an argument over semantics. Just about every profession thinks theirs is the hardest to learn/master whatever. Necro I tend to also think is one of the harder ones, but it doesn’t change that you are not pulling off what other professions do in this game, regardless of having learned everything. If you want to call that just mobility, then fine, give us mobility. Skill alone cannot make up for not having it and only goes so far.

If you just go into casual hot join with kind of a beginner or average player, they are going to do much better with an Ele, Thief, Ranger than with a Necro. So call those lower skill ceiling by that definition if you want. But sadly at the top levels of skill the same thing applies, Necro still comes up short between two elite players who know their class inside out. Other professions do more for less work, less skill. Whether we are talking current sPVP top tier meta, or just messing around in WvW looking for fights. This is the complaint with the profession. It would be dumb to give Anet brownie points for making one of the hardest classes to play, also one of the most lacking in effectiveness.

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

Great movies man , now try to show us something similar but with necro

Sadly, such a video does not exist, or is it possible to exist with necros as they currently are. If the video did exist, it would have been linked repeatedly as proof that this class is capable of something other than being a floor ornament.

Here’s a video of a necro dueling competent opponents. Still looks pretty impressive.

I know that its important to learn how to play necro but it looks like we are mastering our all skills to be one the same level like other professions but what happens when other players mastered their classes too ? Yup dead necros everywhere .

Blaine Tog.8304:

Here’s a video of a necro dueling competent opponents. Still looks pretty impressive.

No one ever said necros can’t duel or 1v1. Its the 1vX when you’ve achieved a higher level of skill that necromancers are having issues with. The ranger video I linked had him 1v4ing people and winning. The engineer was surviving against just as many by himself and still killing people. Two bad players can still gang up and kill a good necro, and its not for a lack of trying. We just do not have the tools to deal with outnumbered situations, and thats a major issue. Every other class has at least one build that allows them to 1vX in at least some limited capacity. Necros do not.

GankSinatra.2653:

Yes its so hard to throw down circles and get trained in DS : 3

Your last sentence about the ele actually counts for every single class in this game, they are all seriously braindead easy to learn. If anything its the ele you talked about that is the hardest to learn simply because of the cooldown tracking and number of skills and their synergy with eachother, instead of the necros slow activating abilities and stacking 3 different tiny fears to get any sort of duration out of them while you facetank in perpetual stunned mode.

When a thief can fear you for 3 seconds with 1 ability, and you can get a 3 second fear by putting staff, DS and corrupt boon on cooldown, is your skill cap really that much higher? Or are you just clunky outdated kitten? Is scepter really harder than Ele dagger? Hell, is our dagger really that much harder? Or is it just crappier?

I can use my (utility) skills half as many times as other classes can, fear my leet decision making skillz.

No its not hard to throw circles on ground and press F1, what is hard is to make the circles on the ground count instead of them being dodged and the F1 actually being a second renewable hp bar instead of a nice blob of green effects as what you are obviously using them. Also i have a ele and know that unless you really like spamming staff/focus 4/5s or still use ride the lightning as a run away skill, everything will be up by the time you finished a full rotation to start another one, there is actually no personal (there is for the team) difference between a good timed fire field, a combo of knockback into fire grab arcana burst followed by a knockdown to escape and just derping up cantrips, churning eath and then flashing, the most advanced thing youll get as a ele is using swaps while another is on 1.9~1.5 seconds away from being back up for it to trigger global and recharge faster (and with every ele weapon designed to go air-fire-earth-water you get the F1-4/z-v/whatever keybinds you are using timings pretty easy).

For short ele got set rotations to squeeze out as much as they can from the 4 attunemnts, so to max out its not skill of combos but being able to click 40 buttons at once that counts, so idiotic spiked learning curve, medium skill ceiling (e.g. Orianna/Syndra in LoL).
Lets say you do that as a necro… yeah you got yourself a pile of dead everything, not a living dodging 4+ booned living tank, but for someone who doesnt wanna squeeze out as much as they want and just be ok, necros will do fine; easy initial learning curve like prancing on a meadow that then hits a brick wall high as the Olympus Mons, just as high max skill ceiling (e.g. Cho’gath/Elise in LoL).

Also you would know, if you played the necro right, that no, both reapers mark and corrupt boon are better than a self centered max 5 second fear, also wasting new traited steal (that pretty much every thief should have traited) for kitten 3-5 second fear (being both condition and cc thus easy to either return or remove) is stupid when you can just drop assassins-basilisk-head shot/any ranged skill into step during cast into backstab with lyssa or mad king to gib a person faster than mario kills a sleeping goomba.

Kravick.4906:

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

Great movies man , now try to show us something similar but with necro

Sadly, such a video does not exist, or is it possible to exist with necros as they currently are. If the video did exist, it would have been linked repeatedly as proof that this class is capable of something other than being a floor ornament.

The class is capable of something, or was, but it was niche. Boon hate. In the perfect scenario, surrounded by teammate protection we were good at neutering some of the top sustaining builds. However now that they have given this ability to thieves, on top of stealth, burst, mobility, etc, and increasingly more to other professions too, we don’t have much left. Primarily epidemic, but the profligate amount of cleansing in the game and total imbalanced effort between cleansing and building large stacks of conditions, always put that on limited lifespan usefulness.

A profession should never be built around just a couple of utilities and we pretty much are. Even our burst builds that ignore those high profile corruptions, are also similarly built around a couple utilities, namely wells, which if you use at the wrong time, or vs any smart enemy that knows how to get out, you become just a poor man’s thief without stealth. While condi’s outside their corruptions are like big bloated mosquito’s, that prick you over and over, without ever elevating beyond an annoyance to being truly threatening.

