Guild Wars 2

All the other classes have great 1vsX videos on youtube and everything, only the necro hasn´t. People tend to be satisfied with playing in groups or making 1vs1 builds ( which the necro is great at) and saying noo, you can´t do that as a necro, “you don´t have the tools for solo roaming”, but I don´t want to believe that without giving it my best. I just started experimenting a lot and want to know if any of you had similar thoughts on how to build a necromancer to make him able to solo roam and win alone outnumbered.

My current attempt so far: a power necro, because in most cases you need to be able to kill enemys quickly before reinforcements arrive or enemys can really react to you.
I found one of the biggest problems to be to be able to finish downed players, so from my expierence so far 30 points in soulreaping is a must for shroudstomp secured by stability. Then I was thinking about how to fix the issue of dealing as much damage as possible whithout dying. Mesmers have illusions to mitigat damage, thief has stealth etc but necro doesn´t really have anything comparable. The only thing we have to turn a fight around (as example after bursting someone down and shroudstomping him, then fighting his mate) is either life siphoning, massive damage or massive cc, escape isn´t really an option for us except using the slow casting flesh worm with 40 sec cd. In my opinion we have to sacrifice too much to get that cc (like a chill build or a fear-build), that still isn´t able to kill anyone alone, so I don´t really think that´s an option. If you choose massive damage alone you have the risk of meeting bunker builds that just oulast you without you having any options to avoid that, so I decided, inspired by the discussions in the forum here about life leeching, to try life-siphoning while maintaining a crit-chance as high as possible to do massive burst damge with the dagger and getting lots of procs from sigills (fire and rage at the moment), omnomberry ghost bufffood and our trait to siphon life on crit, while going 20 points into blood magic already for that, I decided to grab the heal on well damaging as well, as wells are a great source of damage or alternatively a great tool from keeping people from being revided or rallying and with this trait they can heal a pretty decent amount. The last 10 points I used to get greater marks to be able, on one side, to track down stealthed people and protect myself from being bursted down by a thief as well as hitting multiple enemys at once, all together my build at the moment looks like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQUQNBIhZqkRTb+KN+ao3mAkK880Dv5WcqHr3+5A
I use pure berserker equip, even thought I´m planning on trying it out with different armor combinations (like knights, cavalier, valkyre etc), use maintainance oil, omnomberry ghost, prec stacking sigill on staff and fire and rage on warhorn (for having an additional interrupt and generating life leech heal and swiftness with locus swarm) and dagger. Because of money reasons I´m currently using ruby orbs, althought I want to try with different rune combinations, like rune of air, it seems to be able to crit up to 6 or 7k on people, or maybe rune of vampire.
My strategy is to overrun people with my 3 immobilizes (one of them sylvari roots) and combo well of suffering with dagger autoattack and shroudstomp, it works pretty decent against most enemys. After doing two evenings of roaming with this I get mixed results, while I´m able to win like almost every 1vs1 (a really good bunker elementalists killed me after engaging me while I was fighting a thief of his server, I managed to kill the thief, but after that I was down to like 25% health and wasn´t able to recover from that, after 2 minutes of struggling he killed me and one time a berserker longbow ranger gave me troubles, I had to jump of a bridge, run away a bit and then, when he jumped down, I ported right next to him with flesh worm and would have been able to kill him then if it weren´t for a zerg of his server that just passed by on top of the bridge and saw us, but on open field I would have just been chance less without any possibility to counter him (without using environment) as it´s really difficult to close in from that range while getting lots of damage, and staff isn´t nearly enough to pressure someone in a situation like that.
Besides that, I won a lot of 1vs2, even one 1vs3, and think with some more tweaking I should be able to get even better results with this build.

Now I want to ask about your thougths on this topic, your approaches to a solo roaming build and feedback of any sort.

PS: Excuse my bad English it isn´t my native language

The only time I have ever 1vX anything on my necro was under water. Problem I have with necromancers in these kind of situations is that we simply don’t have the mobility to avoid obvious incoming high damage attacks and we lack the burst to put someone down ASAP. We also cannot attrition against multiple targets very well either due to lack of reliable long duration protection like guardians have.

Necromancers are just not a solo roaming class. You simply have to give up to much to achieve any kind of survivability beyond what other classes can achieve, but they still put out more damage than us when doing so.

Kravick.4906:

Necromancers are just not a solo roaming class. You simply have to give up to much to achieve any kind of survivability beyond what other classes can achieve, but they still put out more damage than us when doing so.

this is the truth unfortunately.

At the risk of sending you to an early grave, have you experimented with retaliation from the axe in a high power & toughness build? Retaliation is kind of the definition of a one versus many condition boon, and necromancers have surprisingly good access to it.

Softspoken.2410:

At the risk of sending you to an early grave, have you experimented with retaliation from the axe in a high power & toughness build? Retaliation is kind of the definition of a one versus many condition, and necromancers have surprisingly good access to it.

My problem with the necromancer retaliation builds is they require a very specific set of traits that are spread out all over the kitten place, so it becomes very hard to do any kind of specialization with it. I’m sure it works in some situations, but because of the trait placement, you’re never doing anything remotely close to burst or tank. Its another niche build in the ocean of niche builds that is necromancer trait builds.

We need more specialist builds, but we can’t do that because of how spread out everything is. Wells run into the same problem. If you want to specialize in wells, you’re forced to take 20 points into curses, 10 into death magic and 30 points into blood for the juiciest well traits, and blood is regarded as our worst tree for the obvious reasons. You’re also left with no ability to get any of the weapon support traits like greater marks/staff, so you can’t really use a staff with it very effectively. You get no synergy with your wells by taking 30 points into blood other than the traits themselves,l so there is an issue with that if you also want to use the Spite tree to boost well damage output.

