Guild Wars 2

but after looking at the patch notes im going to take another month long break from this game , if arena net is not serious about fixing the real problems that plague the necromancer class than neither am i playing this game .. i hate all the other classes because they don’t fit my style of play and i hate the pve in this game . i prefer pvp in wvw . thats all i care about . so arena net wants to give us necros the shaft i say give it back to them by not playing their game !!!

They didn’t give us a shaft. They buffed us. They’re fixing bugs next patch. Chill out bruv.

We’ve gotten more fixes and upgrades in the past month or two than we have the entire life of the game. We’ve still got a very long way to go, but we’re in a much better place now. If you’re planning on waiting for every tiny kink to be worked out to the point they never have to balance necro again…yeah just go ahead and uninstall, cause it’s not going to happen. If ever there were a time to start jumping back into it, I’d say now is it. It’s gonna take you at least until next patches to dust off the cobwebs lol.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

We’ve gotten more fixes and upgrades in the past month or two than we have the entire life of the game. We’ve still got a very long way to go, but we’re in a much better place now. If you’re planning on waiting for every tiny kink to be worked out to the point they never have to balance necro again…yeah just go ahead and uninstall, cause it’s not going to happen. If ever there were a time to start jumping back into it, I’d say now is it. It’s gonna take you at least until next patches to dust off the cobwebs lol.

This right here, and currently we are one of the strongest tournament classes not named ele (who saw a nerf), Ranger (rarely played well). Guardians are not stronger, and Engineers are gimmicky. So currently we are better than Thieves, Warriors, and Mesmers, and in the same spot as Guardians and Engineers.

Bas.7406:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

We’ve gotten more fixes and upgrades in the past month or two than we have the entire life of the game. We’ve still got a very long way to go, but we’re in a much better place now. If you’re planning on waiting for every tiny kink to be worked out to the point they never have to balance necro again…yeah just go ahead and uninstall, cause it’s not going to happen. If ever there were a time to start jumping back into it, I’d say now is it. It’s gonna take you at least until next patches to dust off the cobwebs lol.

This right here, and currently we are one of the strongest tournament classes not named ele (who saw a nerf), Ranger (rarely played well). Guardians are not stronger, and Engineers are gimmicky. So currently we are better than Thieves, Warriors, and Mesmers, and in the same spot as Guardians and Engineers.

Ergo Necromancers should be a tPVP only Profession.

We’re fine in PvE and WvW too, although there is plenty they can do to perfect the class.

Bhawb.7408:

We’re fine in PvE and WvW too, although there is plenty they can do to perfect the class.

Could argue WvW viablity considering we are half-free rallies for enemies in zergs due to our downed health.

Meh, Necro is still not in bad shape. Other professions are getting buff a lot because they have fewer viable builds. Also, some of Necromancer’s “problems” are pretty deeply embedded so any change can be tricky. The class is sort of non-linear in performance in different situations so improving it for one might make another over-powered.

Bas.7406:

This right here, and currently we are one of the strongest tournament classes not named ele (who saw a nerf), Ranger (rarely played well). Guardians are not stronger, and Engineers are gimmicky. So currently we are better than Thieves, Warriors, and Mesmers, and in the same spot as Guardians and Engineers.

I just find that without support, necromancers fall flat on their face in sPvP. I also find the necro bunker builds to be extremely lacking. They just don’t have the longevity guardians or engineers have when built to bunker. A bunker engineer can tank 3 people beating on him without dying for what seems like an eternity. A bunker guardian can last quite a while against 3 people. Necromancers don’t last nearly as long against 3 people as guardians do, and certainly don’t even compare to engineers.

I saw rangers all the time in sPvP, and the trap bunker spec is some where in between engineer and guardian in terms of bunker longevity. Because of the pet, rangers are also able put out a ton more damage than both guardian and engineer built to bunker. I saw very few bunker necros. They didn’t seem to hold out very well against even 2 people, but I can’t speak for their skill level.

Granted, this is all from personal observation in the approximate 300 games it took me to get Champion Phantom title. Someone who has spent more time doing sPvP would probably have more credibility than me.

Bunker is what I hope the Spectral skills might eventually be. Not one of the Spectral skills actually does damage. They mostly add non-damaging conditions and aid mobility. If the protection and vulnerability portions had longer up-time, I would call that a bunker build with the right gear and traiting.

I find it hard to talk about anything that isn’t Khalifa’s D/D (or similar), Nemesis’ terror (or similar), or just a standard Rabid condi build in PvP (without using personal experience of me playing a build). Why? Because almost no one tries anything different (by and large). You can throw in the occasional MM, but as a very active MM, the vast majority of them are so terrible at it it makes me understand why people think MMs are so bad. The problem is that the 3 mentioned builds are very effective, so few people try anything different.