1v1, as per the above video, Necro can come out well if the opponent is committing to the duel. In any non pre arranged affair though, it can be a lot harder in practice if they are willing to run away as soon as it looks like they might lose. I chased a warrior around for 5 minutes the other day before finally killing him. I’m convinced he messed up several times and could have outdistanced me if he was smarter.

Pendragon.8735:

Skill ceiling in the way I was using it was judged by effectiveness of what you can achieve by max skill input. We can choose a different word if that will move on past this word issue.

I don’t want to get into an argument over semantics. Just about every profession thinks theirs is the hardest to learn/master whatever. Necro I tend to also think is one of the harder ones, but it doesn’t change that you are not pulling off what other professions do in this game, regardless of having learned everything. If you want to call that just mobility, then fine, give us mobility. Skill alone cannot make up for not having it and only goes so far.

If you just go into casual hot join with kind of a beginner or average player, they are going to do much better with an Ele, Thief, Ranger than with a Necro. So call those lower skill ceiling by that definition if you want. But sadly at the top levels of skill the same thing applies, Necro still comes up short between two elite players who know their class inside out. Other professions do more for less work, less skill. Whether we are talking current sPVP top tier meta, or just messing around in WvW looking for fights. This is the complaint with the profession. It would be dumb to give Anet brownie points for making one of the hardest classes to play, also one of the most lacking in effectiveness.

Oh you kids and your weird stuff, once upon a time skill ceiling ment how you could squeeze out from what you had, not how much it actually is on a numerical scale. Yes necros scale like kitten and most skills and traits either dont have scailing, its weaird or plain start off too bad/situational to have a reliable use and unlike a bigger part of the game its on over 50% of the things we have. Thats a balance issue and we all know it by now (at least i hope, just like mesmer cripling specialization, warrior derpyness of being brawlers but nothing else, guardians lack of true ranged/siege power, engie bipolarness and ranger/projectile/pet/every dodgy not true but kinda leap obstructioness, etc). BIG BUT that is not a representation of what the skill ceiling is, example who is a better tradesman, a person that turned 10$ into 1000$ (necro) or a person that turned 500$ into 3500$ (ele)?

Andele.1306:

example who is a better tradesman, a person that turned 10$ into 1000$ (necro) or a person that turned 500$ into 3500$ (ele)?

Who is happier though, probably the richer guy.

The weird thing is in most MMO’s the harder to play learn/master classes, those with the highest skill ceilings as per your def, also have the highest play ceilings. Opposite here, other than warrior, who gets the shaft like Necros, but at least doesn’t get the shaft while working 5x as hard to not get it.

@Pendragon Indeed. On the one hand you have classes such as Engineer or Necro. And on the other hand you have the ultimate faceroll DPS monster machine, also known as Warrior.

It’s okay to have a noob class. But it’s not okay that this class performs the best (speaking of PvE) with the least amount of work. If this isn’t bad game mechanics then I don’t know what it is …

woeye.2753:

@Pendragon Indeed. On the one hand you have classes such as Engineer or Necro. And on the other hand you have the ultimate faceroll DPS monster machine, also known as Warrior.

You might wanna fix it to Guardian since Warriors are pretty kitten outside of getting carried/protected to instagib a peron (aka what a thief does when not backcapping for giggles) for pvp, even a hybrid necro outdoes them in terms of team worth…

Pendragon.8735:

Kravick.4906:

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

Great movies man , now try to show us something similar but with necro

Sadly, such a video does not exist, or is it possible to exist with necros as they currently are. If the video did exist, it would have been linked repeatedly as proof that this class is capable of something other than being a floor ornament.

The class is capable of something, or was, but it was niche. Boon hate. In the perfect scenario, surrounded by teammate protection we were good at neutering some of the top sustaining builds. However now that they have given this ability to thieves, on top of stealth, burst, mobility, etc, and increasingly more to other professions too, we don’t have much left. Primarily epidemic, but the profligate amount of cleansing in the game and total imbalanced effort between cleansing and building large stacks of conditions, always put that on limited lifespan usefulness.

A profession should never be built around just a couple of utilities and we pretty much are. Even our burst builds that ignore those high profile corruptions, are also similarly built around a couple utilities, namely wells, which if you use at the wrong time, or vs any smart enemy that knows how to get out, you become just a poor man’s thief without stealth. While condi’s outside their corruptions are like big bloated mosquito’s, that prick you over and over, without ever elevating beyond an annoyance to being truly threatening.

1v1, as per the above video, Necro can come out well if the opponent is committing to the duel. In any non pre arranged affair though, it can be a lot harder in practice if they are willing to run away as soon as it looks like they might lose. I chased a warrior around for 5 minutes the other day before finally killing him. I’m convinced he messed up several times and could have outdistanced me if he was smarter.

yh I agree that necro is more support class but there is one small problem , maybe for us it`s huge one . People don`t need (don`t want)necros in party , very often they are too weak and useless . People are looking for guard , warrior (on lfg you can see it often NO THIEF OR NECRO). And that`s the problem necro is class all or nothing . We can apply many conditions but other classes can do it better , we can use burst dmg on daggers but others do it better, we can siphon health , others are doing it better . We are mastering our necros to be able to kill some noob elem.

Hey guys,
WOW! Haha! I am very flattered that KarlaGrey took the time to respost these. If I knew that they would end up in their own thread, I would have taken the time to make it longer/more in-depth/more organized.

Yes, I made a mistake about the grasping dead tooltip. I DID think it was more stacks, but was writing the post in a limited amount of time and I just resorted to believing the tooltip over my own intuition, figuring that it something so simple couldn’t possibly be erroneous this many months in. Silly me.

