Guild Wars 2

Don’t just use Doom on it’s own, chain it. If your enemy can’t break out of it, use the time he’s defenseless to apply more conditions.

In an optimal scenario you could do this:
1. Place spectal wall behind enemy.
2. Use Death Shroud and fear the poor sod with Doom.
3. While he runs through the spectal wall, elongating the fear, cast Dark Path.
4. You will teleport to your fear’d target, applying Chill and 3 Bleeds.
5. Tainted Shackles, adding 3 Torment. Since he is still running, Torment will tick 2x per second instead of 1. Don’t wait for it to cast, just press 5 and exit DS.
6. Use Reaper’s Mark for more fear.
7. If he is still standing and has not broke out of the fear yet, bomb whatever condis you have on him.

Summary:2-3 fears, 1 chill, 3 bleeds, 3 torment.
PLUS:
If you are using Dhuumfire, even with a low critchance there should be Burning on him.
You will probably have Barbed precision too, so throw in a few extra bleeds in the equasion. If you have traited for Terror, this will result in a huge burst.

You can do all of the above in a few seconds and still have 2 utilities and an Elite you haven’t used yet. It’s enough to melt thieves without condi removal/stun breakers in WvW. Guards will ususally try to convert your condi’s into boons. Use either corrupt boon after they do, or signet of spite to cover up the important ones.

P.S.: In small scale fights I sometimes like to use the Golem, giving you another stun.
You can also start the combo with Reapers Mark into spectral wall and doom, allowing RM to be off cooldown sooner. Grab a friend and duel a bit in a controlled environment.
One last thing: Rune of the Nightmare can give you an additional fear when hit on a 5% chance with a 90s CD.

And so OP trolled everyone into bickering.

Race depends entirely on your taste. Charr looks pretty cool, I went with Asura. Sylvari has a lot of colourful options. Should you want to try WvW in the future I’d recommend Norn, since one of the Elites adds some much needed mobility. Other than that it’s a question of personal taste.

Also the build I posted earlier is still viable. However it wont do you much good in PvP situations.

I’d recommend watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKcDOIgEGLU

It’s a bit long but has a lot of insight, especially if you are not too familiar with the class.
However, don’t run into PvP or WvW with this.

Banjal.7328:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Ya you sure put people down fast. Can you please post your build?

I’m sure its the same build most Condi necros run. 30/30/0/10/0

I’m roaming on a condi necro myself and have similar results. Only difference is, I use spectal wall, spectal walk and corrupt boon. But that’s just personal taste, will try the sigils next time.

Anyhow. I guess it’s more of a 30/20/0/0/20 build with the essential 3 Traits: Dhuumfire, Terror and Master of Terror (and Signet mastery in this case). Reason being with Dire gear and runes of scavanging, you can take a beating easily. Nercos have always been tanky but Dire is a game changer. So there is not much need for vampirism. Also you don’t need 30 points in curses for Lingering Curse, since people remove conditions before they tick for a long time (at least that’s the smart thing to do). And if they don’t you don’t need them to tick very long either as video demonstrates.

I run the Ascii WvW build in Zergs though I am mostly roaming. It does pretty well, you’ll be tanky, deal a lot of damage and tag pretty much everything.

Link

The default size of marks has been increased, so it’s not really necessary to get greater marks.

I’d recommend this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Ascii-s-WvW-Wellomancer-Build/first

Do you think every time one of the other classes gets a change you NEED one too? Thieves are not your older brother. Just because Thieves get to eat ice cream does not mean you start holding your breath until you get one as well.

Go up to your room.

Please use the search function/google. There’s a lot of info out there, and it’s not hidden away.

To answer your questions:
MM in WvW is bad. Run conditions if you want to roam alone, go for wells and power if you run in zergs. Dire is good, you will lose some damage in favour of tankyness.

ManaCraft.5630:

Anyway, with regard to epidemic, it is a skill that in many ways breaks the conventional rules of game design. It doesn’t exactly serve as a good example, nor can you hold back the overall design of an entire class to accommodate a single skill (assuming it becomes a big enough problem). I’ve called for changes to epidemic before, I’ll have no problem doing it again.

