Guild Wars 2

Nah, Anet made necro intentionally a pood choice for PVE and I doubt that will change. Would they care that one of the classes is so bad in PVE that it gets kicked from dungs even with the best build they would have changed it two years ago, no reason to wait now. Reaper nerf INC in 3…2…1…

I have a condi build but it falls short of expectations. Eventually I will do the same thing I did with my necro – do power and keep those aoe spells for zerg tagging in WvW.

Well, absurd ammounts of BoHs got nerfed to very rare goods. Those who stockpiled will benefit, others… well screw others, Anet says.

Yes, more raptors! and not just 10, make it 20! And they can cast lightning bolts for 10k dmg each. Why not…

Still. This is very, very bad decision from anet. The new map is like a mine field. Diehards already zerged it and won’t return back, and casuals can’t succeed because it is too dangerous for them.
Oh, and grind. Grindy grind that grinds tens of hours into grinded dust of what could have been enjoyable but is not because… why exactly? So that some Anet employee could boast his kitten by saying “our group is for hardcore gamers only”? It sure wasn’t to benefit average paying customer of GW2…

+1 everyone. Why is a map that requires having tons of people around so empty? Why can’t I find anyone for champion challenges? Why do I have to farm in a train for like 40 hours to get masteries required for elite spec that I need at the beginning to begin with?

Poor game design, very poor game design.

Why the hell didn’t they give us an opportunity to convert spirit shards into hero points? It would make good sence. The ratio could be ridiculous, like 1:20, but there would be a way. Now we are stuck with spending hours trying to get people to do champion challenges or spend tens of hours trying to farm masteries. What a lovely options…

In VB there are 5 champ hero challenges (and 2 require high rank). When you say it is easy to get people to kill them then how come I was trying my best yesterday (switching zones and TS servers) and didn’t find a single person to go there with me?
If it is so easy, how come it doesn’t happen? Please, explain this to me, I would love to hear your explanation!

OP,

your opinion is irrelevant and frankly a bit offensive. It is a logical falacy. It doesn’t matter if I get better when better getting half of hero challenges in VB depends on other people, not on myself? I can get better but I will still be dependant on others, no matter how good I am. Solo I am nothing regardless since Anet prevented me from soloing champs.
Difference between solo and group play, you know. Solo is dead. That is why people whine.

Burst dmg? That would be power wells build. The thing is, enemy needs only to roll to avoid your most serious bursts. Of course you can pick a dagger and spam the first attack for the criticals, but to do that you would be in the very heat of battle, which is what you don’t want since you lack the skills to get out properly if taking damage.
Anyway, I use wells in WvW since it is the only thing that enables me to get any marks whatsoever. Also, very usefull on downed targets, it helps to kill them fast to that they won’t get up from your jagged horrors.

Necro is too cool not to play it, even bugged. Not strong, not op, not competitive, just fun. And that alone can make people do the strangest things.

Necro can take 8-9 lvl 80 mobs? the truth is he CAN! He won’d live long enough to kill them though … Anyway, you stated the class is capable of doing that, so give me a video or fraps of necro doing exactly that. Thank you.

Also, with the gear in the videos, show me any enemy class performing worse than necro.

Your post may seem as a justification of necro class, but actually all it says is that with top gear necro has one build that with proper playing stands some chance. Wow. Respect man, didn’t know that! Now be a good boy and show me how ANY other class performs worse in same conditions. You can’t? There is your answer.

Necro’s best crowd controling is mindless running arround to make sure everyone in the area marks you as a target. Then, all you need is a Signet of Locust and dodging to keep the crowd behind from killing you. Thats it, now you control the crowd!
Works in PvP too, at least on melee classes.

Well … some fixes, thats nice, but none of those fixes will fix the necro gameplay. Siphon still bugged (thus vampiric build is off), minions still dumb as a rock (thus minion master build is off), no fixes to conditionmaster skillset …
I mean, great thing they started, but hey, all classes have been getting fixes for like a month now. We got our first fixes of less important stuff today … I appreciate the change, I really do, but can’t appreciate the results. Not until something of importance is fixed.

