Guild Wars 2

So my main is a thief, have a ranger and warrior aswell. I started leveling a necro and have been playing him in WvW the last 2 days, he is level 65 in knights gear and i actually think i like him the most. Even at level 65 i just didnt seem to ever die.

Ive won most my 1v1 fights and in zerg vs zerg battles im always left alive or the last person alive on my side.

Right now i’m D/D & staff while i dont do heavy damage i still do good damage for how hard i am to kill. Staff is okay for stand off and seige /defense but i really like pulling people to my daggers. (especially pulling them off walls)

I prefer offhand dagger mainly so my target is weakened. especially 1v1 going toe to toe.

1 trick i like to do is run away from someone chasing and lay down all staff marks in from of me, stop on them turn and spectral grasp target to me and pull out the daggers.

Im really looking forward to getting 80 and being in really good gear. but just how efefctive i am now i dont see why people always say their necro sucks………

I don’t have issues 1v1, and I think most necros that are familiar with the class don’t either. WvW is an environment where you have to be able to adapt to an ever changing landscape, and most of us who don’t have top of the line computers hate zergging around. In the zerg every class is fine, and necro is quite good.

Out of the zerg, you are either roaming around looking for 1v1, or you end up fighting 1-5 allies (if you do small groups) vs 1-20 enemies.

That is where problem starts at least for me personally. One zerker thief is fine. Two zerker thieves is really hard, but possibly doable. 2 zerker thieves + anything else focusing me gives me little to no survival options. Since I can’t blink/stealth/go invulnerable, I get to soak damage or die.

You may say that ANY class can’t take on three skilled opponents, and you would be right. But some classes can have that situation thrust upon them and not be left with the only option of dying. Thief/mesmer/ele – the primary fun classes in wvw can all disengage from that fight and not have to respawn and walk back. Warriors/certain engineer builds/certain ranger builds can also make some burst distance if need be.

The primary reason WvW is an issue for the necro is because the class is built around not having a disengage, and that sucks for WvW. You can be careful and avoid bad situations all you want, but eventually you are going to rolled over by a zerg, and not having an escape that can get you away from the front of the steam roller is not fun.

I can’t even count the times a fight has continued 5-10 mins after I go down by our thieves and mesmers, who will eventually come out on top, because of those disengage skills. But I have come to terms with this, and rolled a mesmer alt for when I get frustrated. Necro is still fun in WvW, but you are very rarely ever going to see a necro fight a horrible odds fight and win. It can happen, but it requires very bad opponents and very situation circumstances.

Necro isn’t bad in WvW, it is just doesn’t have enough misdirection to win a bad odds fight, or enough safe stomping options to prevent intelligent opponents from just picking each other back up in those bad odds fights.

yes i had some situation where there was no escape tool like you mentioned but overall i was happy with how i survived in the skirmish fights.

most of teh time i was running with the elite pet but i switched to Plague and liked it. and there were a few time it saved me, it was like the O kitten button.

was s big skirmish and i followed and finished off a ranger only to have 3 enemys jump on me, i put up Plague at half life and it got me back to my guys and i even lived. i noticed in the stats it doubled my toughness and gave me another 10k life.

I also used it twice to get into a tower that was under siege, i basically went threw the enemy zerg, had atleast 8 ppl on me, pulled me back once and i still got in with 40% life.
but from what i saw with plague it was a massive survivle ability and worked as an escape as long as there was safety to get to like my guys or a keep door. Also i was just tapping the aoe blind pulse so that probably really helped aswell.

I agree, outside of big-scale fights, necros have issues in WvW. We are great in small fights too (1-5 on each team), but once you start getting just below huge fights, and just above small ones, you hit this weak spot for Necros. We can’t as easily hide in the crowd and spam AoE in these mid fights, and we don’t have the right kind of tankiness to bunker through them. We can’t escape if we’re caught (only if you run away before they catch you), and even in fights, we can’t revive/stomp as well as other classes.

