Guild Wars 2

I see people say its all down to your positioning with necro. what does this actually mean? our weapons are 600 range so its not standing far away.. our wells are extremely short in duration so its not standing in them. staff marks are negated by dodging/evading into them. other classes have leaps/ teleports skills that do all positioning for them with one click(e.g thieves) some even automatically get rid of our soft cc so kiting is hard/impossible in many cases

so I want to know what people mean by saying “you didn’t position yourself right” or “its all down to good positioning”

It is never completely down to “good positioning” but generally what they mean is in the macro sense. It isn’t so much where you are in relation to your enemy, but where you are in relation to “safe zones.”

For example, it’s a bad idea to sit on a cliff edge vs. a hammer wielder or a necro. It’s also very dangerous in WvW to roam too far from allies because a necro can’t escape if he’s caught.

In PvP, it’s more along the lines of evaluating the threat regarding staying on a capture point and positioning yourself so that you can duck out if things get hairy. Necros don’t want to get in the middle of a teamfight (except Plague), they want to be on the outside, even if that is still practically melee range.

Yeah basically what Drarnor said.

If you ever do organized WvW, you’ll have a person called a driver who will generally tell you whether to push in or peel out. In general you’ll want to be relatively close to the driver as hes usually a safe spot to be. And then in general as a peripheral, you don’t want to be all the way in the back, as thats where gank squads can pick you off, and you don’t want to be in the hammer train ever, unless you have plague up. The most important thing is to avoid, usually through dodging and running along the sides, the enemy hammer trains and AoE bombs (basically a combination of ele/guardian CC and necro wells). Other than that if you’re relatively near you driver you can be in axe range and deal damage while your marks or deathshroud is on cooldown. And besides that time your wells and place them with your driver, and deathshroud is such a power defensive tool for wading through light/medium fire to get back to safety, and #5 and #4 skills are very strong for extra AoE pressure. I also like lifeblast any stray targets or Axe#2 them. In my build, my lifeblasts can crit thieves for 5K, which is very very cool.

Interesting assessments.
Personally, I always associated “positioning” with some sort of 6th sense for when you are overextending. In that sense the word itself is probably misleading, there’s no perfect spot to stand or an optimum range to an enemy you should be moving in at all times. Sometimes you can stick like glue on your opponent with just 100hp left and sometimes you’ll overextend even when you’re at full health and life force. Just know how far you can go without dying. Obvisouly this kind of battle field awareness doesn’t just involve your own skills, hp and coodlowns, but mostly knowing how and from where your enemies can inflict damage on you.

Stay out of the locus involving the situation “at the wrong place at the wrong time”.
At the same time it doesn’t mean to stay away from the fight and run -which is unproductive-, but to stay in the “right place in the right moment” to accomplish your role from a safe place.

You have to read the circumstances and position accordingly to it, kite dangerous targets, stay out of heavily dangerous situations, and learn to disengage or leave the target when the situation becomes unstable or risky.

It’s not a matter of explanation, it’s a matter of tryal and error.

flow.6043:

Interesting assessments.
Personally, I always associated “positioning” with some sort of 6th sense for when you are overextending. In that sense the word itself is probably misleading, there’s no perfect spot to stand or an optimum range to an enemy you should be moving in at all times. Sometimes you can stick like glue on your opponent with just 100hp left and sometimes you’ll overextend even when you’re at full health and life force. Just know how far you can go without dying. Obvisouly this kind of battle field awareness doesn’t just involve your own skills, hp and coodlowns, but mostly knowing how and from where your enemies can inflict damage on you.

This is the best way I would describe it.

It’s really not something you can be taught, I would say. More like something that comes with practice that is a valuable skill in this game.

In WvW, keep your commander between you and the enemy zerg. Utilize high ground whenever possible. Never run inside the actual group but five feet to the right or left, whichever is furthest from the enemy zerg. Most will stay behind the main force but that is exactly where the enemy commander is going to push to expecting to kill all the dps.