The difference between necro bunkers and other bunkers is the way our bunkering works. They are generally better at bunkering multiple people because of their boons, as long as none of those people are a Necro. Once you throw in a Necro with Corrupt Boon (or some other way to tear them off), they drop hard and fast even in 2v1s. Necros on the other hand really can’t 3v1 well, we are too weak to burst and CC, but don’t have that glaring weakness. We also can very easily outdamage other bunker builds.

It just doesn’t fit into the standard yolo queue team as well. You can jump in as a guardian/engi and facetank the team and be helping. You need to have a secondary tanky build if you want to be bunkering as a necro, the trade off is less tankiness for more damage. Support is similar, we can’t support as well as guardians, but when we do we bring a heck of a lot more damage potential.

You know, I could see vampiric builds being viable as bunker if the healing amounts weren’t so pathetic. Doesn’t help any that healing power has such a negligible effect on them as well. Meanwhile, thief life leech abilities scale off their power stat. WTF kind of shenanigans is that?

Our siphoning builds are actually pretty good, you just need to not consider it it’s own thing. Siphoning+regen+leech runes/sigils is going to be giving you a whole lot of health, which in combination with other things can keep us bunkering. But again, its a similar thing to what I said, you won’t bunker quite as well as guardians, but completely outdo them in damage (siphoning ignores armor).

Kravick.4906:

You know, I could see vampiric builds being viable as bunker if the healing amounts weren’t so pathetic. Doesn’t help any that healing power has such a negligible effect on them as well. Meanwhile, thief life leech abilities scale off their power stat. WTF kind of shenanigans is that?

Sort of like a regen-Ranger, then. Necromancer would probably have to give up damage somewhere to be allowed any kind of real bunker. Using minions does not cut damage so I understand poorer native healing for Necromancer when minions are traited: the minions heal the Necro plenty by themselves. I guess that would mean whatever other bunker build is selected, it cannot allow fully-traited minions or that would be OP.

“better at bunkering multiple people”

If you aren’t bunkering multiple people, you aren’t a bunker.

Taking a MM build with minion siphons and condi clear is ok and all for novelty vs. one person but it’s slow, and slow gets you killed. It’s slow in mobility since it’s hard to give up any minion slot for locust if you want it to still work for siphon + condi + boonstrip, it’s slow in cast times since the minion ai has a huge gap to fire anything useful, and it’s easily locked down permanently once the minions start dying on recast times.

Invulnerability modes and superior mobility on the boon stacking classes are just always going to be better than anything the necro can do in regards to bunkering. Proper use of invuln on a good bunker can get around corrupt boon AND WoC on the same build in the hands of a good bunker by clearing the corrupted stack and reapplying boons.

I don’t know what kind of crappy bunker play is out there that makes people think MM can really be equivalent to it but when you see a truly good bunker you will understand.

That said, the new thief meta and healing nerfs to ele have made it a lot harder for them, personally I am giggling like a maniac rocking S/D thief whilst bouncing around like Happosai with a giant sack of boons over my shoulder.

MMs can’t bunker like a bunker guardian, it just isn’t doable. No necro build can sit and take damage and aggro like engi/guardian bunkers can, we just don’t have the ability to min/max that much. On the other hand, every “bunker” necro build completely outdoes their damage (this is the case across many different types of necro builds). This is why Necros don’t fit into teams super easily except as Condi builds.

It is like a lot of things, necros aren’t able to fill the super generic roles other classes can (guardian=bunker, thief=glass burst, etc), instead Necro builds have a hybrid aspect to them, pretty much always. A “bunker” MM isn’t as bunker-y as a bunker guardian, but completely and totally outdamages them. A “support” shaman necro can’t support as hard as support ele/guardian, but we still outdamage them. We can’t outburst a thief, but we are innately tankier. We can’t faceroll like a warrior, but we have far more control. The list goes on and on, and it is mainly because so much of what we do is built into our base class (things you can’t trade off), and then you specialize a little on top of that, whereas other classes are able to specialize much better, but at the cost of everything else.

Bhawb.7408:

Our siphoning builds are actually pretty good, you just need to not consider it it’s own thing. Siphoning+regen+leech runes/sigils is going to be giving you a whole lot of health, which in combination with other things can keep us bunkering. But again, its a similar thing to what I said, you won’t bunker quite as well as guardians, but completely outdo them in damage (siphoning ignores armor).

In PvP they are actually, in PvE they are really ALMOST there, I know because I’ve run this kind of build extensively.