Tried pretty much about everything,including dagger builds and healer/boon duration.
A support warrior kittens all over a support necro all day long and laughs at a condition necro.
Untargeted condition cleansing ,untargeted condition flipping at 1200 range and with 1k extra toughness and more hp.
Heck the banner heal/regen and negation is more solid than a necromancers entire burst of healing ds well and marks.
Lets just face it,whoever bought this game out of love for what necro was got ripped off bigtime.

grave of hearts.7830:

Tried pretty much about everything,including dagger builds and healer/boon duration.
A support warrior kittens all over a support necro all day long and laughs at a condition necro.
Untargeted condition cleansing ,untargeted condition flipping at 1200 range and with 1k extra toughness and more hp.
Heck the banner heal/regen and negation is more solid than a necromancers entire burst of healing ds well and marks.
Lets just face it,whoever bought this game out of love for what necro was got ripped off bigtime.

Are you talking about PvE or PvP? PvE support warriors are fine, not necessarily considered top tier but its a perfectly playable style.

The problem is PvP banners just… aren’t that good. To my knowledge, they can be destroyed; you do not want abilities that are so easily counterable as that. But really the biggest issue with banner warriors in PvP is the fact that you need a warrior on your team to use them. You’re basically saying my team is happy to fight a 4v5 all game, except our 4 will have both forest buffs for team fights.

A support Necromancer can heal your bunker and anyone else on point for more than their own dedicated heal, keep perma regen, and then have at least one stacked with chill and a variety of conditions, while still having decent condi pressure. Put them with an HGH engi, and all they need to do is press Epidemic every 15 seconds and put out more pressure than your support warrior could ever hope to achieve, while still filling themselves with supportive abilities.

Whats the problem with both of these support builds? You’re team already has an Ele/Guardian which can do your job better, while still providing necessary Burst/bunker to the team, which neither warrior nor necro can say in a support build.

Heh, bit confusing for Condition Damage Necros are called “Condition Necros” for short.
When Necromancer is hailed as “THE Condition Profession” it doesn’t mean just Condition Damage, but rather as the overall theme.

Chill, Vulnerability, Weakness, and Immobilize are all very powerful and don’t have anything to do with Condition Damage.

Most of you already knew this but I thought it best to point it out to root out any confusion.

Warriors and Necromancers were probably both one of the first classes made, therefore they obviously lack.

flow.6043:

He is wrong about the staff, of course. Having your marks on cooldown doesn’t mean you are reduced to auto attacking with necrotic grasp.

The axe: Dagger necros are so easy to kite because of their short range, so overall the axe might have a higher dps against non-npcs because you are more likely to hit them at all. But whatever…

Scepter: Grasping Dead, wrong tooltip, it actually inflicts 3 stacks of bleeding.
With enough extra condi duration (which every conditionmancer has) there is no need to prolong the poison on Putrid Curse. It also stacks in duration so without any cleanses you’re target will be perma poisoned anyway.

The “trait fragmentation”… old hat. This has been discussed so many times already.
The fact that staff related traits are spread over 3 lines is the worst example you could make. Greater Marks and Staff Mastery are in the same line. Spiteful Marks is probably even worse than Siphoned Power, the dps you gain from it is pathetic even in a glassy power build. So basically you can just forget it exists and wonder why Soul Marks is in a different line: It doesn’t profit the staff itself but your life force regen, that’s why it’s in Soul Reaping.
That’s all there is to it. It looks all over the place, but it’s really not. And that goes for most of the other traits as well.

What do you mean that “having your marks on cooldown doesn’t mean you are reduced to just auto-attacking?” We have 4 marks and an auto-attack. If the marks are on cooldown, it means we just have an auto-attack left. What else are you doing with your staff?

The issue is that the cooldowns on chillbain’s and reapers is too high. So, once you only have mark of blood as your available mark, you have capped damage/condition variety and equally important is that we don’t have the utility of chill on chillbain’s and the fear of reaper’s mark. We can use our marks defensively at times to create distance/soft CC via chill/fear, so when those are gone, we are just sitting ducks for any kind of focus fire. This is the reason also the cooldown trait doesn’t really improve our effective uptime of “fighting” in staff because our autoattack/mark of blood aren’t enough options/damage to actually bridge the gap of waiting for chillbain’s, putrid, reaper’s to come off cooldown, so when this happens, we switch to our other weapon and fight in it until the mark cooldowns come back. IF the autoattack was improved and/or chillbain’s and reaper’s marks were reduced in cooldown time slightly, then we could actually fight in staff as a sustained option (Like a Mesmer with their greatsword do), and the reduced cooldown trait would actually be useful.

As to your reply back about the trait/trait placement:

A) The fact remains that we have four separate traits in three separate lines affecting just one weaponset. Just that fact alone is screaming proof of significant need for trait consolidation. We just don’t have enough trait points to spend that many points to augment a single weaponset for these quality of traits.

B) Your point that Spiteful marks sucks and can “just forget it exists” doesn’t exactly serve to support the argument that our trait trees are fine. It should be changed and/or consolidated to actually do something useful (something that possibly affects both power and condition builds would be ideal). If the traits were properly designed and though out, I should be faced with painful decisions as to what I should be choosing as my trait choices. I should have to do careful pro/con analysis with each trait choice to figure out which gives me maximum utility. Currently, there are way too many dominant choices (best choice for most or all situations) and too many dominated choices. (worst choice in most or all situations) This is the biggest issue plaguing lack of build diversity and its a class-wide problem.