Basically what Katai said.
I love WvW and there, one can do a “thing” or two with the necro. The “thing” is rather strange, though, because it requires a lot of variability in skills.
I actually went with condition master, staff and scepter/dagger. Consume condition, the two wells that do damage (sorry, to early in the morning to think properly), epidemic and plague.
It is one of the “WTF” builds, but it is the one I found working most in WvW. Of course I can go all conditions, take corrupts and blood is power and such, but it actually isn’t helpfull at all when you waste your skill bar on three enemies, who don’t give a kitten about being conditioned when there is more than thirty other players marking me as a target. No sir, not a way to go.
Thus, the wells. Reliable damage. A thing that necro simply doesn’t have and for that reason necro is UP. Those two wells doing damage can be applied fairly fast and are the ONLY thing that makes necro either get no drop or some drop. then, epidemic. I have my own scepter and traits for bleeding, but the key to mastering condition necro in WvW is understanding that I will never be able to apply conditions as well as other 15 people arround me. So, picking a properly conditioned target in range of the enemy team does too much to ignore. And plague, no need to explain, same case as epidemic.
Again, I know its lolbuild, but the most usefull in WvW. Marking gates, welling gates, death shrouding and repeat. Best XP I’ve ever had.

+1 and bump! Come on kittens, daddy needs some Rabid jewels!

I am lvl 80 too, I am, too, aware of the bugfest that weights heavily on my class’ ability to perform on par. Still love it, and that is why I play it.
Well, that and the fact that I need money and karma … but those don’t really count, do they?

Necro minions are plain boredom while in the game there are dozens of great undead animations. Birds, zombies, golems, you name it. We’ve all seen them in our story or just when exploring the world. So, why does necro get a huge skeletal flying pseudo-fish, a kaboom rats, a scorpion (most boring of all), a blob of bad textures and a something that looks like stolen from Silent Hill except for all the cool image? See the necro section to find out what am I talking about. From all the bugs and design flaws the necro has, minions are one of the bigger ones.
And why, I have to ask. Why, when out there, in the game world, we see much better models, much better beasts?
So I got an idea. How about making necro minions system more ranger-like? Why don’t we let the necro to decide which undead beasts he wants to summon when the models are already in place? Why don’t we get a ritual that would allow us to reanimate a corpse of certain dead being to add it to our collection, pretty much just like the hunter does?
The minions are already devided into “classes”, “families”. We have a ranged healer, a utility, ranged dps, melee dps and heavy hitter. We can leave the flesh golem in its place since it is an elite skill, but what about the rest? Why don’t we get an undead owl or raven, why can’t we reanimate undead inquest asuras for ranged dps, why can’t we reanimate sylvari or cats for melee dps? Why don’t we get an undead chicken instead of that bone minion thing, whatever it was supposed to be?
Most of the models are already in game, and necro minions are broken to the point when they will need serious rework anyway. So, why not to start with something cool that would give the class some love? Most of what you need is already in game, why not use it?

Thank you for constructive criticism, looking forward to your reactions.

CptCosmic, ranger doesn’t have to do a thing of those since aoe condition damage on bigger group isn’t that great. You say “the whole enemy team”, I say 2 other players in average at max due to its short range.
You say 2k toughness. If you are to get that many toughness it means your condition damage will suck. You can’t have all you posted in one build.
One more thing, necro is great at spreading conditions, not maintaining them. You can make 4 people get the conditions, but they will do only a minor damage and will be removed shortly given the high volume of condition-removing abilities in game. After than, ranger can maintain his damage, necro can’t. Together they may be quite effective, but solo, don’t be ridiculous, you will never win a match with a hunter with some skills in playing his character.
Ranger, as the name states, has range. He doesn’t need a DS (also wrongly described as a “second life bar”, which it is not), but on the other hand he has a pet. Pet can hurt the necro quite bad in 15-30 seconds gap and necro just can’t counter it.

Necro is limited at long distance and daggers, mediocre at their damage, are 130 range.

As regards conditions, hunter wins anytime. Every group having four condition-oriented players should have a necromancer for its epidemic, but it is a niche, way of supporting group which is already strong. It doesn’t make necro either strong or competitive, just niche.

Agreed. IF the bugs were fixed then I suppose a minor buff in some less important areas would make us competitive. The thing is, even after all bugs fixed, we still would have the weakest weapons in game (even with power builds), out conditions application is by far the slowest (even with proper condition builds) and such, but those are rather minor things, adding like 30-50 damage here or +1 bleed stack per hit over there aren’t things of huge impact on how is the class played, but they are required to make us competitive. But without the bugs fixed, it is just not worth it.

