Guild Wars 2

Necros are generally my favorite class in any game, close with Ranger/Hunter iterations, some games do them justice, some don’t.

I haven’t played GW2 since around launch, but I remember giving Necro a go for obvious reasons, and in the end, I just didn’t like the playstyle that the class seemed to be designed for. Not knocking ArenaNet, it is a design I can appreciate it, I just couldn’t find my groove I guess.

I tried the Minion Master setups, not being able to heal my minions made them seem somewhat unreliable, it was something I just couldn’t settle into. I mainly rolled around with a staff and all the minions I could, seemed ok, but seemed like it was missing something.

Then I tried a “tanky” Necromancer, since the GW2 Necro seemed to be catered towards that type of playstyle, Dagger in the main hand, can’t quite remember what was in the off hand, but it was kinda fun, didn’t seem like it was a lot of damage though, and that was kind of what I was looking for.

To me when I think Necromancer I think one of two things, minions and/o damage over time spells. The way GW2 deals with Conditions is somewhat weird to me, I was able to figure it out on my Ranger, which of course was just Bleeds, I learned that different Conditions work differently, but I still couldn’t find a way to play a Necro that made me happy.

But, it’s been a while since I’ve played, maybe things have changed? Are there any good builds for Necros for PvE? Specifically, dungeons and leveling. Minion Master any better? I’ve read a little bit from this forum that leads me to believe Condition damage Necros aren’t as good because of Condition caps.

What about PvP? The way I would want to play a Necro in PvP would be something kinda tanky, that could do decent damage, whether it was conditions or direct, and have a good time.

Like I said, it’s been a while and I haven’t kept up with updates or the state of the game and how much it may have changed.

I played the game at launch, got to 80 with my Ranger. I was torn at the time between Ranger and Necromancer, as I am in a lot of games, but after playing around with Necromancer at launch, it just wasn’t for me.

The more I played Ranger, the more I had fun with it. I did a lot of “sPvP” I think was? Going to the island, queuing for the little 5v5 battlegrounds, or whatever they were.

Short Bow was king in PvE, was easy to stack a ton of bleeds on mobs, some AoE support, etc. The sPvP was fun, using a bird and a build focusing on Sniping with the Longbow, because I loved the Longbow and PvP was the only place it seemed any good at the time, but also bringing a Shortbow in case someone got in my face.

It wasn’t ideal, but I remember absolutely wrecking a lot of people as a Ranger, I did get my butt handed to me an equal amount of times, but Ranger felt good.

The pets were different, they weren’t all the same basic thing just re-skinned, and I liked that. Birds could evade, they didn’t do a ton of damage, but they could crit a lot and “sometimes” do a ton of damage.

For PvE I had actually grown to like the Shortbow/Bleed build I had, even though Longbow was what I really wanted to use, the Shortbow at the time just seemed to do so much more damage.

For PvP I absolutely loved sniping with the Longbow, I don’t exactly remember my build because it’s been so long, but I didn’t go all out trait-wise for Sniping, because not all of the sPvP “battlegrounds” would lend themselves to sniping, I had some Shortbow support.

Is it still largely the same? Better? Worse? I read some of the posts on the Ranger forum and it seemed 50/50, just trying to get some answers for my specific playstyle and if Ranger still supports that.