C) I realize that the Soul Marks trait affects life force gain, but I would argue it really is augmenting our staff because it is now adding a secondary effect to our staff abilities. Either way, whether you classify it as affecting our staff or whether your classification of “life force gain”, its a matter of semantics. The actual issue is that I need to spend 20 points accessing that tree to augment my staff, while other staff skills (even if they are weak), are located in 2 other trees. The first 10 point trait options in soul-reaping are all medicore and unwanted, and once I get 20 points into that tree, I would opt for the fear duration trait. So, basically, in actual practice, I have to spend 30 points to even access that trait AND at the cost of a grandmaster trait. Unrealistic and poorly designed. There needs to be consolidation.

Here’s my perspective on high level tPvP (can’t speak about PvE/WvW balance since I don’t play those modes). I’m currently ranked 60-something on the NA ladder, which I only mention here so you know that I go against the top teams all the time on NA (the few that there are remaining). That said:

-Condi Necros are completely viable in condi cleave teams paired with a condi engi. However note that IMO condi cleave isn’t what I would consider optimal on many maps. I mention this because a lot of people seem to be up in arms about not seeing Necros in the few tournies we’ve seen so far, but IMO that at least partially has to the do with the fact that it’s not something you can run on all maps.

-Condi Necros are also great anti-condi support. This is another reason why I don’t think we’ve seen many Necros in EU tournies, because AFAIK (I don’t follow the EU scene closely so take with a grain of salt) condi cleanses are more prevalent and condi cleave teams much less prevalent on EU compared to NA.

-The focus should be on improving other Necro builds because condi Necros are more or less in a decent place, perhaps just a few tweaks so that they are a bit less niche, more along the lines of improving mobility than raw damage output.

-Here were my submitted questions to the eSports weekly thing SOAC is doing next week with the devs, which focuses more on the overall design intent of Necros than specific changes, along with some possible suggestions to consider:

1) Is it intended that Necros receive no healing (from party members,
from regen, etc.) while in DS? If so, why?

2) Are Necros living up to your design principles of “attrition” in
sPvP with the abundance of condi cleanses in the game?

SUGGESTION: If not, do you feel more sources of poison application
would help somewhat alleviate this issue, both in terms of addition
cover conditions and the reduction in healing output?

3) Is the Necro’s lack of mobility (lack of easy access to swiftness,
teleports, leaps, etc.) an issue? Is this intended?

SUGGESTION: Changing the “Speed in Shadows” trait to grant swiftness
on DS activation would be one avenue to alleviate the lack of
swiftness.

4) Why do life siphoning skills (such as Life Siphon on the dagger and
Signet of the Locusts) scale with healing power, but life siphoning
traits (such as vampiric) do not? Is this intended?

SUGGESTION: Life siphoning traits are currently non-existent in sPvP,
wouldn’t making these traits scale with healing power open up more
viability and give Necros more reasons to itemize for healing power?

5) Why are Ranger pet abilities usable while downed and with no cast
time, while Necro minion abilities cannot be activated while downed
and most require a cast time from the Necromancer himself?

SUGGESTION: Activated minion abilities should require no cast time (as
there is already a delay between skill activation and when the minion
actually uses said skill) to increase responsiveness of minions and
improve minion Necro viability in sPvP.

6) Assuming Necro survivability was designed around DS, do you feel it
is an issue that Necros starts matches with no LF and thus are at a
relative disadvantage to other classes?

SUGGESTION: Have Necros start with a small amount of LF (i.e. 10%) so
they can access and utilize DS to a small degree at the beginning of a
match.

A very good post Skyro, the questions/suggestions are quite good as well.

I think again, another issue is that few people tend to look at Necromancers for anything except condition damage. Our condition support is incredibly strong, especially when paired into a condition cleave team. An HGH with a condition support Necro will not just put out very large AoE condi pressure, but the Necro will be essentially “covering” the damaging conditions with chill, weakness, immobilize, cripple, etc, in addition to the actual effects that those condis have. I’m actually surprised that they don’t use this more in EU (I’m guessing its probably due to something I’m not thinking of), because most condition cleanses that are being used are limited to 1-2. Meaning they can effectively be nullified by condition spam.

I think something else that would really help out is if they made the hybrid amulets in PvP not suck (I’m looking at you Rampager).

Bhawb.7408:

Are you talking about PvE or PvP? PvE support warriors are fine, not necessarily considered top tier but its a perfectly playable style.

The problem is PvP banners just… aren’t that good. To my knowledge, they can be destroyed; you do not want abilities that are so easily counterable as that. But really the biggest issue with banner warriors in PvP is the fact that you need a warrior on your team to use them. You’re basically saying my team is happy to fight a 4v5 all game, except our 4 will have both forest buffs for team fights.

A support Necromancer can heal your bunker and anyone else on point for more than their own dedicated heal, keep perma regen, and then have at least one stacked with chill and a variety of conditions, while still having decent condi pressure. Put them with an HGH engi, and all they need to do is press Epidemic every 15 seconds and put out more pressure than your support warrior could ever hope to achieve, while still filling themselves with supportive abilities.

Whats the problem with both of these support builds? You’re team already has an Ele/Guardian which can do your job better, while still providing necessary Burst/bunker to the team, which neither warrior nor necro can say in a support build.

I am talking WvW warrior to be precise.
Warrior has a 1200 range warhorn skill that removes hard cc and flips other conditions into boons with no targeting.
Each banner when specced to it stacks regeneration to those affected by it,aside the banner effects.
Meaning a banner warrior can cleance 5 people twice from a condition and turn into a boon every 12 and 16 seconds,and keep 20 others on perma regen and all that while it takes a zerg to kill him.
Sure you can aim for the banners but that still doesnt do much when the regen he receives makes him laugh at you.
And in the rare occasion you start posing a threat he can switch to his shield set and block a burst and daze you long enough to at least force you back.
Sure necromancer can heal for slightly more if ds manages to go off or if the mark isnt dodged or if the well of blood long cast isnt interupted by some random cc.
Necromancer isnt bringing any solid support that isnt on unnaceptable cooldown.
And on top of it the condition flipping of a warrior is so far superior to that of our so called condition management class that not only negates our dmg but also makes the necro a handicap to his team.
You may consider it a viable playstyle and it is,its simply bad design for a heavy dmg/armor class to be a better support than a light armor class.

