Q:
(edited by Autumn.8043)
Worth Starting a Necro?
If you think it’s a chore to play Guardians, then you’ll absolutely hate Necromancers.
Most classes don’t really come together until level 60 or so, but Necro is the worst I’ve experienced.
It works, but I don’t find it fun at all. I’m leveling it to 80 now out of pure spite.
It seems like it’d be great for defending nodes in sPvP, but I don’t really do sPvP so I couldn’t tell you.
Elementalist and Engineer have been the classes with the most versatility, and there was rarely a challenge I didn’t think I could overcome through swapping out a few skills. Guardians are easily the most solid class I’ve played. They do what they do very well, but there aren’t that many bells and whistles.
Necros are difficult to play well, and don’t really do anything other professions can’t do much easier. I found Elementalists and Engineers both more intuitive and fun.
Oh, and before I forget
—obligatory Minion AI complaints in a necro whine thread—
If you think it’s a chore to play Guardians, then you’ll absolutely hate Necromancers.
Most classes don’t really come together until level 60 or so, but Necro is the worst I’ve experienced.
It works, but I don’t find it fun at all. I’m leveling it to 80 now out of pure spite.
It seems like it’d be great for defending nodes in sPvP, but I don’t really do sPvP so I couldn’t tell you.
Elementalist and Engineer have been the classes with the most versatility, and there was rarely a challenge I didn’t think I could overcome through swapping out a few skills. Guardians are easily the most solid class I’ve played. They do what they do very well, but there aren’t that many bells and whistles.
Necros are difficult to play well, and don’t really do anything other professions can’t do much easier. I found Elementalists and Engineers both more intuitive and fun.
Oh, and before I forget
—obligatory Minion AI complaints in a necro whine thread—
Engineer was fun but I do enjoy sPvP and I just couldn’t get the hang of it with Engineer.
Guardian has been the most fun I’ve had out of the three that I have run but It felt too easy, as If I could do it blind folded. Even for sPvP.
Guess I’ll stick to Guardian for the moment.
You won’t know whether you like it or not until you try it out, personally I love my Necro I’m leveling him atm and having a blast. Are there bugs and flaws with the profession? Yup…but it doesn’t stop me from playing, because I’m having fun with him.
I even play him as MM because that’s what I like, the minions AI is kitten but I still have a smile on my face when I play Necro, none of the other professions do that for me.
:)
I love my necromancer main as well and have tons of fun with it.
It really depends on what you want to do. Lower level play you can be anything with a necromancer.
For higher level pvp, you’re generally shoe-horned into conditions, RIGHT NOW, but they are working on balance.
Jack of All Trades is the perfect description of necromancers in my opinion. Other classes tank better, other classes escape better, other classes melee better, heal better, condi spam better. We can do it all in one build though. We’re tough and resiliant. We’re good at spreading conditions. We’re very good at blind/chill.
Personally, I use wells and a crit build and love love love the feel. It’s fast and furious because I use double daggers. Staff is an awesome support weapon and death shroud is cool.
There are a lot of problems/bugs with the class, but I don’t notice them in the low PvP and lvl 80 dungeon stuff I do. Hope you decide to try it out. There’s a lot of anger due to the lack of updates on bug fixes on the necromancer forums, don’t let it cloud your decision. It’s a fun class.
Jack of All Trades is the perfect description of necromancers in my opinion. Other classes tank better, other classes escape better, other classes melee better, heal better, condi spam better. We can do it all in one build though. We’re tough and resiliant. We’re good at spreading conditions. We’re very good at blind/chill.
This is the one thing I love about this class. The one shining virtue that makes it somewhat entertaining. Necros can take a beating! I haven’t seen a single build that wasn’t tough as nails to bring down.
I have read a lot about problems with Necro’s but personally I find the necro entertaining. I have played around with all the classes and end up back on my Necro. In fact he is the only one I have not deleted and started over. But that is me, I am morbid.
Yeah they have glitches. I have cursed a many time about my minions just watching me die. But in most cases they keep attacking or in the golems case attacking random creatures. But all in all it is still fun for me.
I have actually found that I can keep alive longer on my Necro then I can on any of the other classes. You just have to learn how to use DS. I will say Necro’s do tend to be the harder to figure out only because how it is designed. But even in gw1 it tended to be the odd one out to play for most. In the end it will probably be like in gw1 where only the die hard necro fans will play them. But that is just my opinion. as pincushion said most classes are more interesting at a higher level. I dreaded the levels 20-40. But after that you can really start figuring a profession out.