The trait tree is a huge design clusterkitten.

Kravick.4906:

My problem with the necromancer retaliation builds is they require a very specific set of traits that are spread out all over the kitten place, so it becomes very hard to do any kind of specialization with it. I’m sure it works in some situations, but because of the trait placement, you’re never doing anything remotely close to burst or tank. Its another niche build in the ocean of niche builds that is necromancer trait builds.

We need more specialist builds, but we can’t do that because of how spread out everything is. Wells run into the same problem. If you want to specialize in wells, you’re forced to take 20 points into curses, 10 into death magic and 30 points into blood for the juiciest well traits, and blood is regarded as our worst tree for the obvious reasons. You’re also left with no ability to get any of the weapon support traits like greater marks/staff cool down other than dagger, which are also extremely lackluster. You get no synergy with your wells by taking 30 points into blood other than the traits themselves as well so there is an issue with that if you also want to use the Spite tree to boost well power output.

Its a huge clusterkitten.

It’s true the devs have done a masterful job of scattering complementary traits over 2-3 trait lines. So much so that I believe they are suffering from a bad case of FOBO (FEAR of Being Overpowered) that has paralyzed their ability to take the class in a meaningful direction or even listen to feedback from the player base.

The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.

Bhawb.7408:

The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.

I hear similar reasons for alot of necro stuff being the way it is.

Usually something like…

“well ability A was like this and because of that, ability B could not be that powerful. Then we had to nerf ability A but we forgot about ability B because we were too busy trying to figure out how to make mesmer GS AA into a piercing attack.”

Dredlord.8076:

Bhawb.7408:

The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.

I hear similar reasons for alot of necro stuff being the way it is.

Usually something like…

“well ability A was like this and because of that, ability B could not be that powerful. Then we had to nerf ability A but we forgot about ability B because we were too busy trying to figure out how to make mesmer GS AA into a piercing attack.”

Of all the ways to end that sentence, you picked spatial surge?

Do you have any advice for how to make a 1vMany build for the Necromancer?

Bhawb.7408:

The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.

So why are the traits for other classes not spread out among 3 tiers like that then? They all have a focus or a theme attached to them. If I want to specialize axe on my warrior I go down the strength tree. If I want to focus on greatsword, I go down both strength and arms, which both have synergy with one another. Focus on sword? Go down Arms. Want to hit things with a hammer or mace? Defense tree has all of those traits. Tactics is the warhorn, shouts, banner, and longbow tree. Discipline has a lot of support traits that benefit all weapons to some extent.

The other classes trait trees have a theme and a weapon associated with them. Necromancers have crap spread out all over the place and in very bad locations.

Softspoken.2410:

Dredlord.8076:

Bhawb.7408:

The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.

I hear similar reasons for alot of necro stuff being the way it is.

Usually something like…

“well ability A was like this and because of that, ability B could not be that powerful. Then we had to nerf ability A but we forgot about ability B because we were too busy trying to figure out how to make mesmer GS AA into a piercing attack.”

Of all the ways to end that sentence, you picked spatial surge?

Do you have any advice for how to make a 1vMany build for the Necromancer?

yeah because I found it totally kittenin ridiculous they were working on something like this rather than virtually anything else with nearly any other class. It just shows how disconnected the devs are with their game.

Dredlord.8076:

Softspoken.2410:

Dredlord.8076:

Bhawb.7408:

The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.

I hear similar reasons for alot of necro stuff being the way it is.

Usually something like…

“well ability A was like this and because of that, ability B could not be that powerful. Then we had to nerf ability A but we forgot about ability B because we were too busy trying to figure out how to make mesmer GS AA into a piercing attack.”

Of all the ways to end that sentence, you picked spatial surge?

Do you have any advice for how to make a 1vMany build for the Necromancer?

yeah because I found it totally kittenin ridiculous they were working on something like this rather than virtually anything else with nearly any other class. It just shows how disconnected the devs are with their game.

Personally I thought it was an interesting change that increased the value of positioning for both the mesmer and their opponents. All in all, it’s a Good Thing, and I won’t frown on that kind of change.

And I take it that’s a “no” on the second question then.

Kravick.4906:

So why are the traits for other classes not spread out among 3 tiers like that then? They all have a focus or a theme attached to them. If I want to specialize axe on my warrior I go down the strength tree. If I want to focus on greatsword, I go down both strength and arms, which both have synergy with one another. Focus on sword? Go down Arms. Want to hit things with a hammer or mace? Defense tree has all of those traits. Tactics is the warhorn, shouts, banner, and longbow tree. Discipline has a lot of support traits that benefit all weapons to some extent.

The other classes trait trees have a theme and a weapon associated with them. Necromancers have crap spread out all over the place and in very bad locations.

Spite – direct damage: axe, focus, signets.
Curses – conditions, critical hits: scepter, warhorn, on-crit effects, conditions, corruption skills.
Death Magic – defense, minions: staff, minions, general defensive stuff.
Blood Magic – life regen: dagger, life siphoning, life regen, wells.
Soul Reaping – death shroud: death shroud, life force generating, fear.

They all have definite themes involved, and basically speaking a weapon. The exception is staff, which is kind of spread out. I also tend to agree that things are spread out, but I just don’t feel like it is as much of an issue as many people take with it, we just don’t have the very obvious choices like many other classes do (how many classes have actually tried the huge variety of builds that necromancers do, when they can just copy the big 1-2 builds and be solid).

As for why other classes don’t feel that way, I couldn’t tell you, maybe it just happened out that way, or that because of the lack of need to innovate it just isn’t a big deal right now.