My point is, we need those blanket conditions. But people should still be rewarded for intelligent play when facing a necro. So there should be a sweet spot when to use a condi cleanser to get rid of bleeds. With epidemic, it’s not going to be easy to balance, and it’s not going to be a quick fix. Epidemic will likely remain as it is.

flow.6043:

This is not an issue with Dhuumfire but conditions in general, which is why zerg-fighters tend to run power builds.

My point exactly.

flow.6043:

That’s not really an argument in favor Dhuumfire. Also, escaping a necro is not at all as easy as you make it out to be, and the fact that players will escape you sometimes doesn’t make Dhuumfire any less overpowered.

I hope you are aware that I am not defending Dhuumfire, hence I am not making arguments in favor of it. Also if you can’t break away from a necro, you likely missed your window of opportunity/waited too long. If your heal and your cleanses are on CD, your health is low and you have chill+cripple on you, you definitely should have disengaged sooner.

flow.6043:

Damage and survivability are completely seperate issues

Excuse me? Damage and survivability are two sides of the same coin. If you add to one, you need to substract at the other. Otherwise you end up with an unbalaced class, and God knows we have enough of those issues already :P

Stillmoon.6894:

snip

Please be a troll.

cough sticky cough

ManaCraft.5630:

Now I can’t speak for sPvP, but in WvW dhuumfire is just overkill, no question. My necro often has no problems putting an opponent into an unrecoverable position just by autoattacking.

Nyee… I don’t see Dhuumfire as a problem in WvW at all. When you are running in the big PvDoor Zergs, you will fight other Zergs. In those big battles your conditions will be cleansed sooner than you can apply them.
If you are roaming however, there is a different mechanic canceling out the OP-ness of Dhuumfire: We are slow like a snail crawling uphills. If the condi pressure gets too high you disengage and then attack again. The only reason why Dhuumfire is OP in sPvP is because sPvP is about controlling points of interest. If you disengage from a Necro in that situation, he wins by default. Lose if you do, die if you don’t.

ManaCraft.5630:

The right move (pre-dhuumfire) would have been to diversify the condition damage output among several different conditions while keeping the overall output amount roughly identical. Diversification without amplification. Burning contributes next to nothing to the former, and almost entirely to the latter.

Agree, sort of. We need a way of burying those bleeds in a blanket of other, non or low damaging conditions. Bleeds are our bread and butter after all. Condi engies kinda work that way. They dont stack any condition very high, but they sure have a wide variety of them. And they can apply them very quickly too. The only problem I see with that is Necros have this wonderfull skill called Epidemic. Stacking lots of different condis on a single target (without burn) sounds reasonable. But that ability with epidemic might be a bit much in teamfights.
Damage over time is a pain to balance aint it? ^^

I have reservations. Care to give us your build and educate us on damage numbers?

Sororita.3465:

A lack of mobility means death in a pvp environment, mobility is king. We are the easiest of any class to be trained on, people can stick to us like glue and you all know this.

Here’s another thing I know: Necros are currently one of the strongest classes in sPvP.
And you would like high mobility on top of that? Gimme a break…

Necros are not mobile classes. We don’t need mobility. We are the tankiest light armor class under the sun with a huge healthpool and DS on top of that. This combined with our high pressure potential makes us a very hard hitter.

You don’t want to add mobility to that. Every class needs a weak spot. Mobility is ours, get used to it or reroll.

tl;dr: Nercos need mobility like a warrior needs stealth.

How about using the ol’ google, hm?
Because there is no simple answer to your question, it’s rather complicated.

On single targets you’ll want power, but you’ll suck at AoE.
For AoE you’ll want Conditions, but you’ll suck at single targets.
If you run Hybrid you’ll do well at both, but excel at none.

Get used to the idea that there is no “best” build for anything. If all you care about are huge dmg numbers, roll a warrior. And then roll your face over the keyboard. :P

Also you don’t want to run a condi build if you are in a bigger group/zerg. Your condis will be cleansed sooner than you can apply them. I recommend Ascii’s WvW build for that.

Condis are okay for roaming though. Problem with roaming is: Nercos aren’t exactly mobile. If you get into a bad situation, you’re toast. You can not run from a fight with this class.

If you really wish to run condis in WvW, in Zergs as much as in roaming: Roll an Engie. Works quite nicely for me.

Not to mention how awesome the masks/facepaint look on charr.

…I have no clue which one you mean. A description/picture would help.