When people say necros suck in WvW, what they are really meaning is we can’t roam as well as thieves/eles/mesmers; and we can’t.

I understand my main is a theif and being able to stealth / shadowstep away is a hard tool to beat.

2 skils tho im curious about..? well of darkness, it wouldnt get you out of there but wouldnt it basically stop the unload of damage for 5 seconds.. like let a thief blow all his initive?

What about spectral walk?….

I categorize Well of Darkness (and similar things that can reduce damage) under in-battle survivability. It would definitely help you run away, as you could maybe blind someone about to shoot out an immobilize, but the problem is that necromancer’s only form of escape is either totally out-thinking the people chasing you (like juking them), or just normal running.

For example, maybe I can stall out long enough that I get out of battle and waypoint somewhere, or I run long enough that I get to allied zergs or bases, but those aren’t hard escapes, it is stalling until you can make the situation more favorable. Other “escapes” could be highly situational, like using spectral walk and bringing them with you for almost the full duration, then activating the recall and running in the opposite direction. Or using flesh wurm, and running in the opposite direction then activating the blink. You could even find a really, really high place to jump off of, and use DS to tank falling damage that would kill every other class.

But besides those gimmicks, your only real hope of getting out of battle is just stalling until a more favorable situation, not truly escaping like those other roamers can.

Rennoko.5731:

Necro isn’t bad in WvW, it is just doesn’t have enough misdirection to win a bad odds fight, or enough safe stomping options to prevent intelligent opponents from just picking each other back up in those bad odds fights.

I would love it if they made Flesh Wurm a straight up teleport without needing any line of sight. I think it would address the disengage issues without breaking the Necro design since you’d still need to plan ahead.

I play the necro class the most in WvW and i have two builds i bounce between. Basically the juggermancer and the conditionmancer (alt between fearmancer and a 0/30/20/20/0 build. I actually think the necro is decent in spvp, and ok in wvw. That said, we suffer from some serious problems in the meta of wvw which boils down to slow movement, 0 “realistic” escape mechansims, and SLOW CASTING TIMES.
It really leaves me to question what the devs where thinking when they said, yeah, lets make the attrition class, slow at speed and casting, make them hit like a wet paper bag, but let them have really good conditions, that will be what? easily cleaned by any class.

1. You cannot pin anyone down, because everyone and their mother has 2-4 ways to remove conditions, and what, oh yeah, cripple, chill, fear, are conditions and easily wiped off. So once again, devs have 0 idea what an attrition class means. I mean, sure, if the guy forgets to press his heal button or use one of his numerous condition removeal skills, then he will wear down. To add to the matter, if the enemy is trying to get away, we are the slowest class so catching up is difficult as heck. On the flip side, we have absolutely 0 escapes, so when our conditions get so easily removed, we are fat, slow AND they are running away… laughing. With regard to getting away, fat chance. You may say, but we have DS. Well whooopiedooooo i cant even see what conditions are on me, and even if i could, i cant do crap about it. other than switch back, try to get a heal off, get puppted around because we have 1 stability (that is used in no decent builds) and die. Or hay, lets try plague form or even the huge kitten cousin, fat kitten lich form. neither one allows us the ability to heal ourselves, or even see if our skills are off cooldowns, so basically you get double hammered, take away your skills, take away your heals, and guess what, your speed is slow as a fat kid at recess. 0 escapes, and our ability to keep them near us is boned. I am all about skill classes, but the nerco has absolutely 0 tolerance for missing a spell. Miss that cripple (because everything you do is easily avoided), and your boneslapped, or the enemy is gone.

