Guild Wars 2

This is a main reason I’ve severely cut down on how much I play. I stopped watching streamers because it’s so boring between matches, and I wait 7-8 minutes for every queue. When that queue ends up having a 4 man, organized premade on the other team, or a 4v5, and it’s another 7-8 minutes even after that match ends, and you end up spending a lot of time to have literally no fun.

I have no idea how the average queue is less than 3 minutes at any point. That means that for every Nos out there, there’s like 7 people getting instant queues.

Voting Chaith. And if he’s in a V-neck, then it’s easily Chaith.

Necro is not bottom tier in pvp. We’re in a better spot than rangers, engis, guards and warriors, so that’s top half right there. Countering eles also helps.

You should bow down to your necro overlords and they may spare you.

OneKlicKill.4285:

Roe.3679:

If necro is the “weakest” light armor class, it’s only because ele and mesmer are so strong. Necro is fine. It finally can play the attrition role it was promised, can contribute to a team, and still has all of the major weaknesses it always had.

If you don’t mind me asking, what is the necros “major weakness” cause when i play necro I feel just as strong as my ele or mesmer. They are just the only of the 3 that don’t really have a standard default rotation to approach every fight, you have to actually think which is why so many people think they are weak cause its apparently hard to think… Now I think ele needs the burning stack application tweaked (reduce stack application increase duration) and mesmer could still use some toning down on their burst and/or stun/daze intensity. But all 3 classes are in an amazing place, the same cannot be said for the medium armor classes right now.

Necro has always lacked mobility, escapes, has little stability, and it’s defenses are largely unavailable to begin a match, and said defenses don’t scale with more enemies. It all adds up to mean that if you focus a necro, you will kill it, which has always been true since launch.

If necro is the “weakest” light armor class, it’s only because ele and mesmer are so strong. Necro is fine. It finally can play the attrition role it was promised, can contribute to a team, and still has all of the major weaknesses it always had.

The best answer is debuffs.

Cele signets is probably the strongest buid, which corrupts boons into debuffs, sends debuffs back to the enemy, and naturally provides a lot of close range debuffs, namely weakness and cripple and a handful of bleeds. All the while they can still take a punch, deliver cc, deal good damage and provide some resemblance of support.

I think people are right to be critical of the reaper right now. The shouts are weak and could have addressed some weaknesses for necro, but instead they are mostly selfish and have cast times. Especially the shout heal and elite could have filled needed roles, but didn’t. I don’t see them unseating signets, spectrals, and even wells.

Greatsword has some neat utility, but ultimately relies on one big skill for any life force generation. It has chill but in pvp, it won’t land a lot of the time. Compare that to dagger warhorn, which has swiftness, plenty of life force, and comparable cc.

Reaper shroud is cool, but losing the range on normal death shroud is going to hurt for anyone taking a melee set.

And lastly the changes to cc skills does hurt reaper to some extent.

Personally, reaper is my only real motivation to buy HoT, and as of right now I am not planning on getting it. Maybe if they revamp reaper a bit I’ll budge, but I’m not paying for a trait line and weapon I won’t use.

I wish they would decrease the time that you’re in the map but the game hasn’t started, increase the timer to accept, and let us queue from anywhere again. I would be playing a lot more gw2 if I didn’t have to sit in hot for 7-8 minutes doing nothing between every match.

It’s not very fun to watch streamers for the same reason.

Awesome change, too bad it took so long.

Mesmers and rampage toned down = net win even with our very small changes that are being way overreacted to here.

Necro is in a much stronger place than most of you seem to think.

Linnael.1069:

Roe.3679:

You can feel free to check my pre-Dec. 17th pvp rankings if you think I’m such a low level player.

They aren’t going to revamp the whole class, perhaps you should get that through your head. It’s been requested, discussed, refined upon, compiled, etc for years. It’s not happening.

So rather than admit how wrong you were, the moment your bullkitten was called out you literally just resorted to telling people to stop suggesting things because you think the devs are never going to do anything.

I’m not even going to talk about kitten like “never going to be an expansion” “never going to get flying” “never going to get dueling”. You’re literally the opposite of constructive. Get off the forum you troll.