Ignore the whiny troll and roll a charr. I mean come on, look at the Lunatic Boatmaster. Dude’s one stylish mofo. Also if you want to be human, log off and watch some TV. Being human is boring, you can do that outside of GW2.

Have I mentioned ignoring the troll yet? Because you should do that.

Dhuumfire hits like a truck, it’s totally worth it.
What’s absolutely useless is Lingering Curse. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome in PvE. But players in PvP have this tendency to use condi cleanses, you wont be able to stack 25 bleeds on anyone.

The most common build used in sPvP right now is: 30 ins Spite (Dhuumfire), 20 in Curses(Terror), and 20 in Soul Reaping (Master of Terror). Flow already pointed that out with some good suggestions for trait choices. You have a bit of leeway in your choices as long as you go for Terror, Master of Terror and Dhuumfire. I also agree with Flow on your choices in Soul Reaping.

The combination of burning, fear, bleeds and torment hits really hard. Also give the Golem Elite a try. While Plague Form is quite a beast, the golem will allow you to put opponents flat on their behind every 40 seconds. With runes of Lyssa, that will also buff you up on a 40 second cooldown. Between your 4 sources of fear Doom in DS, Reapers Mark on Staff, Spectal Wall, Corrupt Boon(turns stability into fear ) and the golem knockdown your enemies will have their hands quite full.

The patch is pretty new, however:

For leveling I always recommended going Dagger/Focus with Power as your primary stat. Condi damage does not scale well at low levels, avoid it for now.

Try going dagger with minions. I haven’t tried it since the patch is quite new, but I have a feeling it might be quite good at low levels. If you try it give us some feedback, other players leveling a Nec might find your insights quite useful.

If you really want to run condis in large groups, an Engineer might be better suited for that task. With bombs and grenades you can apply more conditions in less time. Sure, necros are a lot better at stacking conditions, but you won’t be able to do that in a zerg anyway since they will be cleansed before you can get 10 bleeds on a single target.

Other than that I recommend having a look at Ascii’s WvW build. It’s focus is more on heavy CC but it still feels like a necro and thrives in huge battles. Works very well for me.

Oswaldzl.3652:

necro has its good use but a buffed class seems more powerful. conditions can be cleanse while only necro can counter boons

Necros turn a buffed class into a sobbing, moaning heap of bleeds. If you have to shoo a bunker guard off of a point, you want a Necro.

Yes, conditions can be cleansed. Once, twice, maybe even thrice. The thing is, we’re not running out of bleeds, while our opponents will run out of cleanses.
It may sound like it takes us forever to kill someone, but that’s not the case. While we can not burst, the combination of fear(traited), bleeds, poison,torment and burning will melt anything in seconds if left unattended.

One more thing: I play necro and I am very new to spvp as well. The biggest mistake Thieves do against me in 1v1 situations is they try to keep pressuring me when I am in Deathshroud. Don’t waste your Initiative trying to wear down my life-force, I can regain that stuff quicker than you get your initiative back. Back off and break line of sight or you’ll find yourself fear’d, immobilized and with 3 stacks of torment on you. You don’t want that.

Life force runs out by itself, the necro will pop out of it if he can’t attack you with it. If he does not, wait until he runs out, keep on your toes. Necros are not very mobile.

As soon as the nec leaves DS, it will be on a cooldown of 10 seconds. That’s when I don’t want thieves anywhere near me. If he used his DS skills those will be on an even longer CD. So if he should pop it back on he’s likely unable to fear you just yet.

Last but not least, stealthing won’t save you from condi spam. Necros have a few skills to put down AoE conditions, they will hit you in stealth. If you need to get out and heal up, break line of sight. Always keep moving. We are terrible at mobility.

What else? Don’t try applying conditions to us, we’ll throw those right back in your face.

Your best bet is to keep moving. A good thief can annoy the living piiiiss out of me until I start making mistakes and run out of life force.

Good luck, see you out there

Yasha.5963:

Feel sorry for the people that get to play the kitten classes?

I feel sorry for the state of the forums if this is the most creative input you can come up with.

Locuz.2651:

I dont think this game is suited for 8v8 in “small scale pvp”. I think 5v5 is even pushing it on certain maps.

I share your sentiment. I adressed it by suggesting bigger maps with more objectives. As far as watching or casting goes: I leave that to the pros to solve. My concern is coming up with an idea on how to make it fun to play, not watch.

