Guild Wars 2

Don’t consider this an attack on you Xom, but I find it hard to believe anything you say in your posts when you make broad statements with zero substantiation. This is a problem of the boards in general. When you don’t give an argument, which is ideally supported by mathematical evidence or at the very least a list of reasons why you feel the way you do, it is hard to distinguish whether you (1) came to that conclusion yourself and are just not sharing the evidence, (2) are perpetuating a widely held belief, (3) or are just trolling.

As far as I know, there is no way to say whether necromancers are one of the least used classes in sPvP or tPvP outside of your personal impressions, where (n) could equal 5 games or 500 games. It’s often been the case in MY experience that there will be as many as 3 necromancers on either side of an sPvP match, that being said, I try not to run around espousing that as the true representation of things.

I’ve found necromancers to be one of the more potent professions in PvP. As Bari noted in his post, we do lack certain features such as easy access to stability (but this is a generalized problem across most if not all professions) and knockbacks (but knockbacks are arguably out of control).

What necromancers do have is multiple condition removal and transfers which makes them incredibly robust against a major game mechanic and acts as an additional way to disable and damage your opponent. Death shroud is also extremely potent and not only acts as a damage buffer, but also gives you life transfer, a teleport that chills/bleeds, and fear on demand (to stop stomps, delay revives, keep an enemy off a point while neutralizing it, or controlling movement into marks/wells). Life transfer is extremely good and provides significant AoE pressure, while maintaining you in DS mode.

Typically, I think that most people have difficulty understanding how strong necromancers can be because they haven’t gotten a strong grasp on the mechanics of the game. Time and time again I see “condition necromancers” simply auto attacking with a scepter when they should be actively cycling through their skills to get to 15-18 stacks and then throwing down epidemic to apply huge AoE pressure. You can also achieve a similar type of pressure with wells and life transfer, which can easily turn the tide of a battle in your favor. While some people rag on wells because you can evade out of the area, you have to realize that well bombing over a capture point is a form of zone control.

I’m not saying there aren’t issues, but I find necromancers to be a strong PvP contender. I used to feel that the class was a bit lacklustre, but that opinion was purely based on my poor understanding of the profession. I imagine that this rings true of most of the professions in GW2, where that if you know your profession well and can play to their strengths, you can make a significant impact on the game. Believe it or not, there IS a learning curve – just stick with it and you’ll likely be impressed with what you’ll be able to achieve.