Bhawb.7408:

Spite – direct damage: axe, focus, signets.
Curses – conditions, critical hits: scepter, warhorn, on-crit effects, conditions, corruption skills.
Death Magic – defense, minions: staff, minions, general defensive stuff.
Blood Magic – life regen: dagger, life siphoning, life regen, wells.
Soul Reaping – death shroud: death shroud, life force generating, fear.

They all have definite themes involved, and basically speaking a weapon. The exception is staff, which is kind of spread out. I also tend to agree that things are spread out, but I just don’t feel like it is as much of an issue as many people take with it, we just don’t have the very obvious choices like many other classes do.

Almost, but not quite Bhawb.

Blood Magic is not the well tree. As I said earlier above, its spread out among different 3 trees. Furthermore, the only well that benefits from the blood tree is Well of Blood. If you want anything that has any kind of synergy with the other wells you’re using you have to invest into a completely different tree from Blood (IE: power tree for well of corruption/suffering, curses for well of darkness, death for well of power). As such, you’re locked into one specific well rather than being allowed to use multiple wells.

The only Signet that synergizes with the Spite tree is Signet of Spite (the irony is not lost on me), but you still need Curses to get the full benefit from Signet of Spite. You need Blood to boost Locust. Undeath is clearly suited for the Soul Reaping tree for the LF generation. Plague feels like it would fit wonderfully in Curses. However, I think this has more to do with necromancer signets not having a clear focus on what they should do.

Dagger main hand is a power weapon. Dagger off hand is a condition weapon. WTF are those traits doing in Blood? Dagger is badly placed in Blood. Dagger 2 is the only skill that is effected by anything that would remotely synergize with the blood tree, and thats siphoning is 50% more effective. Even the direct damage portion of dagger 2 is affected by power. The condition on Dagger 3 is affected by condition duration, the damage by Spite, so why the hell are dagger traits in Blood and not Spite or Curses where they would get the benefit of extra damage out put or critical chance? Dagger off hand abilities are clearly suited for the Curses tree or the Spite tree. Someone please explain to me why the traits for this weapon are in Blood?

Minions are in the exact same place as wells. To get the most out of your minions you’re forced to go 20/0/30/20/0 or 20/0/20/30/0 or 30/0/20/20/0. Want some crit with your obvious power build? To kitten bad. What about boosting my DS or getting some critical damage stat? Sorry, no can do. You have no leeway what so ever when it comes to minions. The traits are to spread out all over the place again. The reason you can’t use condition damage with a minion build is because of trait placement.

Death Shroud: Yeah you pretty much got that part right. Can’t really deny it.

Curses is the only tree that makes any kitten sense TBH. It might be why condition builds are so popular on necromancers. You get all that you need from scepter (the obvious condition weapon) in a single tree. Corruption skills also feel right at home here, as they fit very well with condition style play. You are now free to spend the other 40 points wherever you want and not feel forced into a specific weapon type or stat combination.

You forgot spectral skills, but thats ok. I forget about them too. Thats another group of skills plagued (hurr, puns are funny) by poor trait placement that have traits in different trees that make no sense. Why is spectral attunement in Curses when it buffs boon duration (Death tree) and Death Shroud (Soul Reaping tree). Its in such an odd location.

You already mentioned staff. Its obvious that its all over the place.

Fear is also divided oddly. Fear does damage is perfectly placed in Curses but fear duration is placed in Soul Reaping. Condition duration is clearly the territory of Spite.

As for why other classes don’t feel that way, I couldn’t tell you, maybe it just happened out that way, or that because of the lack of need to innovate it just isn’t a big deal right now.

Because the weapon placements make sense in those trees and aren’t spread all over the place. They have some actual synergy with the stats that their trees provide, much like Curses does for necromancer scepter.

thanks Kravik well said, I just don’t have the patience to argue with the fanboi’s when they can’t even get their facts strait.

Without going into whether / how schizophrenic the trait tree is: Your best option for 1vN in WvW is probably either

1) 20/0/20/30/0 or 0/0/20/30/20 or 0/0/25/30/15, full on minions, staff and scepter / dagger or dagger / whorn or focus. Axe is garbage and should be avoided, the decision of second weapon set depends on whether you feel like you need range or not. Go with some combination of retaliation and minion damage in the spite tree; staff traits in the death tree; bloodthirst, vampiric minions and fetid consumption in the blood tree; persistence and soul marks in reaping. Go with power gear, either soldier’s or knight’s or a combination. If you have enough crit go sigil of blood, otherwise force. Go with 2 or 5 vampiric runes. Go with Omnom pie if you have crit, regen food if you don’t. I have played similar builds; you can battle 1v3 and win (but probably won’t).

2) A well-based power / DS spec like 0/0/20/30/20 or 0/0/25/30/15 with either full soldiers or healing power gear, utilizing as much siphoning as you can get. I have less to say here, except that Melandru’s runes might be useful, as might -condition duration food.

Basically, I think you cannot damage your way through a 1vN as necro. You need to bunker to stand a chance. Also, necro is not great as a 1vN roaming class, but it doesn’t need to be, because it is good elsewhere. Last, videos are usually cherry picked. (But we love them anyway. Check out Leeto I and II, very fun.)

Kravick.4906:

(cut for post size)

number of well traits in Blood Magic: 3
number of well traits in every other tree combined: 1
Wells are in Blood Magic

Whether you think they don’t synergize with the stats you get, that has nothing to do with it. The current meta is using WoS as a nuke, congrats, that is why you have 70 trait points, not 30, and can go into another tree.

number of signet traits in Spite: 2
number of signet traits in every other tree combined: 0
Signets are in Spite

Refer above. Stats aside, signet traits reside in spite, and as such are a theme of the tree.