What exactly am I wrong about?

Interesting that you call me a troll for pointing out that revamping the entire class wont happen. Perhaps a more prudent suggestion, like a smaller life force pool, that fills more quickly and more abilities that gain life force with more enemies around would solve the issue without turning us into mesmers 2.0.

Again, feel free to search my pages and pages of post history to see my constructive posts. Just because you noticed that (if EVERYTHING were different) DS could make more sense as a burst mechanic instead of how it works now doesn’t mean that anyone who disagrees is wrong. It’s a good observation, but means nothing, because it’s so far from the reality of the class.

The devs don’t make fast changes to classes even when things are wildly under or overppwered, so they certainly won’t go searching for things like this. We already know what we are getting in the expansion, and it doesn’t address this at all. That doesn’t even have a release date, even though it was announced over 6 months ago.

It’s cute that you think this could go somewhere, but I suggest you accept Necromancers as they are.

You can feel free to check my pre-Dec. 17th pvp rankings if you think I’m such a low level player.

They aren’t going to revamp the whole class, perhaps you should get that through your head. It’s been requested, discussed, refined upon, compiled, etc for years. It’s not happening.

I understand what you’re trying to say, which is that this type of set up seems like it would fit a burst class/mechanic better. But in order for that to work, everything needs to change. Mesmers are everything that you’re describing. They have a resource that needs to be built up and can be rapidly expended, and they have the tools to survive without said resource. Just because getting zerged can go through your DS quickly doesn’t mean it always is gone quickly. You probably need to work on your positioning if you’re always running through a full DS bar in a few seconds.

And what awful players are you fighting that fights take so long? I kill most celes in 30 seconds, bunker guards in less than a minute. Burst classes either kill me in their opening combo or are dead shortly after. The only spec that takes awhile for me to kill is actually an mm necro, which supports the whole attrition thing more than your theory.

Linnael.1069:

Muchacho.2390:

Linnael.1069:

So you’re saying that if LF was high generation low-pool then it would be an attrition mechanic, but because currently it is low generation high-pool its a burst mechanic?

nice to see you agree with me.

Also not quite sure how you determined that LF would go down faster if all you did was lower the max and raise generation.

Mhh maybe i have a different definition of a burst mechanic but i dont consider a bad implemented attrition mechanic as a burst-mechanic but whatever.

What i mean with LF goes down faster is if you reduce the max LF enemy attacks will drain LF quicker (in precents) and knock you out of DS quicker. Well i guess that is what you want since it would make DS worse against burst.

You would need to completely reverse some of the core properties of the life force system to turn it into an attrition system. Sure it’s an implementation error, if by that you mean they totally implemented the wrong thing.

manveruppd.7601:

snip

This guy gets it. I’m going to ask all the people talking about whether necro should or shouldn’t be good at power burst to go and read the whole thread again.

It takes 26 seconds or so for a full life force bar to degenerate, and 51 with VP. Does that amount of time seem bursty? If it were all gone in seconds you might have a better point, but it’s not.

I mean sure, if they gave the class a ton of active defenses, changed almost all of our weapon skills, DS skills and utilities, and made DS drain quickly for hard hitting skills, you’d be right. But then we’d just be mesmers.

Eles seem fine to me.

Necros used to be able to start matches with 30% because of minion sacrificing. I don’t see why that shouldn’t come back, and regenerating to 10% out of combat wouldn’t be game breaking. At least that way necros would have access to doom or on entry/exit traits when a fight starts.

Everything zapv said, plus it does super well against eles and just about everything except a warrior using rampage and mesmers, but even then there are options. It’s the only necro build I’ve ever played that can actually recover from a burst.

Disagree that it’s bad in team fights, although it doesn’t have a ton of aoe pressure so I can see where that comes from.

Death magic is objectively the worst necro trait line and all this trait gives you is stats. It should have much higher stavks so it actually mattered in group play, otherwose it won’t ever be meta.

Aereniel.7356:

abc.5790:

Solo Q wasn’t the problem, it was Team Q. If they separated team and solo, the teams would suffer by not having enough teams to go against. If the pvp pool is 20x the number, then a separate queue would make more sense.