In WvW sure banner warrior is fine.

And no, I will still laugh all over a warrior’s condition cleansing. If you want to argue that a warrior has good condition removal, thats fine; he gets it by completely removing all offensive presence and going into a specific build. Every condi necro gets 2 full condi cleanses just by bringing the weapons we want. If we want to go full condi cleanse, we’ll still poop on warrior’s cleansing, its not even a competition.

Agree with pretty much everything but in the end we still have to be balanced around that lame death shroud hp bar that seem to mess up this class from an actual fun viable class to something thats just lacking in everything.

Epidemic is still sorta cool, except 1sec is a long cast time and with the los change + long setup time with the condition stacking + somehow avoid em being cleansed before you get epidemic off then yeah its not really that great anymore for its required setup.

If we truly were an attrition class then maybe we wouldnt loose lf during a fight but get stronger as the battle goes on like they said but i guess someone thought the idea of highest base hp + more hp in death shroud was a great idea, what could possible go wrong!!

just wait for DS5 ability that lets us go into a third hp bar and then rebalance EVERY single skill for that, should be fun. <- its a bad idea anet dont do it!

I have lots of Problems with the necromancer too.
I always want the staff in one of my weaponsets for its finisher. Who plays a lot knows that combos are really strong. Just think about the water field that ele, engi, ranger and thiefs(vs ranger) can set..
The formula for the heal of blast and leap finisher on waterfields is:
- Blast Finisher, at level 80, heals for 1320 + 0.2 * (Healing power)
- Leap Finisher, at level 80, heals for 1300 + 0.5 * (Healing power)

I first thought yey, i place my well of blood and use putrid marks (i just heard it has 2 blast finishers) and i am able to heal myself after receiving 2 heartseeker or something like that. This way it would make sense to get some healing power.
Now i know that it is just a light combofield and i get some retaliation. Pretty usefull on a conditionmancer.. not. This means that in my opinion healingpower is bad in every build for the necromancer at this moment.

In general it feels like somebody just deleted all our finishers for no reason. I mean why are dark path, haunt or spectral recall not leap finisher? Or spectral grasp, life blast, deathly swarm or reapers touch a projectile finisher?
Compared to for example mesmers swap, magic bullet, mirror blade or phase retreat i see no reason for this skills not to be a finisher as well.
Maybe because we have so many darkfields? Yes.. thats so much stronger than the etheral fields of the mesmer which provide chaos armor and protection..
Those combofields are just pain in the kitten . i mean why would i use a finisher on well of darkness? Because i want to stack up some seconds of blind. Thats Useless..
and i don’t have anything else than blast finishers.
Whoever comes now with staff1.. i really dont know why it has those 20% chance.. even if it would always steal some life or something else.. as long as it is used on range the oponement cant get hit if he don’t want that. And i would not recommend to play the staff in melee range either.. This autoattack is for pve only i think..and even there i don’t use it and please an elementalist to place a frostbow for me.. which is better then every single weapon i have.

Ah and please give us 180 condition damage to plague signet and this “i steal a condition every 10sec” kitten to the mesmer and look what they say about that.

@ the players who talk about our effectiveness in a “condi cleave comp”:

Let me preface this by talking about my experience in tournaments. I used to be on Imperial/III and we used to be in the top 20-30 players(me, prince, seether, primordial, erichimself) in QP points before we stopped playing. I also fluctuate anywhere from top 50-200 players on leaderboard depending on how much I am solo queueing and destroying my rank. I don’t put as much volume in these days at the moment.

My experience on necro (speaking from the perspective of a condition necro and a power ranged glass cannon wells tokyomurai type build) is this:

I am in a constant “defensive” scramble moving and rotating around the perimeter of a fight as I am being pursued by a thief, ele, mesmer, or some combination of the above. Many times, I am forced to actually cast my marks defensively on or near me to stop this pressure and thus can’t contribute them towards a better, more offensive location on a contested node/downstate bodies, etc.

I am the primary focus fire of the team because:
A) If let to freecast, I can actually do significant damage to a team.
B) I have no escapes; especially at the start of games with empty lifeforce bars .
C) I have a rez signet, so killing me first removes the implied threat of a player revival.

So, those are the three factors that primarily cause experienced teams to constantly put pressure on necromancers and take them down. We don’t have the ability to sneak away with stealth like a thief; we can’t “protect me” like a ranger or mistform like an elementalist; we can’t blink/decoy/staff escape like a Mesmer. Those classes can use their abilities to buy time during your pursuit of them to hopefully have somebody else from the other team drop or have someone to peel onto you to alleviate pressure before they go down.

On top of that, we don’t have the readily available stability to avoid the chain CCs that those classes can string together as a concentrated effort to take you down. We don’t have the vigor to get extra dodge rolls in to avoid big attacks and rotations like a Mesmer shatter. If you stay on that necromancer relentlessly, he is going down faster than those other classes. This is even more so true at the start of the games because of the fact we start with empty life force. When I am playing tPVP, I actually instruct my teammates to target necromancers first at the start of games because we are so weak at escaping.

Because of these above mentioned dynamics, there are many tough, games where I am just unable to go into an offensive mode because I am either dead or scrambling around the perimeter using wells/marks defensively rather than offensively. There are times when the “perfect storm” of a big corrupt boon + epidemic never materializes up to its potential and it can be a frustrating experience.