Blood magic siphoning traits on hit, dagger has (by far) our fastest # of hits per second, and thus is the strongest synergy with life stealing. It also synergizes best with wells, which, crazily enough, are also in Blood Magic.

number of minion traits in Death Magic: 6
number of minion traits in every other tree combined: 3

Want some crit chance that will have absolutely 0 effect on minion damage? What about boosting my crit damage that will matter a whole nothing for my minions? Hey, what if I went condition damage, so my minions that only cause conditions via combo finishers and dying can get that nice boost, as well as having terrible synergy with condition weapons.

If you are traiting fully for minions, then go all in for minions, don’t half kitten it by using scepter (single worst minion synergy of all our weapons), going condition damage (people have shown why condition damage is bad for the standard minion build), and boosting my person stats that have no effect. This is why Soldier MMs are so strong, their minions do the exact same damage as a Berkzerker MM’s, with some of the highest defensive stat values of most builds, while retaining the ability to burst most glass builds with the proper CC chains (dark pact, doom, wail of doom, charge, rigor mortis just to list the hard CC, not including the 4 cripples and 2 chills available).

If you aren’t traiting fully for minions, there is no problem, the minion traits themselves are all in the relevant tree (damage in the damage tree, siphoning in the siphoning tree, defense/main minion traits in the minion/defense tree).

Condition builds are popular because they are easy to use, strong, accepted by everyone, and easy to figure out.

Spectrals are Soul Reaping, with that one trait off in Curses, I considered them as part of the DS/life force generating side of things. I will totally agree its in a weird spot, it would make more sense to be in Death Magic, seeing as 3/4 spectrals are mainly defensive.

Staff I’d consider similar to Minions. It has 4 traits overall, with the “main” ones being in Death Magic (its home tree), and the other two being in relevant trees (soul marks in the LF generating tree, damage in the damage tree).

If I had to make a guess about fear, it would be because it is associated as being part of our mechanic, and seeing as Soul Reaping is highly tied to our mechanics that might have been their reasoning. I don’t disagree that from a gameplay standpoint it is a bit silly (the only time you would want it is for Terror, a condition damage build, that wouldn’t be wanting DS traits otherwise).

I think the problem is that its assumed that a tree must synergize its statistical gains with everything therein, which is just not possible. This isn’t exclusive across Necromancer, however, other classes have similar types of allocations.

Bhawb.7408:

I think the problem is that its assumed that a tree must synergize its statistical gains with everything therein, which is just not possible. This isn’t exclusive across Necromancer, however, other classes have similar types of allocations.

Not even close to the extent that necromancers have. Refer back to my warrior example. Every single weapon trait, even if split into different trees, benefits directly from the associated stats that accompany that tree. Honestly, for other classes to be on the same level of insanity that necromancer traits are currently, you’d have to see things like warriors Greatsword/Axe weapons in the toughness/boon duration tree or the vitality/healing power tree just to give you an example.

I still stand by my view point that dagger traits have nothing to do with vitality or healing power. I could see your view point on the whole siphon thing if healing power had any effect on siphons. Unfortunately, only 1 skill of all the dagger skills even has a siphoning effect. The rest of it comes from a minor trait that works regardless if you have a dagger equipped or not. I feel the dagger traits really belong in the Spite and Curses trees.

As for the rest of your post, I’ll just agree to disagree. We’ve both made our points known and I feel there isn’t anything else that either of us could add to further the discussion.

Only way to 1vX on necro is to kill one before other kills you and then kill other. In all traits/skills/weapons you have only 1 real skill to get away from enemies which is flesh wurm, in all traits/skills/weapons you have no immunities at all. 1vX works by doing damage when you can and disengaging/becoming immune when you cant, necro has none of this.
In my videos you can see some 1vX but its complete joke to what i can do on thief or elementalist.

I took a siphon minion build out tonight to check it out.

Fleshy AI is still terrible, entire fights with veterans and he stood idle multiple times. Sometimes he stood there right next to us sometimes he stood 100 distance away.

using his knockdown didnt help, he didnt even make it back to us before the vet was killed.

He would attack sometimes using staff AA sometimes not with dagger AA and never using life blast.

When they did attack the healing was great and damage was good too.

Leeto.1570:

In my videos you can see some 1vX but its complete joke to what i can do on thief or elementalist.

this has been my experience too.

The single biggest thing you can do to win more 1vX is:

Dredlord.8076:

Leeto.1570:

In my videos you can see some 1vX but its complete joke to what i can do on thief or elementalist.

this has been my experience too.

The single biggest thing you can do to win more 1vX is:

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Transfer to a low tier server.

Or fight vs multiple necros, they dont have big burst and cant get away from you, perfect class to kill in 1vX =D

Glad to see someone telling the truth about this class Leeto.

First of all I want to address the argument that if necromancers ever have a chance at beating multiple opponents then only if they are “undergeared, upleveled noobs”:
Come on people… that has to be true for every class. If you are a decent necro (or any other class for that matter) there’s simply no chance that anyone else could beat you+some others solo. If all players are equally skilled and geared then there is no 1vX for any class!

Leeto.1570:

Only way to 1vX on necro is to kill one before other kills you and then kill other.

That’s how every class has to do it! In fact, when you look at videos of eles of thiefes or mesmers… they go in burst someone down, go back out and reset the fight, back in burst someone down then back out and reset the right. There is rarely ever a situation in which they actually fight every single one of a 5-man team at the same time.
Actually in those regards the necro trumps all of the other classes because the greater access to aoe allows him to damage 5 players at the same time, all the time. I know, just for about 5 seconds before he dies because he can’t reset the fight.
That “lack of mobility”, as kravick ever so insistently points out, leads to the undeniable truth that necromancers can’t fight a high number of noobs. That realm is reserved for other classes only so far. How do we deal with it? Just don’t engage. Pick your battles. More than 3, stay away, even if they are upleveled etc.