Merging queues is a stop-gap solution at best that does not fix the underlying issues. Let’s face it – teams are unhappy with the current system regardless of queue times, because it’s extremely hard to get good competitive matches with the existing queue system. If you have an established team and don’t want to waste your evening by stomping PUGs, your only option is to agree scrims against other established teams in a private arena, rendering ranked queue practically useless. This leads to the exclusive and stagnant scene we have, where the likes of ROM, Helseth and Chaith have to go on Points of Interest to practically beg WvW players to give sPvP a try in order to get some new blood in.

The two biggest issues that limit the growth of sPvP are the lack of incentives for entry level or mid level teams to stick together and tryhard, and the lack of in-game support for the forming of new teams. The only two segments of the sPvP population that are currently catered to are the ultra-casual soloers and the established top echelon of tPvP, meaning people with under 500 games or people that compete and win ESL weeklies on a regular basis. If only Anet got around to providing a proper seasonal league system with meaningful leaderboards and PvP-exclusive rewards tied to said leaderboards, the PvP in this game might actually take off and grow. A competitive solo queue is an absolute must-have part of that development.

These are my thoughts exactly. Great post.

Shroud always interrupted a stomp.

There should be a soloQ option for solo players just like there will be a stronghold/conquest option. That way soloQ players can still be in the team queue but can avoid teams if they want.

I always thought the Sclerite warhorn was way cooler than howler, so that’s what I got. It’s gotten pretty pricy lately but still probably less than a legendary.

I always waited about 8 minutes for a match. It’s one of the major reasons I am playing less often.

Pretty obvious that they changed chilling darkness because if reaper chill traits and plague form.

Oh look, Eremite had another subjective experience that he decided to declare as fact on the forums.

So what you’ve been doing is forcing necro into a roaming role even though it’s been known for years to have weaknesses in that area, and then complaining when better roaming classes have an advantage. This is the definition of forcing a round peg into a square hole, and you’re complaining that it’s not fitting.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Laraley.7695:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Rampage may be strong 1v1 but its an elite.. It should be.

Anndd it can be moa’d.

Besides, in its current form it is now actually worth caring about without being overbearing. Before it was laughable.

You know the problem is that other classes do not have access to such a powerful elite. Look at eles for example, Tornado is probably one of the worst transforms this game has. They either need to buff all of the elites or nerf Rampage to put them in line. But honestly all these zerkers warriors just count on Rampage to win fights, which is kinda dumb if you ask me.

I agree. But then look at lich. Who’d win, Rampage War or Lich Necro?

Ele’s elite just falls short compared to the other transformations, but I wouldn’t have them toned down to Tornado level and thus all made useless. Tornado should have a powerful presence on the battlefield like the others.

(Then again Eles really got shafted when it comes to useful elites in PvP)

Rampage warr without a doubt. They take much less damage and have more hp, while having the cc needed to burn through stability, which is a smaller stack on lich, and still dealing similar damage.

It would help if stability could actually be corrupted into frar, but right now it isn’t working. Even if it could, rampage is by far more powerful than lich.

Dagger warhorn is our best set up, in my opinion.

They are tanky but don’t deal nearly the damage a turret engi did, and minions die much easier. And since many of them are melee, the AI is terrible compared to ranged, stationary turrets.

I only play pvp and I don’t plan to buy the expansion. I still get Stronghold and the new WvW borderland should I ever go there, and after seeing the other traitlines, Reaper doesn’t interest me a whole lot.

First, no one is forcing any of you to play the class if you’re so convinced that it’s bad. If you don’t like it, I’m sure that no one will notice another warrior or ele running around. I have no idea why anyone would continue play something that they complain about so much, it’s a game afterall. Play it for fun or don’t play it. It’s like the video game equivalent to an abusive relationship.

Second, I am not convinved – a week into the meta (LOL this thread)- that things are so bad. Has no one else noticed that shoutbow or dps medi guards are gone? That engineers and thieves, who were thought to be so much stronger post patch, actually both seem weaker, defensively? That since unpredicatable burst is so possible that having a high HP pool actually is very helpful defense? That condition transfers are ridiculously powerful? That the spite tree alone allows necros to take more defensive amulets due to the might stacks?