Yes zzod like all classes Necros have their share of pros and cons, but if you suggesting that Necro’s are not viable at the highest levels of tPvP in a condi cleave comp on FoN and LoF then we are in disagreement on that one. There is a ton of variability in condi necro builds based on the comp you are facing and their strategy. I more often than not change things around with my build and gear match to match based on the comp we are facing, which is especially important if you run into the same team multiple times in one gaming session and happens quite often at the top of the leaderboards.

I think there are some valid points being made here, but the thread as a whole seems to be schizophrenic. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen five different versions of “get back on topic” stating it’s really about this thing that particularly pertains to them. I would rather not have the class redesigned around PvP ignoring all others’ complaints. Personally, I see a lot of pink energy in the depiction of skills and feel that’s what’s really lacking. DS 5 really needs a giant pink explosion, although that might be stepping on Mesmers’ toes.

So, fixing the Necro: stability or stunbreaks would be nice, perhaps flavorfully in converting them into boons. I liked that idea of tying it to DS, too. I, for one, love Target the Weak. I run a hybrid necro and it’s great in its spot in the traits and for the build in general. Reanimator is pretty much a waste for me, but I need Greater Marks, and just live with it. Are their any players/builds that really like it? Would it have to be where it is or could it be merged with PotH?

I’d say that Greater marks should be standard (the size, not unblockable), if a weapon is absolutely useless without a trait, I think its a sign that the weapon needs to have some changing.

I’d also replace reanimator with something that gives vigor.

I’m not sure if anyone else has brought it up, and I realize this thread is probably more focused on the PVP side of things, rather than the PVE, but Marks don’t trigger against things like dragons or other world bosses.

To be honest, I’m not a big fan of Marks at all, they don’t really seem to have that much utility compared to other aoe attacks, and 90% of the time I’m using them like ground targeted AoE in PVE anyway.

I hear alot that Necros are the attrition class of guild wars 2, if that is true, when will we start being it?

We dont have any real fancy tricks to avoid damage, we have our base defenses and DS and lack luster life siphoning. Life siphoning so bad it doesnt even really register.

I decided to make a pure bunker build out of curiosity:

30 in blood magic for life siphoning increase,well CD reduction and wells siphon life.
20 in death magic for condition lose in DS, 400 toughness while channeling.
20 in soul reaping for slower life force drain and speed of shadow’s ( mainly wanted the 15 point trait).

Full sentinel gear, around 2k toughness, 3.2k attack and 36k hp, well that was a waste of gold and time…..absolutely sucked, compare that to other class full bunkers, not even in the same league. o well what you going to do…ill just be beserker i guess…same survivability it seems.

Skyro.3108:

Yes zzod like all classes Necros have their share of pros and cons, but if you suggesting that Necro’s are not viable at the highest levels of tPvP in a condi cleave comp on FoN and LoF then we are in disagreement on that one. There is a ton of variability in condi necro builds based on the comp you are facing and their strategy. I more often than not change things around with my build and gear match to match based on the comp we are facing, which is especially important if you run into the same team multiple times in one gaming session and happens quite often at the top of the leaderboards.

Yes. I agree with changing things around when facing same teams. I change to a different class. 8(

Skyro.3108:

the eSports weekly thing SOAC is doing next week with the devs

Wow, is this really happening? O_o
I’m very curious about how they would answer your questions…

flow.6043:

Skyro.3108:

the eSports weekly thing SOAC is doing next week with the devs

Wow, is this really happening? O_o
I’m very curious about how they would answer your questions…

What about it ? Haven’t been catching up with these kind of events, any info available?

flow.6043:

Skyro.3108:

the eSports weekly thing SOAC is doing next week with the devs

Wow, is this really happening? O_o
I’m very curious about how they would answer your questions…

I would love to add if they honestly believe that DS keeps up with other classes mitigation styles (stealths, evades, blocks, invulns), especially over a prolonged fight.

Personally I think we lack severely in generating DS to ever keep up with those abilities. In a fight against pretty much any other class they will be avoiding damage outright and that ability is coming back off cooldown, while a Necro’s DS (if they had any at all) is getting whittled down with almost no hope of regenerating it. IMO it’s not the valuable resource that they think it is, one that makes spectral armor worthy of a 90 second cooldown.

I think if you let Necros start with some LF in sPvP and make generation a lot easier, it can go a very long way to helping a Necro not be a bottom class.

Kravick.4906:

No one ever said necros can’t duel or 1v1. Its the 1vX when you’ve achieved a higher level of skill that necromancers are having issues with. The ranger video I linked had him 1v4ing people and winning.

Yeah, and the 4 were just terrible. Not to knock the ranger’s skills but I don’t find the video as a particularly compelling case of why the Ranger is OP or the Necro UP.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Kravick.4906:

No one ever said necros can’t duel or 1v1. Its the 1vX when you’ve achieved a higher level of skill that necromancers are having issues with. The ranger video I linked had him 1v4ing people and winning.

Yeah, and the 4 were just terrible. Not to knock the ranger’s skills but I don’t find the video as a particularly compelling case of why the Ranger is OP or the Necro UP.

Really? So you’re saying that a necro would have been able to kill those 4 people also? I highly doubt it.

Kravick.4906:

Really? So you’re saying that a necro would have been able to kill those 4 people also? I highly doubt it.

I’m saying a video of one profession killing 4 baddies doesn’t say anything about whether another profession can kill large numbers of baddies. And in any case, I don’t see why killing large numbers of baddies should be the benchmark for balance. Like, if the Warrior were super duper good at PvD, that wouldn’t mean every other profession that were worse at killing inanimate objects would be UP.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Kravick.4906:

Really? So you’re saying that a necro would have been able to kill those 4 people also? I highly doubt it.