The trait distibution issue: Yes, the fact that necros have so many “viable” builds (I know they aren’t all as viable as people make them out to be, especially in 1vX scenarios) inevitably leads to some of those builds beeing forced into traitlines or traits that don’t synergize.
But there are a few builds that do make traits work.
Which brings me to the next point: Has any of you checked out my build that I postet a few days ago??
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-Staff-Corruption/
Traits, gear, runes… everything makes sense here, and for me that’s as good as you can get in 1vX situations.
Someone outside the forum pointed something out to me that I maybe didn’t stress enough in that guide. When I wrote that it’s a build for everything, I didn’t mean jack of all trades master of non… more like master of all trades. And it’s really (!) strong for encountering multiple players at once, imo as good as it get for the necro.

it bugs me how fun necro is to play 1v1 and how that changes as soon as 1 other enemy arrives. I have won a few 1v2’s but its alot easier to do so on other classes purely due to our lack of mobility. will be keeping a close eye on this thread.

most of my 1vX succes has been with terror condition builds. won a 1v3 before using a terror set up but wouldn’t say they were equally skilled opponents.

I have successfully 1vX’d on my necromancer with a few different power builds.

One was 10/20/10/0/30 with the 5-second recharge on DS, a switching build, basically. I was kicking myself for not getting a video of the best fight I had with it. It was basically a series of 1v2s and 1v1s with no break in between (never left combat). First one was a 1v2 with an 80 D/D ele and an underleveled thief who still crit me for like 7k. I killed the thief and chased off the ele. An underleveled, really bad guardian stepped in and I killed him. Then the thief came back with a mesmer. Downed the thief again, fought the mesmer to half when the D/D ele came back. Somehow got the mesmer, then chased the ele for a while before finally killing him.

The other build was 0/0/20/20/30, back when I was experimenting with a full lifesteal build. I was incredibly hard to kill but didn’t do much damage. So those that stuck around to fight me would eventually die, but if they targeted someone else in a small group fight I couldn’t peel them off.

Anyway, based on the above experiences in trying to make a roaming necro and my general WvW experience I have come to the following conclusions:

1) Necro is not really a roaming class. Necros certainly have the ability to take on 2 or maybe even 3 opponents at once, but that’s not the only thing you need to do to be a roamer. There is no ability to disengage if more players than you can handle show up. So it’s very hit-or-miss, either you successfully kill multiple players and feel like a boss, or the zerg comes and rolls over you.

2) You pretty much need full defensive gear. Either full soldier’s or full knight’s. Both of the builds I listed above I used full knight’s, and let me tell you, you can feel the difference between that and any other gear setup.

3) Roaming is less effective the higher tier your server is, and the longer GW2 has been out. I had tons of great roaming experiences back when my server was around the middle of the tiers, but now we’re in T1 and players are smarter and more geared. The days of running into 3 underleveled friends are over, now you run into havoc squads. I’ve also seen far less solo thieves and eles recently, even before the thief nerf. Because of this I’ve switched to a condition build and am sticking with groups. Still got my old gear though, will probably go back to it someday.

TL;DR: You can make an awesome solo build and roam with it and do quite well. Just don’t expect to get away if things go sour.

OP, please insert some paragraphs, tough to read wall of text.

Aside from that, on the discussion, I believe the game is built around hybridism as opposed to having hard spec lines to get everything. This encourages experimentation and finding synergies rather than simply selecting a specline that is “best”. Though necro may be a bit more scattered than most, it is a common theme in all classes I have played.

So base your observations around this, there is no one best spec. I like that I can change around my spec and tap into different aspects of my playstyle without having it all. It makes for tough choices, and tough choices are good. Easy choices encourage the “one spec to rule them all” which is boring.

I’ve always resented mmo’s like swtor that present everything in one spec line so you cant be clever at all, it seems very dumbed down. That game practically forces you to max out a spec line before even looking at another one. Very generic and very boring.

Dredlord.8076:

I took a siphon minion build out tonight to check it out.

Fleshy AI is still terrible, entire fights with veterans and he stood idle multiple times. Sometimes he stood there right next to us sometimes he stood 100 distance away.

using his knockdown didnt help, he didnt even make it back to us before the vet was killed.

He would attack sometimes using staff AA sometimes not with dagger AA and never using life blast.

When they did attack the healing was great and damage was good too.

Again, not to make this a minions thread, but 1) the minions do attack most of the time, but they seem to have a knack of choosing not to at bad times; 2) minion AI could use some improvement, especially Flesh Golem; 3) Flesh Golem knockdown is godly; 4) you can fairly easily solo camps with a MM build, as well as handle a human add (if they suck bad enough). I used to do it all the time, and I have seen other necros do it. The trick is to not let the camp boss smash all your minions at once… some camps are more amenable to soloing than others due to their layout and attack angles.

In comparison, using an offensive power / wells build my experience has been that camp soloing is faster but more difficult.

In my opinion it’s possible to control a small territory in WvW as a solo necro against small groups, but not while roaming everywhere around the map. You need preparation to survive, and terrains need to be used to your advantage. We need walls and such to be on the same ground vs others professions.

I’m in love with the archway near Lowlands, you can put the wurm on top, hold the bridge/door a bit, teleport up there when there’s too much pressure, fear one/two that followed you down, jump down and come back up with Spectral Walk. Instead of the roof you can also go inside the walls, not everyone knows how to get there so it’s funny sometimes.

But then again, you’re not roaming, you’re holding a spot that you’ve prepared for encounters with small groups that wants to grab camps by themselves. It’s still fun as hell, but when they call reinforcement you need to find a new playground.

flow.6043:

First of all I want to address the argument that if necromancers ever have a chance at beating multiple opponents then only if they are “undergeared, upleveled noobs”:
Come on people… that has to be true for every class. If you are a decent necro (or any other class for that matter) there’s simply no chance that anyone else could beat you+some others solo. If all players are equally skilled and geared then there is no 1vX for any class!
.