2. This is the only class that actually gimps itself to use some of our best utiility skills. Thanks a lot. So, i want to kick up my pwer/condition damage, i bleed myself. Not so bad, because im usually running dagger offhand so i just kick that off, or hit staff 4 and hope an enemy steps into it, while im in the circle. Not really mad about that, but still, im gimping myself, 3.5k damage if i dont get it off. Epidemic – sweet, im making myself vulnerable, ill do it, and take the pain, since i just punched 5 people in the mouth if i did it right… oh wait, whats that, im out of range, it did not work, but im still F-ed and am vulnerable (or my personal favorite, stack 15 bleeds, hit epidemic and BAM it goes nowhere, because your dude fell down and ALL your conditions were erased when he went into downed form. SWEET). Ok, corrupt boon – i poison myself to use a utility to corrupt boons on an enemy (single target) and turn them into conditions, that are usually cleaned in once easily click of the button, or an elementalist/guardian cleaning everything every 6-10 seconds (let alone healing for 15k every 10 seconds.)

So WTF are they thinking. Do I think the necro is weak. No, Not entirely. I think it is a decent spvp class, albeit very very unforgiving. If you land everything accounting for lag, the dodge, leading for the slow cast times (my god it has to be the slowest in the game) you will do alright. BUT, if you miss one thing, you miss a rotation (yeah, we have good rotations and in pve, im a god), you’re out of luck because all of your skills are on huge cooldowns and your fiddle yourself in the corner hoping no one sees you, because you know you’re not running away heh.

I have played the necro since day one, i have tried most builds and have settled on 2 good builds. I still think our damage is higher with condition builds in pve (well, solo pvp, because if multiple people are running builds, your 15-20 bleeds stacks (thank anet for the one and only condition we have that does damage, along with 5 other classes) do NOTHING. In that case, you’re better off goign with a power build using axe so you keep 20 stacks of vuln on the mob and he goes down fast with your team wacking him.

In wvw, i bounce between the juggermancer and the conditionmancer. Juggermancer is great for roaming and 1 v 1 fights, but i find that in a zerg, your not doing much other than occasionally wellbombing (which is ok) and spamming staff, which scales HORRIBLY with power. Better off building crit damage, because with power your only hoping for staff 4 to get around 2-2.5k, which sucks. You can do some great damage, if 5 people stand in your well, for the full duration, but that rarely happens.

In my honest opinion, and even though I play this class the most, I still think they need to really address some issues with the class, and really think hard about how our traits are lined up, why we scale so terribly with power, and why did they give us a condition that everyone else has to damage mobs/players (BLEEDS). Let alone, even traited, runed, etc., you’re not getting a 4 second fear (even though the thief can obtain a 4 seconds AOE fear). And why are we so out of shape that we move slow, and have no way to get the F out if the situation calls for it. I mean, in beta we had a cool DS #2 skill that was basically like a shadow step/chill area effect. WTF, were we that op that we can’t have something that fits the attrition class? Heck, we are so kitten slow, that if you switch to DS fire off #2 the dude is usually out of range. Or there is a pebble in the way that ruins our line of sight and the spell fails. SWEET.

Rennoko.5731:

I don’t have issues 1v1, and I think most necros that are familiar with the class don’t either. WvW is an environment where you have to be able to adapt to an ever changing landscape, and most of us who don’t have top of the line computers hate zergging around. In the zerg every class is fine, and necro is quite good.

Out of the zerg, you are either roaming around looking for 1v1, or you end up fighting 1-5 allies (if you do small groups) vs 1-20 enemies.

That is where problem starts at least for me personally. One zerker thief is fine. Two zerker thieves is really hard, but possibly doable. 2 zerker thieves + anything else focusing me gives me little to no survival options. Since I can’t blink/stealth/go invulnerable, I get to soak damage or die.

You may say that ANY class can’t take on three skilled opponents, and you would be right. But some classes can have that situation thrust upon them and not be left with the only option of dying. Thief/mesmer/ele – the primary fun classes in wvw can all disengage from that fight and not have to respawn and walk back. Warriors/certain engineer builds/certain ranger builds can also make some burst distance if need be.

The primary reason WvW is an issue for the necro is because the class is built around not having a disengage, and that sucks for WvW. You can be careful and avoid bad situations all you want, but eventually you are going to rolled over by a zerg, and not having an escape that can get you away from the front of the steam roller is not fun.