This meta isn’t even close to settling. Maybe necro ends up at the bottom again, but I’m seeing a lot of classes who were at the top suddenly seeming to be a lot worse (probably because they lost a lot of defensive stats), and necro feels noticeably better, because we never took defense to begin with.

This should have happened to Grenadier days ago.

Spite is super strong and it’s very easy to be running around with 20 stacks of might. If it weren’t gated it would be OP by a mile.

Your should add that rampage can rez and stomp when other elite transforms can’t.

Maris.3164:

Rym.1469:

To be honest, everyone got some passives this patch.

Necro got Plague Sending which is pretty much mandatory after they nerfed Consume Conditions. Not to mention if you, bless upon your soul, try to run MoC.

But I believe Eles, Engineers, Warriors all got their own, not to mention other profs.

Design choice.

There’s really nothing passive about thief before or after the patch. You know when pre-patch everyone said 2 thieves in the same team is a certain loss? It’s even worse now when they cannot survive long enough to burst down a target.

Panic strike.

It used to be 10 seconds but now it is 5.

Yeah the other necro was an MM and t wiped his minions and gave us both life force. Next match was 0% again.

leman.7682:

Have been playing in soloq for three days now on my remorseless power ranger (inb4 Bhawb calls me a moron for stacking conditions against necros) and necro definitely seems absurdly op in 1v1s. The baseline marks combined with all the passive traitworks are just putting it way over the top.

I can outplay the necro on many levels and even then they will just get into plague form and get out of it with DS cooldown gone and full life force.

The damage is too high for the amount of survi, condi manipulation and cc that the profession can make.

And before someone calls me out with ‘l2p’, I have 5000 ranked matches played on necro in a rather high MMR, so I know what I’m talking about.

I’ve been annhilating other necromancers since the patch. Obviously I’m doing this on my necro, but I’m not seeing where the class is so strong like you’re describing here. At least before the patch I was a little worried that another necro could life blast me into oblivion, but now I find that I just beat them down because I know the class better. Usually super strong classes are still OK in the hands of a new/average player, but necro doesn’t seem to be in that position.

I have found MM to be very tanky, but not necessarily OP. They are still just as weak to all the same things as usual.

I wonder how much of your perspective is shaped by rangers still seeming like a weak class. Potentially even the weakest class right now.

Just played a match and noticed I had started with 30% life force as soon as the match timer started (the 10 second one). I asked the other necro on my team, and they also had 30%.

Nice little buff that I didn’t notice at all until just now.

I’m pretty sure I drew condis from my flesh golem when I was running it. Not an official test or anything but I’m sure it was the only thing around to take condis from.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Supreme.3164:

Drayos.8759:

Gern.2978:

All in the title.

With the way condi’s are right now, plus the sheer tankyness they have always had, they have ruined PvP for me.

really? power necro exists which is quite squishy, its only the bunker necros holding sooo much survivability.

Also with Mesmers and Engineers sitting how they are u think NECROS ruined pvp? oh please, I’ll take someone who has 0 presence and lives forever over the Shatter condis Disrupting everything u do and finishing u in 2 seconds flat, or a Engi abusing the bugs which cause them to hit u for 15k dmg with Gernades.

I think its Stupid to QQ on Necros, they’re about the only class with 0 OP Mechanics and Resembling balance lol.

And yet..here I am…loading as much condi clear as I can..to avoid being 100 to 0 by somebody sitting at 900-1200 range , doing nothing but press buttons as they come off CD, then run in circle while pressing 1 on scepter…and yet…necro is considered UP…kk

So poor necros lose when a team focus them…hhmm that’s goes for every freaking class in the game??

What about necros sitting in the backline pressing scepter 1, all passive condi crit/transfer..is that hard too? What about triple signet necro, is that UP too? Newly support necro?

..all UP isn’kitten

And apparently making no effort to close said 1200-900 range gap, since Necros don’t have gap openers. This is about as L2P as you can get.

And no, not every class does lose when focused by the enemy team. Everyone but Necro has some ability to escape that focus or make it pointless for some time.