I tend to disagree on this. You can run some pretty comical builds with mesmer using boons/retaliation that make you basically able to take on 3 people without any risk of dying at all. Between the blinks, and immunities, and heals, and invisibilities, you really won’t die if you know what you are doing. Granted you may not be able to kill those three people unless they are mostly glassy without decent regeneration of their own. Good thing most people in WvW don’t run bunker/retalation builds, so it makes that much easier.

I literally had a fight with 4 people (3 at 80 1 uplevel) on my mesmer running the troll build described above, and they eventually just gave up and left me alone, because they couldn’t kill me, and because of the two bunker elementalists, I couldn’t kill them.

No blocks, no blinks, no immuntites, very short opportunity window for burst, and no way to get out after its done (save once every 45 seconds with worm) mean you are not going to be happy building for 1VX with necro. Yes you can get full uptime retaliation, but unlike the elementalist, guardian, or mesmer, you lack the healing potential required to keep that going in a 1vX, where their DPS will outpace your lifeforce generation and healing.

Eles, thieves, guardians and mesmers can 1vX in Spvp so that invalidates the wvw versus undergeared opponents concerns. Necros really can’t.

I believe the skill level in S is a lot higher too as people chain pvp there all day and aren’t in that PVE mentality.

I’ve gotten some 1v2s in S but it is very rare, opponent 2 has to be pretty clueless too.

I’m talking a real 1v2 also, not “I dropped the other guy just as he killed someone else and had no life or cooldowns”."

I’m running 0/0/10/30/30, d/w vamp runes, knight ammy, bloodlust/force main, endurance restore on swap. Suffering/Corrupt wells, sig locust, golem elite (although I do love lich form, the golem is just better to keep people in wells not to mention kding a chasing zerg)

I intend to build this way for WvW eventually when I can stomach that much pve again. (Not that the pve here is bad, it’s awesome; I’m just not in the mood for it.)

I believe vitality. as well as traiting defensively and gearing offensively is our main key to 1vX because of a few things:

1. We double dip vit/hp in the case of DS.
2. Life drains in blood, although weak they are our only extra access to healing to stretch out longevity.
3. Defensive traits are much better and actually shore up some weaknesses that we cannot stat for in most cases whereas offensive traits can be made up for by more damage on gear. Compare DS stability to Power trait line 20 percent extra damage for instance. (Then compare mesmers who can chain two invulnerabilities or ele/engi invulnerability form stomp, har har).

The drawback to this approach is (mostly) wasted healing power….except dagger 2.

Kravick some points…Well recharge is in the Blood line, also 3s protection is in toughness line it would be the best one to call Blood ‘The Well Line’ although that is a meaningless title.

Dagger #2 siphon is affected by healing power so really blood does go well with daggers. The heal component is listed as ‘Pulse Heal’ and you can watch it go up in the tooltip and I checked in the mist as well. No other siphon is though that I know of which really should get fixed….it would clear up a lot of the weakness of necro and put them on par with other classes healing when you factor in boon stacking and massive ele/bm regens (even though you can still block, evade, whatever against our “healing”) AND let siphons heal us inside DS since other classes have true invuln and we just get to get locked down every 60 seconds with no escapes. Our main defense, DS is a self cripple even…come on now.

If we’re going to be the undead brick of HP that just eats all the CC in this game, let us really be the brick of HP and give us a way to come back when we’re behind as we can’t generally just hit a button and RTL out or go into stealth.

Rennoko.5731:

flow.6043:

First of all I want to address the argument that if necromancers ever have a chance at beating multiple opponents then only if they are “undergeared, upleveled noobs”:
Come on people… that has to be true for every class. If you are a decent necro (or any other class for that matter) there’s simply no chance that anyone else could beat you+some others solo. If all players are equally skilled and geared then there is no 1vX for any class!
.

I tend to disagree on this. You can run some pretty comical builds with mesmer using boons/retaliation that make you basically able to take on 3 people without any risk of dying at all. Between the blinks, and immunities, and heals, and invisibilities, you really won’t die if you know what you are doing. Granted you may not be able to kill those three people unless they are mostly glassy without decent regeneration of their own. Good thing most people in WvW don’t run bunker/retalation builds, so it makes that much easier.

I literally had a fight with 4 people (3 at 80 1 uplevel) on my mesmer running the troll build described above, and they eventually just gave up and left me alone, because they couldn’t kill me, and because of the two bunker elementalists, I couldn’t kill them.

Well… your example kinda proves my point. I allready agreed that those scenarios are entirely possible with classes like the mesmer, but never with the necromancer. I can’t comment on the fight itself, since I wasn’t there obviously. But! One thing I can say for sure: If one of those guys was a necromancer and landed corrupt boon on you, it would have been game over.

Otaking.4675:

Eles, thieves, guardians and mesmers can 1vX in Spvp so that invalidates the wvw versus undergeared opponents concerns. Necros really can’t.

How does that invalidate anything?
Only because everyone in spvp has access to all the same gear, runes and traitpoints etc doesn’t mean that everyone makes the best build out of it, let alone brings equal skill to the fight.
Again: There only has to be one necro with corrupt boon and the outnumbering party doesn’t even need skill to bring down any of those classes.

flow.6043:

Well… your example kinda proves my point. I allready agreed that those scenarios are entirely possible with classes like the mesmer, but never with the necromancer. I can’t comment on the fight itself, since I wasn’t there obviously. But! One thing I can say for sure: If one of those guys was a necromancer and landed corrupt boon on you, it would have been game over.
.