I can’t even count the times a fight has continued 5-10 mins after I go down by our thieves and mesmers, who will eventually come out on top, because of those disengage skills. But I have come to terms with this, and rolled a mesmer alt for when I get frustrated. Necro is still fun in WvW, but you are very rarely ever going to see a necro fight a horrible odds fight and win. It can happen, but it requires very bad opponents and very situation circumstances.

Necro isn’t bad in WvW, it is just doesn’t have enough misdirection to win a bad odds fight, or enough safe stomping options to prevent intelligent opponents from just picking each other back up in those bad odds fights.

THIS!

Last Wednesday(?) I had a fight on my Necro vs a Ranger, a Warrior and an Elementalist that lasted ~5 minutes. I was actually winning against them because they weren’t pro players, but the fight eventually took too long and a zerg came through. I couldn’t stomp the Elementalist that I downed because of the kittening ridiculously overpowered mist form and I couldn’t stomp the Warrior that I downed because of his vengeance downed skill.

Condition removal is definitely our biggest problem and what makes the class difficult to play in WvW a lot of the time. Against small groups, I tend to do pretty well because I just need to fight through a small amount of condition removal before my conditions start to stick. However, when fighting against larger groups, the aoe condition removals can make it difficult to every get any condition to apply more than a few seconds. Another issue is that when the opponent stacks everybody together, the AoEs I apply can get distributed and watered down amongst a bunch of different people, so I can never get a large number on any specific individual, and if I am trying to target a specific player, they often end up not even being hit.

In PVE, our big problems could be removed simply by removing the bleed cap. I’ve never seen a real explanation as to what the purpose of this cap is.

Necro problems are too many to list. But the top ones are

-No damage avoidance.
-No escape gadget.
-Very mediocre damage.
-Conditions too easily removed in zergs.
-Bleed cap, which hurts a lot since bleed is a condimancer’s primary damage.
-Skull Fear, a thief stolen skill from a necro, fears 3 times longer than necro skills.
-Crazy cast times, specially channelling.
-Crazy cool down times, specially signets.
-Many bugs that are still not fixed, with some that seems very easy to fit. For exampe staff mark size indicator. This indicates that very little time is spent on the necromancer by Anet.

what? wait???

where are all the usual necro fanbois today?

I don’t like the feeling of this….

Let’s take a look here…

CHIPS.6018:

Necro problems are too many to list. But the top ones are

-No damage avoidance.

Nonsense, Necromancer is easily one of, if not THE, most durable class in the game when it comes to taking it on the chin and living to tell the tale (Deathshroud soaking, Plagueform, Spectal armor, enormous base HP pool)

-No escape gadget.

This is somewhat true, more accurate would be no easy escape gadget, but we do have a plethora of cripples, fears and a somewhat useful ability to fall off mountains and live in two different ways

-Very mediocre damage.

Conditionmancer damage is not mediocre at all, neither is juggermancer damage. What you mean to say is “not blatantly OP damage like thieves”. Which is silly.

-Conditions too easily removed in zergs.

Again, not true at all. I play condition necro in WvW pretty much daily and my epidemics are not dealt with very effectively by the enemy at all. The key here is to bait out premature condition removal, and THEN applying the pain.

-Bleed cap, which hurts a lot since bleed is a condimancer’s primary damage.

Never an issue in WvW, and directly opposed to your earlier complaint of “too much condition removal”.

-Skull Fear, a thief stolen skill from a necro, fears 3 times longer than necro skills.

This is, legitimately, one of the most stupid things in GW2, and I feel it needs to be fixed… it’s nonsensical and blatantly unfair.

-Crazy cast times, specially channelling.

There are several spells with a pretty annoying casttime, grasping dead, enfeebling blood come to mind as an example.

-Crazy cool down times, specially signets.

…Signets always have long cooldowns. As it stands the cooldown on ours, or on our other spells, does not seem particularly long or annoying really. I don’t see a problem here.

-Many bugs that are still not fixed, with some that seems very easy to fit. For exampe staff mark size indicator. This indicates that very little time is spent on the necromancer by Anet.

