So, I don’t know if I can actually qualify as someone who can reply to this, but I am looking for a similar playstyle to you and have done a lot of research as well.
I’ve mained a necromancer for a long long time, and just love outlasting, outtanking, and allowing for some burst damage when needed. I find that in small groups you are actually the “tankiest” in a solo/minigroup aspect with 30 in soul reaping and bouncing back and forth between DS and Staff/DD. If you focus on Viatality and Power, you can reach 28k health and using certain traits get 3% DS per mark, and you have 4 from the staff and onefrom dodging (traited), therefore gaining “health” very frequently. Then going for Dhumfire and the 50% crit in DS, you have a lot of on demand burst, shooting for 2500 Life Blasts once they leave you alone, due to tankiness. You have 2 on demand condi removals, a blind, a weakness, a chill,2 fears, an immobilize, and practically permanant regeneration (although you wont heal whilst in DS) with getting free condition duration in the power trait line. Also, my favorite part about this build is that you can use any utilities, and i recommend well of power, corruption, or darkness, spectral walk, and whatever else. then using Lich for more damage in a small party, and plague for everything else in WvW (especially zergs).
I’ve found through playing that going full tank necro is kinda…. meh… in all aspects because all you get is a bunch of health and nothing to do with it. Conversly to proffs like Guardians and Warriors who have invulnurabilities and Blocks and easy stability, we get minor health regen and very very little Crowd control in WvW and still get smacked for a hell of a lot more than we can heal in PvE. Although, if you want to focus specifically on wells or Minions, you can go full tank, but i’d try to persuade you away from attempting to vampire yourself unkillable.
To talk to Minion Master in WvW. You’d prolly survive ok, but with lack of utilities, and the massive amount of AOE in zergs, you’d really only be useful at killing a door, and only so good at that.
All in all, Necromancers are durable and survivable simply by virtue of their death shroud, as it is a second health pool. As this is balanced for a 1v1 situation (so as not to be broken) the more people wailing on you, the less tanky you are, unlike blocks and invu which block 100% of damage. I’ve found that it makes less sense to focus on survivability ignoring the Death shroud, and rather focus on death shroud, or dip into death shroud, as that bar regenerates the fastest.
Elemantalist! I’ve played a bit of ele, and really like the playstyle because of its insane mobility with D/D. You have so so so many things at your disposal including large heals, CC, conditon removal, extreme movment, and versatile skills. They are squishy, but can mitigate so much damage and survive brutal assaults. The important thing to understand is that all of these options require you to know your class very well, and swap between attunments frequently and know your cooldowns. So, putting skill and time aside, its about using a lot of abilities and combos to achieve everything. I can’t talk about how they work in a zerg, but they are required to be melee if you stay as D/D and Necromancer (wells/plague form)/warr/guard are really the only classes that can last any time in melee so you wont do much, but in small skirmishes you can practically go in and out of battle and support your teammate whilst haveing burst waiting in your pocket to open up and massacre someone.
I cannot speak about rangers, but i assume pets would get lost in zergs, but be decent or good in skrims.
ALSO! it’s important to note that traits are coming up very soon, as well as a lot of class balances are coming soon! So… tbh…. look at the flavor of each proff, look at the weapons themselves, and go from there. Recognize that Necro will use Death Shroud very often and those skills don’t change as well as the highest base health. Recognize that Ele will ALWAYS have 20 skills per weapon set and the lowest base health. Ranger will be quircky, have split power, and have the ability to be tricky and survivable.
I hope this was informative and/or helpful, I didn’t read back through it, so please question or critizite whatever you want :P
P.s. This is mostly from a WvW perspective due to your stance on PvE being mute as my arguemnt for you is to play whatever is the most flavorful and fun due to your lucky group of friends actually enjoying the game! haha