Ah but you see that is where you are wrong. My invisibilities, and my -40% condition duration food make corruption boon laughable. I restack quickly on boons, and can shrug that off no problem. I also in that build have a condition removal on heal, if I happen to need that. Or I could run null field in that build as well (though I almost never do). (or Lyssa runes, which I also rarely do)

Corruption boon is set durations, and doesn’t effect stacks. 20 stacks of might still becomes a piddly length weakness. If 20 stacks of might become 20 stacks of bleeding, for the same duration as those might stacks, then I would be in trouble, but as it stands right now, it isn’t nearly as inimidating in WvW as you might think. Against a guardian yes, against a mesmer, not so much.

Also if there had been a necro there I would have been all over him like like peanut butter on bread, because he can’t escape or heal enough to outlast my retaliation, and while my clerics gear does weak damage, it is enough to eventually take down a condition necro unless I screw up and leave myself without a stealth.

Would be nice if corruption boon was more powerful against might stackers, and if the duration of the flip matched the duration of the boon. 30+ seconds of regen SHOULD give 30+ seconds of poison. 30 seconds of swiftness should give 30 seconds of cripple.

Allright, point taken about your build ^^
As I said I wasn’t there, but I doubt you would have survived the fight if I was… even if you peanut buttered all over me :P

Also, I get the appeal of retaliation. I use it myself. But to me it seems too situational to warrent the prais you are giving it. At least against a staff user like me, there are not many chances of triggering the retal-damage, and since it only does 300-400 damage each time it’s really a minor concern for my 25k health pool.

@corrupt boon, I wouldn’t mind an increase, but a 1:1 conversion would lead to situation where a guardian could get a 10 second (or more) fear after using hallowed ground. epidemic that with “terror” and you whipe a whole group xD

Well fear caps at 5 seconds, so it would still be fine… The only strange interaction would be that 9 hour aegis that a guardian gets becoming a 9 hour burning lol.

And I don’t care for retaliation in general unless you have lots of block, toughness, and regen. It is more of a weak DOT than anything else. Good against glassy players that hit a lot, which is like rangers and no one else. I find it to be too weak to even notice in general, but against someone with with weak sustain it does the trick.

Mesmers can abuse retaliation with certain Phantasm builds. In general though, retaliation is a way for an otherwise very tanky build to have some decent extra damage output to punish offensive builds.

I roam every day… I usually just run away when I see more than 1 enemy, I’ve never won a FAIR 1v2. Maybe when the 2 enemies are attacking a camp and I have NPC backup, but other than that… no.

Same problem. I use a Conditionmancer but in 1vs1 usually enemy run away when they have 9-11 stack of bleeding. When they are 2 or more, im dead. Sometimes i use staff + mark to do more damage and gain some healt (2 skill) but it doesnt work very well XD

I think 1vX can be pretty possible on a necro.

The difference between the necro and say a thief, ele, or mes, is the fact that the skill bar is WAY lower for those classes than a necro. Most people can level a thief, ele or mes, copy a build and go and manage to score some kills with the main builds. Necros do not have a be all end all build that will just dominate like the others. We have to actually have high levels of skill in order to pull it off.

So in response, I must say that for a necro, it is the player, not the build, that decides the outcome. We have many builds that are very viable and effective in combat, and I think people really do notice when they are facing a good necro versus a bad one.

We are at a disadvantage running solo with our lack of mobility. And I guess that is where the other classes excel. They are very good at running away. When on my necro, it is an all in kill or be killed attack, and it can pay off quite often.

P.S. I have seen some necro videos showing very good 1vX gameplay. Too lazy to track them down, but they exist. xD

Yerffejy.6538:

I

P.S. I have seen some necro videos showing very good 1vX gameplay. Too lazy to track them down, but they exist. xD

I don’t diagree with this, but it is very easy to watch those videos and poke holes in them because of how bad those X players were. I have watched many a thief video where I literally can’t think of anything the 3 in the 1v3 could have done differently to prevent the outcome.

Where necros end up 1v3’ing, it normally comes down to those guys all stacking up on top of a zerker well, or trying to res each other while you spread conditions all over everyone. It happens, but not like it can for the other favored classes.

If you lose a 1v3 to a thief (or any class) you deserved to lose. There are some builds that can’t deal with them, so there isn’t anything they could do with their current setup I’m sure, but that is still their fault for not running a build that can counter an incredibly common scenario in WvW (thieves).

Yerffejy.6538:

So in response, I must say that for a necro, it is the player, not the build, that decides the outcome. We have many builds that are very viable and effective in combat, and I think people really do notice when they are facing a good necro versus a bad one.

Totally agree, but I think you don’t give enough credit for having a good build.
As seen in Orochi’s lupicus solo video and in the BoC podcast with him, the build in that situation was super sensitive. It had to be spot on all the way through or it wouldn’t have worked, he even switched different types of nourishment in the middle of the fight. Playing against other players in wvw is a lot more forgiving than lupicus of course, but I suspect that the “build’s sensitivity” applies all the same.
The wide build variaty the necromancer offers might to some extent be misleading in the sense that people figure out builds that appear to be good but could really use some fine tuning. Maybe some of them need just one trait or one utility changed, maybe they need different sigils or runes, maybe just different nourishment… something seemingly miniscule that could make a huge difference in the outcome of a fight.

I’m sure everyone has read the “average at everything” argument somewhere. Well, maybe that’s because there are five gazillion builds on the forum of which just a few tap their full potential.

Anyway… I’m mostly speculating here. Skill is, as you said, certainly the bigger factor.

Played Engineer, Ranger, Elem and Necromancer.

Necromancer are by far the worse for 1 vs X.

Just like people said :

We lack the mobility, the damage mitigation, the burst and the sustained healing.