In the end you just have to find out what play style is for you. If you like a challenge and are willing to wait to see how they end up then try it out more.
P.S. almost forgot to say I only play necro in pve. I use other classes for pvp. Not that a necro can’t play pvp it is just I like playing them more in pve
(edited by Lost Dragons Tail.3760)
I’m just going to go for it, sometimes I read to much in to what is the “best” and forget what I actually like.
Necro shall be my Solo PvE alt with my Guardian being Co-op with my GF and PvP.
Since Necro was first announced I loved the idea of it, It was the only class that I knew I wanted to be.
Now.. over the past couple of weeks I’ve been switching back and forth between professions. Elementalist, Engineer and Guardian, I’ve gotten them to 15-20 and end up feeling like it is a chore to play them. I’ve only just realized that I have totally forgot about Necromancer, so I do some research and see people posting that they are pigeon holed into one thing and that they are so buggy they aren’t worth playing at the moment.
I do not expect a class to be a powerhouse, I actually normally avoid those types.
I normally go for a Jack of all type of character.Now.. over the past couple of weeks I’ve been switching back and forth between professions. Elementalist, Engineer and Guardian, I’ve gotten them to 15-20 and end up feeling like it is a chore to play them. I’ve only just realized that I have totally forgot about Necromancer, so I do some research and see people posting that they are pigeon holed into one thing and that they are so buggy they aren’t worth playing at the moment.
I do not expect a class to be a powerhouse, I actually normally avoid those types.
I normally go for a Jack of all type of character.My girlfriend runs Ranger and we mostly play PvE (although I love PvP).
My advice, create one level it up a couple of levels, take it into sPVP, mysts and experiment with utilities
90% of what you read on this forum is negative, we are presently a rather buggy class…. all stuff that will be ironed out in time
If bugs are an issue or they stress you out then yes roll another class
In my personal oppinion Necros are alot of fun, and excel in group situations namely WvW and PVE dungeons…. solo we can are reasonably effective bunkers, burst dps is pretty meh
I liked the necro in the original GW and was initially very interested in playing one in GW2. From a flavor and concept standpoint, I like the class.
I’ve been toying around with necro in GW2, but the one thing that is keeping me from really latching on is the profession’s mechanic: deathshroud (DS). Profession mechanics are essential to proper and effective use of a class, so I deem this as a good enough reason to eschew a class. Similarly, I’m not playing a ranger because I’m not interested in the pet mechanic.
There are already plenty of threads about DS and what people don’t like about it. I’ll acknowledge that I’ve really only previewed the necro, but I realize that I don’t want 80 levels of DS. It seems to be very intrusive to the gameplay of the class. Different strokes for different folks, it seems to work well for some people.
I may revisit necro after bug fixes and if they ever change lifeforce/DS. As it is now, the implementation of the profession mechanic puts necro off my roster.
Working on rerolling to ele but I hate level grinding.
I tend to forget about DS a lot in pve. I only use it when I get swarmed. For me the DS is the fall back to stay alive. I don’t think that is the intended mechanic from what I have read, but it works for me. From what I have read the DS is really helpful or in some cases needed in pvp but I don’t use my necro in pvp.
I actually don’t find a use for DS 2 although I do use it when I need to move away from a group that is swarming me. But my main utilities and weapon skills is what I use. I swap a lot with staff and wand/dagger. Not that that is good combo but I like it. One trait I have come to rely on is the fear when I get shackled. It has saved me many times.
But I find that I still hold to the mm when I play pve. And if they ever get the minions to work like most of us think they should then I will have it made. But I use my minions as distractions more then anything. Even in GW1 I just used them to keep a bit of the heat off me. And with the wells I can keep them alive for some time. Lets put it this way 2 on staff is very seldom not on cool down. Plus if you time the plow of the flesh golem right you can pretty much stop a large mob in their tracks for a short time. I don’t see the use for the blind on cloudy but it does get it into the battle when it decides it just wants to watch. LOL
DS2 is for dagger necros in pvp, more or less. The dev says he uses it, swaps out of DS then uses dagger immobilize as it lands.
As for DS in general, it’s a way to keep doing damage without losing life. As a power build you’ll do less damage than daggers but more than any weapon auto-attack with life blast >50% life force, then use 4 and toggle out.