Also, scaling. Mangocheesecake has it just right. Siphon health should be much higher than current 25 if we are co be competitive, and minions do need to scale more, they are quite weak already and once everyone will start wearing exotic lvl80 gear, they are too weak to be an asset. No matter how Anet decides to fix it, some tweaking is required. Hope they do it soon. Will be playing my engineer and warrior until then.

And now the important question: Will I be able to throw kittens arround or I will be the poor kitten?

The only way of stats affecting minions is that they are low and as a consequence minions are close to useless. Other than that, if they were meant to scale, it is probably bugged, so …

You are missing some DS-focused build. It is one of the iconic abilities of necro and there should definitely be some synergic skills to that ability as well as traits.
It would be great if there would be a build focused on fast gathering of DS life force and its strength, supported by lets say one weapon being especially great for DS life force gathering. Of course the weapon should not be DD oriented, more like a mediocre way of annoying the enemy, but all that to enable and maybe even enhance a DS which should shine due to high damage and maybe some more utility skills or boons.
Now I don’t say there aren’t some parts already in game, but they don’t fulfill that role and certainly they don’t synergise, all being signs of game design not being as thorough as it should be. And since game designers tells us to L2P, this probably won’t ever happen.

Konrad, stop seeing him as a player with experience and see him as a theory crafter. I like to read his theories since they push me to explore what my favorite class could be capable of at some point. His theories not working in practise wouldn’t surprise you that much since you would know he just neglected some factor or he doesn’t really care about the general picture, as theory crafters often do. You know, don’t expect him to be what he isn’t and appreciate what he is.

Mezirah, I will try out your playstyle today. Thank you for the inspiration!

It is, however, smoke and mirrors, I agree with it. Did you see the build Tony posted yesterday? Agressive short range build that can somehow burst some damage and apply some conditions. But this is it. Now most of people running WvW, even sPvP aren’t awesome, and not even average players, they are just lame. PVE folsk playing big PvP game. In other words, noobz you can intimidate by your agressive playstyle, but once your enemy has some experience, he is bully-proofand once he remembers that current necro has no way of being a serious threat, he just kills you. Tony’s build and what you say, those things are fun because if you meet a noob you just storm him and win. Though your success isn’t assured by your skill or your proper build, but by him running away and loosing his mind and focus. Finding proper enemies means you are dead and can’t change that.

My current server was matched with some DE server, Elona’s Reach I think is the name. And I must pay my respects to them, not even did they manage their numbers well, but most of them had exact idea how to behave and how to play the class. Then I discovered many german powergamers moved to that server (and not loosing that much to them made me feel somehow good about my own server). Seriously, either on 1vs1, small scale pvp or zerg vs zerg, not a single one of them was intimidated by agressive playstyle, they all kept their heads cool and focused on their calculated rotations and common sence. Now the important question: guess how competitive necro is in that enviroment? A little hint: not at all.

The thing is, once they fix Death nova, striker’s build will be the best. Death nova spreads powerfull aoe poison whenever minion dies. But it doesn’t work, poison isn’t spread when I kaboom my bone minions, neither it is when my jagger horror dies. Both are crutial for making this build work!
Also basically Death nova is the only trait justifying jagged horrors in their current form, which demands special thanks from me, since justifying something that useless, broken and pointless is a deed worth remembering.

And you are the only person that does know how to play it. Eh.
How are the chances of you being right and everyone else wrong compared to everyone else being right and you being a blabbermouth? Marginal.

Your build is a nice one, should somehow work, but the range kills you. Against static subpar enemies (=pve) you have a chance, against skilled enemy you are a joke. Basically your build suggests you get into battle and wreak havoc. It works in a similar way as traps do – both ways. The fact that you are close to the enemy in light armor with low toughness and nice HP pool makes you as much dead as being close to the enemy in light armor with no toughness. You have no hand brake and DS won’t last enough to buy you enough time to escape if someone aims at you, since DS can be broken in seconds.
You can say how you pwn warriors and such, but it only makes you look more ridiculous. Warriors are incredibly easy to play, meaning high percentage of them are rather unskilled players. Those you can kill, even with necro. But try to joke arround with one knowing his ways and you will end up gutted in pieces before you can even understand what went wrong.