Mobility : You are slow, you don’t have any leap. 1 vs X often resolve around using environement, using them as shield, using LoS. Being slower mean you will have more trouble doing this. You also can’t kite much with a necro. Ranger can use bad kitten kiting to win 1 vs X, same with some Engineer power build. Elem DD are excellent at this, using more of a hit and run still.

Damage Mitigation : Our only source of mitigation is DS. Yet DS get weaker the more oponnent you have. You don’t block damage, you aborb it. You still get CC’d, you still receive condition, you still suffer any effect of the attack. Engineer 3 sec block completly supress any damage done for 3 second, even if 4 thief burst you. If 4 thief burst you in DS, I’m not sure it would hold 1 second.

When using my invulnerability skill with my Elem, I receive no condition. in DS, I still receive them. I get out of DS and I have 20 bleed, 7 confusion, crippled and immobilized.

Burst : Direct damage burst. When 100nade existed, I could win 1vsX because I could kill one of them really fast, heal, and be nearly on equal footing with the remaining enemy. The faster you kill someone the easier the rest of the fight will be. Killing one guys in 5 sec is a lot safer then killing 2 guys in 10 second. Those extra 5 sec mean you’ll receive more damage and prolly die.

Same with HGH condi burst on engi. I can drop people HP really low, and when they are low they go defense mode. It’s a lot easier to fight then. I also have acces to burn and confusion, both really awesome condition in group fight. Confusion is basically a defensive tool, as people have no choice but to stop attacking or die.

Sustained Healing : We do have the blood trait, but right now I didn’t have a build strong enought to 1 vs X with it. Elem DD have incredible healing, giving them the edge in 1 vs X. They can basically full heal each 5-10 second. With Engineer, I have a shrot CD heal (16 sec) and many medpack. Ranger can build for crazy healing/regen, with descent damage from their pet, and synergy really well with there dodge.

Necromancer have a long CD heal (CC) that heal for a good amount, a well on really high CD if not traied(40, still long CD if traited), and a weak pet that got buffed twice, but is still lack luster since you can’t cast it twice during a fight, the casting delay is far too long. What make it worse, is Necromancer is a Large Pool, low armor class.

We are designed around this. They balanced us around the fact that we have more HP then most people. Sadly I feel like they forgot about substaining ourself, wich is for me, a lot more important.

Healing for 7k on my 2k armor necro, is a lot less important then healing for 7k on my perma protection Elem DD.

You only heal for a little proportion of your total HP, which make sustaining yourself really hard since you have really low armor from clothing.

I have to go, sorry about all the spelling mistake, no time to reread! And It’s only an opinion, no hard cold fact! All of this is from my experience.

I’ve found that Necro gets far better when grouped with even one other person. So many of our abilities get better the more people they effect. Putrid Mark, for example. Well of Power is another. Our Poison and Darkness fields benefit far more from repeated Finishers, and we don’t have all that many Finishers to offer when compared to other classes.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that building a 1 vs Many Necro is probably not in the cards because Necro is not as self-contained as an Elementalist. 2 vs. Many would be doable, and loads of fun. It’s not what the OP wants, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Speaking of Thieves have you guys seen Yishi’s new outnumbered video? It’s not as great as the others but it’s still very interesting even after culling removal and 1 second added to stealth.

If roaming means running around while capping camps, neutral monster camps and just being a thorn in the boot, then Necros can be roamers – believe you me.
If you can’t roam with one, try other things out until you find the right build.

I’d post a build but alas… I’m greedy so…. you’ll have to take my word for it

Rok.5260:

Speaking of Thieves have you guys seen Yishi’s new outnumbered video? It’s not as great as the others but it’s still very interesting even after culling removal and 1 second added to stealth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRcTKt47ixk

I swear, those videos grind me the wrong way every time. I just can’t imagine what developer thought…. “okay…. lets put a huge damage leap skill in a weapon set that allows for them to use almost no initiative and get that big hit, plus stealth, therby setting up a nearly uncounterable backstab….” I would imagine it was the same rocket-science major that thought steal and CnD should hit like a truck too.

And its so easy to pull off… which is the most irritating thing ever.. I really had high hopes for how the patch was going to deal with stealth, but since they can still stack it with no fear of being revealed, the extra second didn’t make a big difference. Culling however made the fight much better, but the D/P thief is still completely invincible.

I guess I should count my lucky starts that at least most thieves are not running full glass explode your face builds now, so while I still won’t kill them, at least they won’t kill me either.

Unforunately the thief class is just doomed…. anytime you build a class around being invisible and dealing insane burst, they either get nerfed till they are unplayable, or they get hated on continuously. Either way, not a fun class to play forum warrior with.

Actually, that thief would have been a piece of cake as a Necro…
The only problem is that he met no worthy opponent (and I guess he was good too :P)

MethaneGas.8357:

Actually, that thief would have been a piece of cake as a Necro…
The only problem is that he met no worthy opponent (and I guess he was good too :P)

Yes^^
The part when he says: I’ll kill the necro first, because I don’t want to deal with conditions and fear. lol. There was not one single fear. No reaper’s mark (or any mark, actually) and he didn’t even go into deathshroud. Maybe low on life force :/
He just pretends to be a dolyak and runs around until he goes into plague.

As PinCushion pointed out, the necro is indeed a lot stronger if in company of at least one ally. Here the necro had 2, but that didn’t help him apparently…

flow.6043:

Yes^^
The part when he says: I’ll kill the necro first, because I don’t want to deal with conditions and fear. lol.

Well, that and necro is a pretty easy target for a thief. They don’t have any escapes, their class defining feature is to take all the damage you give them, they have the least amount of stun breakers for any given class. Also for that particular thief build, conditions mean nothing because he traited conditions removed on stealth, so I’m actually confused why he said he didn’t want to deal with conditions.

But you’re right. That necro was awful.