I’m saying a video of one profession killing 4 baddies doesn’t say anything about whether another profession can kill large numbers of baddies. And in any case, I don’t see why killing large numbers of baddies should be the benchmark for balance. Like, if the Warrior were super duper good at PvD, that wouldn’t mean every other profession that were worse at killing inanimate objects would be UP.

Yeah it kinda does make a good benchmark, because thats the entire point of this thread. What necros can’t do because they don’t quite cut it. As was said earlier in this thread. When playing the other classes, depending on build obviously, a good player can easily beat 2 bad/mediocre people at once. 2 bad players can easily stomp a good necro. Necromancers do not have the tools to last in attrition or 1vX fights. They are a class that requires support to be successful, when the other classes do not require it.

Kravick.4906:

Yeah it kinda does make a good benchmark, because thats the entire point of this thread. What necros can’t do because they don’t quite cut it. As was said earlier in this thread. When playing the other classes, depending on build obviously, a good player can easily beat 2 people at once. 2 bad players can easily stomp a good necro. Necromancers do not have the tools to last in attrition or 1vX fights. They are a class that requires support to be successful, when the other classes do not require it.

First of all, “because it’s the point of the thread” is circular logic.

Second, let’s posit that there were a creature in Queensdale that was Green unless Warriors used a special Utility skill called Taunt to make the creature Red to them. Killing the creature gave no benefit, but only Warriors could do it. Does this suddenly make everyone else UP?

Let’s give a better example: Necros are the only profession in the game that can survive falls of any height. Just switch to Death Shroud before hitting the ground and you’ll live. Does this make everyone else UP?

Thirdly, I’ve won duels as my Necro and lost duels to enemy Necros when playing on my other characters. Necros don’t require support.

Twinked a few hours ago as a thief. The Moment i got chaos armor by using a steal and heartseeker in the tutorial.. with only my first 2 abilitys ready and even twisting fangs not ready i thought something like: “ kitten . wasted over 700hours on my necro”

Blaine Tog.8304:

Kravick.4906:

Yeah it kinda does make a good benchmark, because thats the entire point of this thread. What necros can’t do because they don’t quite cut it. As was said earlier in this thread. When playing the other classes, depending on build obviously, a good player can easily beat 2 people at once. 2 bad players can easily stomp a good necro. Necromancers do not have the tools to last in attrition or 1vX fights. They are a class that requires support to be successful, when the other classes do not require it.

First of all, “because it’s the point of the thread” is circular logic.

Second, let’s posit that there were a creature in Queensdale that was Green unless Warriors used a special Utility skill called Taunt to make the creature Red to them. Killing the creature gave no benefit, but only Warriors could do it. Does this suddenly make everyone else UP?

Let’s give a better example: Necros are the only profession in the game that can survive falls of any height. Just switch to Death Shroud before hitting the ground and you’ll live. Does this make everyone else UP?

Thirdly, I’ve won duels as my Necro and lost duels to enemy Necros when playing on my other characters. Necros don’t require support.

it might be circular logic to you…it’s time to leave the roundabout though buddy.

secondly yes it makes everyone else underpowered with regard to turning useless mobs red. Thankfully this game revolves around COMBAT and that’s why we are debating the necros effectiveness at guess what? nope it’s not jumping from great heights…

it’s COMBAT…

thirdly, congratulations, useless piece of information for this argument but congratulations anyways.

Dredlord.8076:

it might be circular logic to you…it’s time to leave the roundabout though buddy.

secondly yes it makes everyone else underpowered with regard to turning useless mobs red. Thankfully this game revolves around COMBAT and that’s why we are debating the necros effectiveness at guess what? nope it’s not jumping from great heights…

it’s COMBAT…

thirdly, congratulations, useless piece of information for this argument but congratulations anyways.

For a bit of troll time, actually DS jump can be quite op on a nice chunk of fractals and dungeons, triggering stuff before it should, soloing events that cannot fully resolve since one/multiple before it didnt finish, etc. Examples would be skipping half the grawl fractal by jumping into the llava then flesh wurming onto the ground/plain healing in it to walk there, soloing ice wall in svanir fractal, CoE lazors/lava, etc

The point about dueling is moot. 1v1 we’re a good class, not top but good. 1vX is totally different. All this turmoil comes from the Dev’s vision of the game for us, that they stated many times: We’re (supposed to be) the King of Attrition.

Then the player settles in with this mindset, try to be the Attrition monster they labeled us to be, and when he fails again and again, try millions of build, different gears setup and still have trouble handling 2-3 good upleveled in WvW, you can see there’s something wrong. Long cooldown, short effects, aren’t made for Group Attrition.

The only way I can effectively 1vX against Good Players is when I use walls or cliffs, so that my DoTs, cooldowns and such have time to come back again. My others 80 doesn’t have this issue, with hundreds of hours less played than my necro. Now, I’ve killed 1v6 Bad Players before, but the only comment I’ll get if I show these videos is “Not impressed, bad players”.

The necro is fun, but frustrating when X peoples rush you, and they do with impunity because we’re not the “scary monster with a killer dead zone” we should be.

I think it would be better if Anet labeled us something else, so that we can focus our energy elsewhere.

Kravick, there are certain builds and professions that can handle 1vX, and some that never will. Those that can are those that rely on the ineptitude of the enemy, and can prey on their lack of skill. Thieves, via stealth, are incredibly hard for new/bad players to handle, because they are constantly disappearing and then spiking you from stealth. They have abilities to secure stomps easily, and also to avoid damage readily.

Mesmers have this ability to a degree as well. Using stealth/invulnerability/clones they can confuse and overwhelm baddies with their high burst while not being punished back for their lack of defenses.