However I believe it’s possible to create maps around this problem as well. Interesting fights are more likely to happen on chokepoints, capture points etc. The map design itself can be used to provoke players into coming up with a variety of builds. For example putting all cap points close to another encourages players to come up with a team that does very well in huge team fights (which I’d like to avoid).

If you put a few points far away, on the brink of the map you’d encourage a totally different play-stile, favoring mobility. Those points would be so far off that it doesn’t pay off to have a bunker sitting on it permanently, you’ll want that guy on mid. However a very mobile class like a mesmer/thief/ele could flip these points easily without opposition. You could even fiddle around with the rewards these points yield, making them more or less of a priority. Mapdesign has many opportunities to change the meta by bringing in a few changes. And by doing so you keep the Zergs out of sPVP, because your team has lots of ground to cover.
Zergs will only happen if it proves to win matches. If the mapdesing punishes Zergs, you won’t find people playing in that fashion.

Overall there would be certainly less 1on1 situations happening in favor of 2v2 or 3v3 fights, wich can be interesting because it requires coordination and team-effort. I suspect one would end up with smaller groups of 2-3 people supporting each other. However you’d still need mobile classes for those hard to reach areas of interest. And should two of those cross each others path, which is likely, you’d have your 1v1 situations.

And since ANet has been experimenting with map design in the past, I don’t believe that this whole idea of using mapdesing to encourage a fun playstile is totally foreign to them. Take Skyhammer for example. It certainly has it’s flaws, but adding the high ground over the mid point is a great addition, which forces bunkers to get more active when harassed from above.

Like jmatb pointed out in this thread, we have a few balancing problems (duh), making some builds and classes more rewarding than others. Like it or not, it will probably stay that way. No matter how many patches will balance this, there will always be some classes coming out on top, while others vanish from the meta for a while. That can not be helped, there is no perfect balance.

There is a way to work around this though.
Before GW2, Team Fortress 2 was my game of choice. Competitive matches had a similar problem there. In a 6v6 Fight the meta was: Two Soldiers, 2 Scouts, a Medic and a Demo. Which means only 4 out of 9 classes got regular use. That is until Higlander-Mode became a thing.
What is Higlander-Mode? Teams now had to consist of one player of each class, bringing a lot more variety to the matches.

Could this be a possibility for GW2 as well? Instead of 5-man teams, you’d have 8 players on each side. And while (as of now) you’d still have very strong Rangers, Necros and Stun-Warris, each team would have to find a way to implement less popular classes into their teamplay. Not only would this make team fights more exciting for the simple variety, but you’d likely see new builds popping up too.

The downside is that it would maybe not work on the current maps. We might need slightly larger battlefields with more objectives.

Tl;dr: Add a new gamemode with teams consisting of 8 players, 1 of each class.

Thoughts?

Bhawb.7408:

The “condition necro>other condition classes” isn’t so much that we are better at conditions (although we are, right now), but its more that if a condition necro loses to any condition build in a 1v1, they should be ashamed and reroll. Plague signet, deathly swarm, and Putrid mark all make a mockery of your condition application. Consume conditions can gobble down a full condition burst and then heal you for massive HP. Well of Power is essentially a middle finger to any condition build as well.

Very true.
In simpler terms, this is what a Condi Necro says to another condi based build: “Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself!” (followed by annoying laughter.)

For leveling in PvE I’d recommend going dagger/focus + Staff. At least until you hit 60.
Try to get Power on your gear for stats. Skillwise, use Consume conditions, Blood is Power, Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption.

Until you hit 60 you’ll have plenty of time to read up on builds

The Staff is mostly used as a secondary weapon in a great many of builds. It doesn’t do much damage wise, has great utility though.

So, weather you decide on a power or condition build, they all run staff as a secondary weapon. In a condition build your primary weapons will be scepter and dagger.

I suggest you look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

Well, probably not the deep kind of story you were looking for:

My main is an Asuran Necromancer. When new skins are announced in the gemstore, I like to preview them. They either look terrible (light) or the nice details get lost due to the small frame of the race.

And then they released this: See Attatchment.

Took me 14 days to bring him up to 80. Now I’m gathering the final tokens and in a few day’s time I will release the most overcompensating Asura on the undead hordes.