Staff mark size indicator is largely a cosmetic non-issue imho, the only persistant issues I run into are:

-[Bug] Spectral grasp and Corrupt Boon are extremely unreliable and unpredictable
-[Usability] It’s really easy to accidentally cancel plagueform/deathshroud because the toggle-off is the same keybind as the toggle-on

^
Most of the complaints that are made today are a legacy from the first months of game. But like Helicity said, corrupt boon is a shinning diamong of the class, but it misses so much you get that feeling of wasted utility slot.

It was already said here in the forums, but necro is a hard class to play because most of the skills have a cast time of sorts, and they are all self-interruptable. So do not dodge while unleashing your atks, but good luck not being imob, stunned or interrupted in some other way. Keeping enemies in your LoS, while paying attention to those boons of the enemie, also the conditions, and baiting them to use cond cleaners is a lot of mental work.

The lack of mobility is also a sign of the class, but I see it this way:
- we are slow moving (but we have 25% boost to velocity or spectral walk to get a long swift)

- We are steady targeted (when you target us, you wont have to reaquire lock)

- We are dangerous (we tend to get attention being able to spread AoE damage very easy. Epidemic spreads not only your conditions, but all of those that are on the target. That in a 12-15 sec window).

Necromancers aren’t the most popular due to the lack of magic DPS and big red numbers. We dont tele, don’t get invi, and dont carry greatswords! ;p But we are far away from being bad.

Helicity.3416:

Let’s take a look here…

-Conditions too easily removed in zergs.

Again, not true at all. I play condition necro in WvW pretty much daily and my epidemics are not dealt with very effectively by the enemy at all. The key here is to bait out premature condition removal, and THEN applying the pain.

In the top 1-4 Ranked servers it’s usually organized guild vs organized guild in WvW organized condition removal happens normally we will lay out fields in order as necessary for combo finisher removals and have people perform their aoe removals when specifically called for etc.. happens on all sides on top tier servers so in heavy fire-fight zerg vs. zerg situations you’re normally going to have most of your conditions removed very quickly. I can’t comment on lower tiered server but at least up here ya it’s normal for them to vanish frequently unless you’re roaming/solo/small group.

With that said they’re still not completely useless necro+mesmer epidemic and confusion stacks even performing removals is going to hurt hard. Focus a target for max vuln stacks quickly and epidemic is going to add more overall dmg than you’re ever going to do alone even if it’s removed in a couple seconds. Mix in a daze into that equation can really mess things up. However relying solely on bleed/poison dmg isn’t very wise in such situations but a little bit can help especially on the “edges” of the zerg where people may not be in field/aoe ranges.

800 hours on my necro, still loves the class, kick kitten in PvE, dungeons and WvW and solo camps/any vets i come across. I feel like a boss when trying to defend or take tower/keep, staff is a nice weapon to have to reach peoples on siege. I still find a lack of options with escape plans though.

Started a mesmer for the heck of it, powerleveled it with crafting, started WvW with low gear, no real combat experience and a shatter spec (Osicat) that I found in their forum. I’m wrecking anything I see, and if it seems too hard to chew, I got a plethora of evasive options and I’m long gone. And this is in berserker gear. My necro must be PVT or Rabid to even compete with her survivability.

The mostly instant cast portion of a mesmer is crazy compared to the slow paced fighting of the necro.

I still love the tankiness of my necro in 1v3 and dungeons, and his 25% movement speed with the signet, but in combat, my mesmer mobility and options are monsters compared to him. You can use the same skill to chase down, or escape.

I feel I can better improve as a player with my mesmer, just because of the quick thinking (and actions) involved in her survival and burst. You really push it to the limit.

Still loves my necro in groups or if I feel brave enough to roam alone, but right now other classes seems to perform better with easier learning curves and much more forgiving abilities.

Plague is an awesome zerg tanking tool, even though the effects are a bit meh. Love it when I just want to wander through an enemy zerg to get somewhere, like inside a keep under siege.