However, you will never see a Guardian, Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger, Engineer, or Elementalist be able to do this except against the most amazingly bad of opponents. This is why it is a terrible benchmark for anything but a thief build, because thieves, and to a lesser degree mesmers, are the only professions capable of doing this.

And frankly, every 1vX video is a showing just as much of how terrible their opponents are as to how good they are. You will never see this happen when both sides are at a high level of play.

However, you will never see a Guardian, Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger, Engineer, or Elementalist be able to do this except against the most amazingly bad of opponents. This is why it is a terrible benchmark for anything but a thief build, because thieves, and to a lesser degree mesmers, are the only professions capable of doing this.

This is amazingly wrong on every point.

I see them do it all the time. A guardian just retaliations them to death. A warrior blows through them with brute force, granted the warrior barely makes it out alive, but they can still do it if they time and land every ability. I ROUTINELY 1vX with my ranger, and its flat out absurd you think rangers are incapable of doing so. In fact the video I linked earlier in this thread is exactly what I do. Same build and all. Engineers are also capable of doing it, but engineers outside of sPvP are incredibly rare, plus they require a decent amount of skill just to do well even with 1 person what with all the skill shots and kit swapping they have. Elementalists are most certainly capable of 1vX. I have one in my guild who does it quite often in WvW.

Yes, the skill level of these opponents must be lower than average for this to be achievable.

Now, about necromancers doing this? I’ve only ever seen them achieve this with horrendously bad up levels. Two bad level 80s are still going to curb stomp a good necromancer. The other classes, if they’re running that magical roaming build, will beat those same two bad level 80s the necromancer can’t.

The point still stands. Necromancers do not have the magical attrition build that is capable of achieving the same level of play the other classes are capable of.

So there’s a lot of topics discussing the problems of Necro and they usually have these good posts analyzing the class kit and possibilities and then comparing it to other classes. But at some point some people just have to start this magical 1vX theme going for themselves. I find it to be very silly each time I see these discussions. First of all these people don’t bring any specific arguments or analysis to the discussion in the way they are handled most of the time and that is: necro cannot 1vX people while other classes can. Those words are too general, too theoretic and when people start going the route of “I cannot show mah 1334 skillz with necro since I can’t win against 2 baddies” it really is hilarious at this point. Please stop these silly discussions since they aren’t really the correct way to prove any points. If you want to make a point, analyze the class kit. Discussing the topic of 1vX is silly, since there’s a lot of 1vX situations happening and they go different ways for everyone so coming up with specific examples convenient for oneself doesn’t look very convincing. So as a result I see it not worth mentioning the 1vX aspect in a general way since it’s very vast on what can happen and at the same time trying to come up with specific situations is not really the way to go either.

As an example when you mention necro being easily stomped by 2 baddies as you like to put it. That is better to put as having an unreliable downed state rather than discussing this theoretical and magical situations of 2 baddies taking you down.

Panhauramix.2784:

The necro is fun, but frustrating when X peoples rush you, and they do with impunity because we’re not the “scary monster with a killer dead zone” we should be.

I think it would be better if Anet labeled us something else, so that we can focus our energy elsewhere.

Or if A-net just returned Alpha DS, Lich and Traits… oh the screams of agony would make hell freeze all over.

Nice posts guys, keep it up!

At Andele, I’d kill to see fraps of those…mind giving a short description?
Lich still hits like a truck with its auto, and I can barely imagine it do even more damage.

Anyhow, here’s another gem from the State of the necromancer thread that also belongs to this thread..

Kiriakulos.1690:

Lordrosicky.5813:

From their description of necros by Jon sharp:

“The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.”

I think this is fine. And think they are close to this. He mentions access to poison and this should be made true. Poison should be increased duration on the scepter and maybe even added to scepter 2 too. Maybe also add poison to death shroud 5 with the new condition also

ANet’s class descriptions and philosophies are flawed and deceiving, reading up on other profession’s after playing them is hilarious.

For the Necro’s here’s where it falls apart:

We have a lot of ways to win attrition fights – We have more HP and damage overtime, that however doesn’t win an attrition fight. Having HP isn’t equal to having more survivability in this game and damage overtime just means that stuff takes longer to die or that the damage can be stopped without even healing.

Poison on multiple weapons – That’s true, we have it on a whole 2 weapons, that’s more than 1.

Combine condition with raw damage – Who the hell doesn’t in this game?

Multiple disables – If you build for interrupt it’s true, but a Necro only has 1 certain disable and that’s Doom. Our other disables are WH 4, Staff 5, Golem’s charge and Lich’s 3. The last 2 are mutually exclusive, WH4 and Staff 5 have 1/2 and 3/4 casting times, respectively, and the Golem charge has severe pathing issues.

Multiple movement penalties – We have cripple on scepter and WH(if you actually manage to get close to a fleeing enemy), chill on staff and immobilize on dagger( good luck with that casting time). Our movement penalties are spread all over and most do nothing against blinks. Getting away from a Necro without a full CC build is notoriously easy since they don’t have movement skills of their own.

Finally, a telling point about the broken design in Necro is shown by answering the following question: Do you feel more powerful underwater and why?
I’ll bet the underwater set was designed and built later in development than the rest.

Also don’t forget that Necro’s had the latest redesign in this game and we are still finding bugs from when DS was a downed state.

well last nights tourny had 1 necro, and im pretty sure TP was just trolling for 3rd place, also he got downed many times and fast, couldnt do anything about it, yes its great that he could dps from a distance, but as soon as anyone blinked at him he died.
(talking about symbolic)

I hope that since jon peters was watching that he can see that necromancers need changes, along with warriors though i dont know much about them. Also for the argument that no one is bringing a necro because they don’t want to build around them, think of what you lose for bringing a necro into the team, in a game of capping points a necro isnt that great.