P.S. “Lord Helmet” was taken :/

Nemesis, I hope I get to see that before the next patch makes you start over again
Looking forward to it.

On topic: I am mostly running in organized zergs with my guild. And let me tell you, Necros are the kings of tagging everything. After a zerg vs. zerg victory I’m always dragging behind the group because it takes me forever to pick up all the loot bags.

The mix of marks, wells, locst swarm, life transfer, tainted shackles and last but not least plague form makes you a mobile artillery. Focus is not so much on damage, but on crowd control.
Your blinds, chills and boon removal can really disrupt what the other zerg is trying to pull off.

I was only adressing his first build. My 1-2-3 Points are adressing utilities, gear and traits of the same. I didn’t have it in me to look at the other two.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

BTW I have tested my builds out. Dont you think i have done that by now? lol.

After looking at your recent thread: No I don’t think you did. lol.
Running through Queensdale, protecting melons from rabbits is not playtesting.

3.) At this point I am not quite certain if I even dare to look into your traits anymore.
OHGODJESUSHAVEMERCY! I clicked it. I cant unsee it! cringe

Spite. 10 Points. All of them wasted. You want to lose 3 conditions when you kill a foe? You wont kill a single one with cotton balls. Other than that why trait into condition removal at all? Consume condition cures conditions (duh). Deathly Swarm sends conditions from you to your foe. Putrid Mark does roughly the same. And the beauty of those abilities is: They are free, they are already in your build. Why you would waste 10 points on something you neither need, nor will ever be able to trigger is beyond me. Please enlighten me on this matter. Me, Todd, Steve and a case of beer cant wait for your reasoning on this.

Curses. 30 Points. There is yet hope! You’ve done something right, 30 in curses is the way to go since your build curses things. Your build also spits on everything we necros hold dear, but I digress again. Traits are a mixed bag however. They are all good choices (who knew I would get to use these words?) but you’ll want to switch em around depending on if you are doing WvWvW or PvE.
For WvWvW go with IV/IX/X. Why Specal attunement instead of lingering curse? Your foes (although they might be paralyzed with a fit of laughter) will probably have some means to cleanse conditions. They wont be able to tick through the whole way, so no need to take that trait.
A whole different matter vor PvE though: II/IX/XI. Here you want your bleeds to be as looooooong as they can. Why? Mobs are stupid, and they dont remove conditions. Most of them anyway. You should get along nicely.

Nothing in Death magic…that would have been a solid choice with you running a Staff.
No Blood magic, okay for PvE, might be worth looking into for WvW though.

Soul Reaping. 30. Just…why?
Also terrible choices of Major traits. First you neglected Spectal Mastery. If you haven’t heard yet, fear kicks like a mule. Spectal wall applies fear. Fear is good. You want your wall to be off cooldown ASAP.
Second Major Trait…Soul Marks. I understand the need for LF but why not take Master of Terror? Remember? Fear kicks like a mule. Mule good, cotton balls bad. Take it. Last but not least stability. Okay. If you intend on meleeing your (laughing) opponent, you might as well take stability. You might as well roll a Guardian, maybe that suits your needs better- even though it’s not as tacky and has less skulls on it.

So. here it is. The feedback you were looking for. Well, maybe not the feedback you were looking for, but it’s the feedback you deserve. [/batman]

P.S: Please be a troll.

Concerning your shaggy Diablo build: Allow me to pick this thing apart, for its as silly as it’s name.

1.) Skills + Weapons are a solid choice for full condition-necros. So far so good.
This is what a lot of Condi Necros run with. Especially the ones that trait into fear and burning. You know? Conditions.
If you expect to read more praise after this part, you will be very disappointed. Better log off now.

So when I switch from the Skill tab to the Equipment tab I expect to see 3 Things: Condition Damage, Precision and Toughness.
Why do I expect these? Condition Damage is a no brainer. You are using conditions, so you want them to hit hard. Otherwise you might as well throw cotton balls at Champions and see how far it gets you. Why Precision? Because “Barbed Precision” -avaiable for mere 5 Traitpoints in the Curses Tree- gives you a 66% chance to cause bleeding if you crit. And since Precision means crit, crit also means bleeding. Still with me? Good. Because when you use condition heavy weapons and condition heavy utilities, I hope you are using condition heavy gear and traits as well. Otherwise: Cotton balls. And last but not least: Toughness. You will be kiting a lot. Toughness helps with survival. Why toughness over vitality? Because you are a Necromancer, and Necromancers are MADE out of hitpoints. You got enough of those already.