I agree with spectral grasp and at least main hand dagger, great combo, use it a lot. When I didnt play necro it was the most noticeable thing they did that I had to respect, so of course I had to slot it too.

At level 80 I’m finding myself very tough. I dont worry about thieves ganking me at all anymore.. maybe I just havent met a good one recently, but the damage is very sustainable.

Main disadvantage over my other two 80’s (mesmer and ele) is less mobility, but if you can be more brute force about moving around (plague as mentioned and also shroud) when you need to. Theres nothing else I really feel lacking in, and for the most part better!

Panhauramix.2784:

800 hours on my necro, still loves the class, kick kitten in PvE, dungeons and WvW and solo camps/any vets i come across. I feel like a boss when trying to defend or take tower/keep, staff is a nice weapon to have to reach peoples on siege. I still find a lack of options with escape plans though.

Started a mesmer for the heck of it, powerleveled it with crafting, started WvW with low gear, no real combat experience and a shatter spec (Osicat) that I found in their forum. I’m wrecking anything I see, and if it seems too hard to chew, I got a plethora of evasive options and I’m long gone. And this is in berserker gear. My necro must be PVT or Rabid to even compete with her survivability.

The mostly instant cast portion of a mesmer is crazy compared to the slow paced fighting of the necro.

I still love the tankiness of my necro in 1v3 and dungeons, and his 25% movement speed with the signet, but in combat, my mesmer mobility and options are monsters compared to him. You can use the same skill to chase down, or escape.

I feel I can better improve as a player with my mesmer, just because of the quick thinking (and actions) involved in her survival and burst. You really push it to the limit.

Still loves my necro in groups or if I feel brave enough to roam alone, but right now other classes seems to perform better with easier learning curves and much more forgiving abilities.

I could not have found a post on the forum that better represented what exactly happened to me, and my exact opinions of the comparison between mesmer and necro. It is like I wrote this post for you and then you posted it. I did the exact same thing about 3 months ago when I rolled my mesmer alt.

I want to highlight most of all the part where he mentioned he feels like he can improve MORE on mesmer. The potential to improve and options for being able to survive are much more apparent on the mesmer. A well executed shatter 1 can deal 8k damage, while a pooly executed one will deal 0-2k damage. A well execute shatter 4 can give 3-4 seconds of immunity, or it can give 0-1 second of immunity.

You can execute rotations well, and land all your AOE’s as a necro, but that is about the extent of combat reaction for you. Anything else, like dodging, is shared across all classes. Fear is our only reactive defense, and it is very short duration, counterable, and requires specitic traits, staff, and lifeforce + DS not on cooldown.

Not complaining, just pointing out that you can counter any and all of the necro defenses, while something like shatter 4 on a mesmer has no counter. And I am OKAY with this all things considered, but it just sucks that at a certain skill level, since we lack the immunities to use in a timely fashion, we have less room for error than any other class.

The most success that I’ve had as a Necro in both WvW and dungeons is going pure berserker gear and using staff + dagger/warhorn. We’re one of the few classes that can actually wear berserker’s gear and still have some semblance of survivability.

In WvW my wells hit like a freaking truck and are loot bag generators for me. They are great for area denial. Even in berserker’s gear I have no fear running up to a warrior or guardian and meleeing them with my dagger.

This is the build that I use:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSPTTZjhPBAp4WdjUQ8wUPcv9zB;TsAg0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1sKYAxGCA

I think too many necros focus solely on condition damage which for us is basically limited to bleeds. I find that my ranger is much better with condition damage than necros as he has access to bleeds, burns, and poison and is much faster at applying all of them.

I think the others have nailed this one on the head, we’ve established WvW Necro tears faces.

However a lot of people keep saying theres a lack of escape routes. In my experience, I like to always fight near a cliff, so if things get too over the top, I can just hop off the cliff, and pop spectral walk, job done. I have never been followed by someone after doing this.