If you’re 15 points into curses use 4 right away as you gain fury for 3 seconds entering DS with 15 points, and you have a chance to cause bleeding on crit, life siphon pulses a lot of attacks quickly, over an area, so you have a chance to stack some solid bleeds and crits there.
That said it’s still lackluster.
I like taking the 66% chance bleed on crit, the fury when in death shroud trait and popping #4 as soon as I enter DS. With my current build, it’s about 75% of the pops on the Life Siphon crit with fury up. It’s a fun way to spread some bleeds.
I really like the Weakening blood cast on entering DS as well.
Like others I absolutely love my necro, and I also think our Jack of All Trades-level is very high.
After reading PinCushion’s first sentence, I have to say that I’m completely at the other end of the spectrum. I’ve played necro since BWE1 and I must admit I’ve had my tough moments where the class just seemed off. So after hitting 80 and making the mistake of using a crafting booster on my necro, while not having enough low lvl mats to continue, I was actually somewhat happy that I could try out a different class. So I rolled a guardian and played it till lvl 35ish. But oh boy, those last 10 lvls were hell, there were times I was literally falling asleep behind my PC, every encounter was the same: you do your greatsword rotation and you win… if you don’t, you can probably try to switch weapons but 9/10 it means you’re in over your head and you can’t do it (maybe I was just playing it wrong, but that was how it felt). After that, I was sooo happy that I could log into my necro again that now, weeks later, I haven’t felt any need to play anything else. Encountering situation where my normal rotation doesn’t cut it is actually where the game starts for my necro (as opposed to where it ended on my guardian) and on top of that, she actually feels tankier…
Opening splendid chests while my golem tanks the champion, soloing certain group events, reviving a guy after killing 10+ mobs that just pwned his kitten because he overaggroed… these are just some of the situations where I’m like “oh yeah, I’m a necro, baby”.
PS. My time as a guardian wasn’t all bad: being without Leap of Faith made me appreciate Dark Path a lot more and it has now become an integral part of my playstyle :P.
The problem I have with DS is that it is a static transform. I can’t modify the skills on it to fit my selection of skils or traits better. It tries to be a one size fits all. It is also too integral to the balance of the necromancer to simply ignore using it.
As DS is now, it’s main use seems to be for triggering traits keyed to entering/exiting DS and for absorbing a big hit. If that’s how it is intended to be used, then some type of life force shield ability would be a lot more fluid than a transform. Maybe a shield that takes damage to life force and triggers traits the same as DS does now. Leave the UI and skill bar alone, or at least just replace the weapon set skills (give us a slot 5) and leave 6-10 alone.
On second thought, I think I will give necro a second shot and just conceptualize DS as nothing more than a fancy shield ability. DS looks like one of those abilities that doesn’t really become worthwhile until supported by traits.
(edited by Merthax.5172)
Merthax, if anything, DS is a quick safety button if you don’t trait for it at all. The #3 fear casts instantly and works if you’re immobilized, knocked down, feared etc. Just pop in DS, #3 cast, and leave. AOE #4 is perfect for tagging mobs in events even without DS traits.
Necro just seems like it has such potential with some much needed bug fixes.
I wanted my main to be Scholar (I use my Guardian only when I run with my GF).
I tried Mesmer and I just couldn’t ‘get the hang of it’, plus very little AOE for PvE was a little irritating.
Elementalist I found fun until I found myself to be rather squishy and found there was VERY little room for error.
@Arvid – I totally agree about Guardian, I found after that inital ‘ZOMG everything dies with such ease’ wore off I got rather bored.
What type of damage can a Necro pull off eventually, to start with it seemed rather slow. It seemed everything was about conditions bleeds,chill etc.. with no straight forward damage, that doesn’t bother me too much since I don’t want another Guardian.
Necro is one of the easiest classes to level, thanks to the general tankyness and the many AoE abilities. Just drop dagger 5 and a well and go grab a coffee…Not very exciting but a good option if GW2’s fast paced combat and the need to constantly move and dodge for most classes isn’t your thing.
Compared to my thief, I’m having almost too much fun with a necro. Here’s a really good guide to help you get started:
http://gw2guidez.com/blog/gw2-necromancer-leveling-build-best-necromancer-pve-build/
Remember your staff has a very long range and you have two weapon sets. I use a staff to initiate a fight with marks and then switch to a scepter/dagger when the fight begins in earnest.
I’ve killed many enemies before they’ve even gotten close enough to hit me with this tactic. I only wish I’d picked this class first.
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Great Answers guys, really gets me excited about Necromancer.