2.) So, after I am done looking at the skill tab I am pleased as punch. Golly, what a fine build I say to myself. Someone deserves a pat on the back, I say to myself while I sip on Early Grey Tea. And while I am enjoying the taste of tea and a good skill combination I open the Equipment Tab. Remember what I was expecting to see? Well I didnt expect Power out of all the possibilities. And while I spit my tea at my monitor in disgust, I wonder what they have been teaching you in that 7th-whatchamacallit. The few gear pieces you’ve gotten right are under-water weaponry, Runes and a few trinkets. Sigils are okay too. So you must have been on to something. If those where the first ones you chose, you’ve been on a good path until now. So why the EFF did you take POWER in there?! Did you get bored and tried to add some color? Power is for direct damage. Whacking someone with your scepter hardly qualifies as that. 500-700 Damage from a direct hit is a joke! It’s a really really bad joke. Maybe you wish to make your WvW opponent fall off his chair laughing, so you can kill him while he calls his friends over to his house to share with them the sight of a condition necro who mistook himself for a Warrior. That might actually work. Because they will be afk, laughing for a long long time. Maybe Todd will even go get some Popcorn, while Steve organizes a Keg. Maybe they will take bets on who will gve out first? Their Hitpoints or your mouse? Maybe this amuse them long enough for your cotton ball strategy to work. One can dream. But I digress.

(More in Part 2.)

Hush, it’s time to take your Ritalin.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

i would love to 1 vs 1 you in wvw where i will own u and your stupid goblin gimmicks. Bra you dont have to troll to a person who’s postin for the first time. I guess you have some really bad memories no doubt. Anyways keep the hatin bra cause I’m gonna make the best necro 1 vs X build no matter what. stay cool

Oh no, a tough guy! He will emerge the 7th-basement-dimension and be all menacing embarassing and stuff. Bra. Seriously? Bra?? Get outta here…

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQNAnYWjMaF7tbib8bKAJFX/MUhejKcM1jyZ/cA-jkzAINioRqDG5BgAlIiAYyTZMHKoWxCblMIFzopuxUxw64hoazLiWtUAQsGA-w

Honestly: Your “build” has Axe/Dagger in it with Epidemic. What is this travesty? This is a trainwreck. What conditions are you going to spread with that? Two bleeds and one cripple? Because after burning your signet, you won’t be applying a lot of conditions for 48 seconds. And 48 seconds is a loooong time when all your cooldowns are wasted. Long 48 seconds in which you wont be doing any amount of damage at all. The smartest choice in your build are the swiftness related runes, because you will be running from battle a lot.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

we cool??

Just…stop posting guides and builds. Leave that to other people until you spend some more time with your Necro and gain a better understanding of the class.
Also behaving like a wanna be Rap-idol makes you look like a 12-year old.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

So guyz, […]u guyz are arguing because i dont really read all yo comments lol… […] lawl. […] sucks balls […] lol […] bein dat when u see like 3-5 peeps ahead of you do dis steps. […] #doomsday

Leave now, and never come back.

This is my main. Same char, different builds and hence different looks.

From left to right: Town clothes (Fancy Winter Outfit + Top Hat); Hybrid (Arah/CoF mix mostly); Full Condition (Storm Trooper Mix); and WvW.

Town clothes + Storm Trooper outfit get the most reactions by far.

I am actually quite content right now.

A few tweaks aside, the main problem ain’t the Necro, it’s the dungeons.
Right now the most effective way to do/farm a dungeon is to run a high dps party with full zerker equipment. The reason being that most boss fights are against one single opponent with a huge amount of hitpoints, a Damagesponge.

The Necro (and probably Engies as well) would really shine in content, where utility is needed.
Also, we rely on mitigating damage by CCing (Fear mostly, but also cripple, chill, blind, immobilize and torment). But defiant bosses take most of that away.
Balancing this will be extremely difficult. You either have a defiant boss or you will see parties perma-CCing any boss so much that the whole fight turns into a joke.

I guess you’d have to reinvent boss fights to solve that problem.