Basically your build works just fine until the enemy learns to double tap. Your daggers? Low range = useless for those 4 or so classes that can keep you at range. Your wells? Can be dodged. Your flesh golem charge makes the most sence of your build, pity it works in like 50% of cases since the golem has issues with positioning. Works in theory, not in practise. Spectral armor? Once the enemy starts beating you at 0 range (which is your default one with this build) its already too late, it will only delay your death, not give you something to save you. Also, no reliable way of breaking stun and escaping …

Find enemies who are capable of doubletapping movement keys and then come and tell us how we all suck and that you are the only one who knows the way … you are so class cannon you hurt my eyes. Today I was gutting similar necro builds in wvw with my 38 engineer, no endurance in battle since you can’t get more glass cannon-ish than that. So many weaknesses, so niche strengths. Anyway, have fun with tise build, it is one of few that have some fun factor right now.

Tried out today and felt fairly disappointed. Given what other classes get for 30 skill points I see this as a bad investment.
I know it provides some benefits, but the current state simpyl doesn’t justify both the 30 SP costs and elite skill slot ocupancy. For free this skill would be great, for the price it just doesn’t pay of.

Kayotik, wait! Jon Peters tells us DS is basically a second HP pool and we have to learn to useit as such, and you tell us that in order to achieve greatness, we shouldn’t treat it as such?
How isn’t that a sign of flawed design?

It would be great if most necro players wouldn’t care about minions, because it would be a consequence of a class tha can be adjusted for many roles.
Now it is different though. Many necro skills don’t synergise together, builds made from player curiosity don’t lead to niche and fun experience, so people turn to what is iconic to the class – minions. And whine when they realise those are useless . Not because they would particularly care about the minions, but because it is one of things the class is somehow guaranteed to have as a strength and it isn’t fulfilled.

Leeto.1570:

Necros arent underpowered their just not rewarding, once you master it your just as good as everyone else but not better.

Sorry but no matter how hard I try I just can’t make my elementalist, engineer and guardian suck as hard as my necro, who got most attention and effort to learn its niches.
Now, please, stop this … There is a huge group of people stating the necro is broken and few people saying it is ok. How about you tell us how is the necro competitive, how is it as good as everyone else? How can we achieve that? What are we doing wrong?
Stating something is OK is easy if you don’t feel like justifying your statement.

Dear Jon Peters,
fix the bugs, fix traits not working, fix minion AI and then, only then, we may discuss the necro having steep learning curve.
How come a game designer of such a complex game is so short-sighted, anyway?

Btw, I don’t get one thing. How can we master DS?
DS is basically the easiest thing on necro. Four skills, extra HP bar. If by “mastering” you mean “know when to press the F1 button”, then there is something wrong … Takes like 15 minutes to find out what is it capable of and another sixty or so to find out when iti s worth using and when it is not.
If you would say, for example, master weapon switching, master minion skills or master equipment choices, what would be something. But this … I don’t know, just fail.

Yes, yes, for the love of gods, YES! This!
The general idea of necro minion master build is to be as annoying as possible, and achieve that via our servitors. Nothing less, nothing more, but this. Don’t forget that.
Now, basically all minion masters need to take traits giving their minions more damage, more HP and the trait to summon them faster. At the end of our journey we are supposed to take traits like death nova, which somehow justifies the jagged horrors even in their current state. Also, health siphon skills, for both me and that of a minions. We are to have minions, they are to heal us, they are to annoy the enemy as much as possible and we are to summon more once they die (which is very soon, and it is good since they would be fairly imbalanced if changed).
The thing is, this build is almost viable, even for PvP. The thing that makes this build totaly useless is minion AI. Suddenly all your plans to annoy fall apart as your bone minions just stand arround, flesh golem decides it is better to beat a doe on its own rather than help you with the enemy, shadow fiend loves to stand arround and watch the scenery … The only minions working as they should are range minions, bone and devourerish ones are quite ok for now. All melee minions sometimes attack, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they just decide to move a bit closer to the enemy but they don’t hit him, probably deciding to stare him to death or something. And this is where all your strategy dies. Without them hitting the enemy, no siphon. Without flesh golem being close to the enemy, you can’t stun him. Shadow fiend can’t blind, he is too far away. Bone minions can perform a “poof of doom”, yay! Pity they aren’t in the distance to cause any damage at all. So, no siphon for you, no being annoying and the only minions skill that works just fine is sacrificing your blood fiend.
Minion master is a great build, it is fun to play and even challenging, somehow versatile and all, but it all rises and falls with minions doing their job, no matter it is just standing there, hitting the enemy a few times and dying shortly after. This needs to be fixed, for other than that you are just a bellow-average necro who uses unboosted death shroud. Not a fun thing to realise once you hit 80 and expect the build to behave in some way.