Yeah the cliff doesn’t always follow you though I would love to have an elite that creates one on demand.

@Rennoko: Gotta say I agree with a lot of your posts on the forum, pretty similar ideas, maybe you’re me when I’m sleeping!!!

Dredlord.8076:

what? wait???

where are all the usual necro fanbois today?

I don’t like the feeling of this….

We get tired of listing exactly why necros don’t suck in every, single thread. You just stop caring after a while, and you post only when you can really help out the OP or someone else who has specifically asked.

[quote=1474733;Disastro.4086:]

I also play a conditionmancer in wvw, and like others I find I do ok in small fights but badly in zergs. Things die so quickly with all the aoe flying around that your conditions have very little effect. I often don’t get credit and loot for kills despite stacking every bleed and poison in my arsenal at them, and Marks are not triggered by downed opponents so can’t even help clear the corpses.
I find I’m more effective using Well of Blood and Well of Power to support my own zerg, but, of course, there’s no XP or loot in that, and neither of those is going to save your group from a portal bomb as the healing/condition removal they provide is gradual.
I’ve been thinking of switching to a power build with wells (something like kidbs’s) because I’m tired of feeling like I don’t make a difference.

Having said that, in other situations the conditionmancer build works well. Small group fights, sieges, a corrupt boon/epidemic combo can be pretty powerful even with the huge amounts of condition removal you get in wvw (pretty much everyone will have some kind of aoe condition removal that affects allies as well, and in large groups all that stacks up!). I just wish there was a build that worked well in all situations!

And yeah, I also agree that we have far too few escapes compared to mesmers, thieves and elementalists. I have a lowbie elementalist alt whom I’m levelling up in wvw, and I find that while I get downed A LOT more often (lower HP plus lowbie armour that’s apparently made of paper), most of the time I can run off with a mist form and come back, whereas my necro is as good as dead if he’s downed.

Some of it is play style…and choice of skills. I played a build that was more condition reliant early on, and found some people I wrecked and others just cleansed.

I have since switched to a power heavy build (in mostly balanced gear) using marks and wells (dag/foci offset). Against bunker builds the damage seems small, but corrupt boon is saved for those fights/players. Even when facing off in small groups/zergs, you start to notice how ‘good’ a necro can be. You get to apply a lot of pressure, and hit surprisingly hard…and for those that don’t get cleansed, go down (yay for allies). Also, for defense, well of power is great. Whether its on walls or open field, turning crap into boons is great (even if the cd sucks).

Survival comes from timing dodge and DS perfectly, and not thinking you’re a bunker ele (yes we can tank, I just try not too). Plague form is a great survival tool too.

Clocked enough hours on my necro to know a few things,one of them is i dont see any marks on tower walls other than my own.
That says a lot.

Sry I haven’t read a lot of these but… It’s true that the necro doesn’t have some mobility options that, for example, a mesmer has, or an ele, even a warrior. But a little trick I like doing, and it almost always saves me is this – take flesh worm and spectral walk. Once you learn how to use those 2, you will have an escape mechanism. I feel like I have to use more brains with a necro to achieve a similar result (getting away from a fight) as another proffession, but ah well. At least it’s rewarding.

Spectal walk + flesh worm are actaully a really nice way to get away… either from a thief, sudden burst, or an incoming zerg. BUT what you also have to do in many situations while you are running and get chased is look back and cast some of your cripples like Grasping Dead or skill #3 from staff or skill #5, or fear while in Death shroud. To me it’s pretty rewarding I’m too used to a necro that I don’t feel as as effective with other classes… at least in WvW.

grave of hearts.7830:

Clocked enough hours on my necro to know a few things,one of them is i dont see any marks on tower walls other than my own.
That says a lot.

It either says the other Necros are bad, or there are no other Necros. Haha.

I use marks in sieges all the time, it’s quite nice being able to clear the walls! I wish Spectral Grasp didn’t have such a slow projectile speed though, I like pulling defenders off the walls.

It’s in open-field zerg fights that conditionmancers are lackluster.