Introducing new boss-fight mechanics instead of wailing on a Damagesponge would not only make our class more valuable, it would also make dungeons a lot more fun and entertaining.
I think the developers might have caught on to that a while ago. Looking at the Aetherblade dungeons and some of the fractals you can see them trying out new things.

EDIT: Coming to think of it there is one thing I’d like to see: When one condition type is capped out at 25, it would be an interesting mechanic to add a new condition then. E.g. if bleed reaches 25 and is KEPT at 25, the target gains a new condition that…maybe stuns for a second or increases bleeding damage by 5-10%. This new condition would disappear as soon as bleed stacks drop down to 24, and it would need a cooldown. This way you’d actually reward players for keeping conditions up and running.
It would be interesting to see individual “max-condition-rewards” for each individual condition type. These would only be able to be applied by maxing out the conditions we have.

Avigrus.2871:

QQ […]
Guess this is what A-net means by class balance. QQ […]

Rock. Paper. Scissors.

I am playing a Guardian and a Necromancer. I run a lot of dungeons and after a couple of bad pugs I mainly use the Guardian for the harder content.

My reasons are, that many people in pugs don’t know what they are doing or are simply new to it. Also communication is a frequent problem. You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t read chat.
So I am using my tanky Guardian for the Dungeons because it’s easier with people I don’t know or can’t rely on.

As for Necomancers: They are rare, you hardly see any of them in a dungeon. I’ve run into some really bad Necos. For example an MM-Necro in Twilight Arbor who was dead more often than he was alive- BUT Necros can be really really really awesome too! Once again: I am using a Guardian in Dungeons. I run SE, HotW, AC and TA. And my Guardian can take a lot of damage before I need to heal.
Every time I see someone in my party being a Necro, I hope he’s running wells and using this build. Huge AoE output, puts protection on me and blinds mobs (which means I do not need to heal, ever!) and has a great many Combo-nations (get it? hehe, hehehe, he…oh come on it wasn’t that bad). It makes my job of keeping aggro on me a lot easier. So, please keep your Necro. I hope to run into you at some time

tl;dr: Necros can be very awesome in Dungeons. Next one I see using this build while running a dungeon with me will recieve a metric ton of strawberry cookies, made with the freshest strawberries in Tyria. <3

Hello!

So far I have only leveled a Necromancer and a Guardian. Needless to say, the Guardian is a lot easier to level than the Necro. But still the Necro can get by without any problems.

First of all: If you wish to level up quickly, the fastest way is crafting. You can go from 1 to 20 from leveling cooking to 300 if that is your thing.

I’d recommend a scepter/dagger + staff build. Your first traitpoints should go into curses, since you will rely on conditions.

As for skillpoints: The first thing you want to do is get Consume Conditions. Your initial healing skill, the Bloodfiend, will die a lot. In fact it will die so quickly that it’s useless, leaving you without a healing skill. I can’t stress how bad this flying ham wallet is. I also recommend getting Epidemic and Blood is Power as soon as you can. This enables you to spread your damage nicely and kill mobs faster. Spectral Walk might be useful as well, it helps with roaming the map and also with kiting harder mobs; giving you means of escape when needed. Wells are very, very usefull as well. If you plan on doing dungeons with your new favourite Char, consider getting wells.

As a general rule I’d recommend to avoid using minions, you probably heard of the AI problems. Use Deathshroud in sticky situations, using it as a second health bar allows you to survive a lot longer. And you might want to carry 2 daggers with you, so you can destroy objects faster.

Last but not least: Be social. This game is an MMO and leveling with a friend is so much more fun

Try switching worlds in the early hours when there is less players online. You should be able to do it

It’s buggy yes, but playable. My main is a Necro and I find the class to be fun to play.

Leveling the Necro was tedious and I often changed my build. That might have been due to lack of experience and understanding as to how the class works. But my then experience was that the class is not fun to level when playing solo. Later on you will be able to solo multiple opponents without breaking a sweat.

You won’t do burst damage, this is not a flashy class. Personally I think that the Necro excels in outlasting mobs (I cannot speak for PvP, mind you). With DS you get a second health bar and if you choose to take Plague form as your elite skill your survivability improves even more. Also you’ll be good at spreading your party’s damage. E.g. when a large number of players attack a champion during an event there will be huge stacks of conditions on that boss. You can spread all these conditions to other mobs.

P.S. Don’t even think about using minions. You’ll develop an urge to punch your monitor. :P