Guard, generally, has no escapes. All of his mobility skills drive him deeper into the fight. Sure, you can argue that we have blocks, but they only really help you survive for a few seconds if you’re being focused. Even less if you’re facing a torrent of conditions.

Warrior has literally one weapon that allows them to escape, but that weapon is tied to a DPS build that without endure pain or resistance will, again, get melted down in seconds.

Ranger has signet of stone and that’s literally it. You can talk about GS, but its the same issue that warrior has but with even less mobility and innate tankiness.

Literally 4 of the 8 classes have any RELIABLE escape mechanisms when running away from non-bads, so don’t give us any of that “BUT NECRO CANT ESCAPE” bs.

I adapted my pre-patch medi build to the new system and managed a total of the following stats without boons:

2.3k power.
2.3k armor.
55% crit rate.
200% crit damage.
20k HP.
And, for the sake of this argument, 2 sizeable condi clears and one mini clear.

And, of course, healthy access to basically every boon in the game save for swiftness and resistance.

There were at least four or five necros I ran into in the last 10 games that literally ran around in circles, dropping condi bombs and hopping in and out of death shroud like it was nobody’s business. I, once, made the mistake of attacking the necro while they had spectral armor up after I burned through the initial DS (which was three quarters if the way full). He literally regained over half of his shroud and kept running around dropping marks and condi blasting me. I had no idea how I was supposed to kill him. Our fight literally lasted so long that I had a chance to throw SoW into my burst AFTER JI came off of cooldown and bursted for nearly 15k damage, which he still shruged off until I got +1d by a thief. I would’ve died looooong ago if didnt have my buttloads of cleanse, but he just kept laughing my damage off. Mind you, when the thief came to +1, I was 5k HP with around 2 stacks of burn, bleed, and poison, with my main clears being on CD.

Am I saying that its impossible to kill a condi necro? No. I’m certain that had I not made the mistake of helping him regain his LF and waited out the armor, I could’ve dropped him with my following bomb, but the fact that I had to time my skills, space out my cleanses, attempt to block his AUTO ATTACKS and he just had to run around in circles just waiting for his condis to do the trick is just not fair. Necro, and especially their condi spec, epitomizes the worst style of play in the game and it honestly, sincerely

Needs.

To.

Go.

Any condi build can kite you. This sounds like condition qq more than anything necro specific.

I got stealth pulled from the no animation stealth magnet and hit for about 12k (ish?) from grenade barrage in a second. I had some toughness too so it wasn’t a glass build. Fun stuff.

Rym.1469:

Roe.3679:

I’ve been playing a cele build that wasn’t too far off from what Nos was running and I took some tips from him, now I’m really loving it. It’s a fun playstyle, in my opinion.

I think I saw him running PC?

Nobody runs PC.

He had Weakning, like 90%.

He had middle traits for every line except spite when I watched his stream, meaning he was running PC.

I’ve been playing a cele build that wasn’t too far off from what Nos was running and I took some tips from him, now I’m really loving it. It’s a fun playstyle, in my opinion.

I think I saw him running PC?

flow.6043:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. No, but I’ve heard of some other people trying bunker builds with it.

2. I have not tried this exact build, but I already know it will not be meta.
Signets might be strong in 1v1s now but they aren’t doing a lot in team fights (except Locust because it’s aoe). But you don’t need to have a lot (or any) signets on your bar with Signets of Suffering anyway because the synergy with Plague Sending and Blood Bond alone makes it worth having.
Also, zombify doesn’t use Blood Magic in that build, big mistake!
And my personal opinion: scepter/dagger is generally too slow for PvP, but that isn’t really a trait-related issue.

3. Have not tried it yet.

4. I actually started using Master of Corruption at first (in both PvP and PvE) but the cd reduction just isn’t worth giving up Terror and getting additional self applied conditions. Blindness on Consume… horrible.

---

The Gates Assassin.9827:

just talk about what you feel is important to mention for Necromancer.

Overall I feel our traits are in a pretty good place after the patch.
However, there are still some issues left:

Spiteful Renewal does not work in Shroud.

Parasitic Contagion does not work in Shroud.

I kind of understand Anet’s position from a balance perspective, not wanting to open the flood gates and allow all sources of healing at once, but traits not working half the time simply excludes them as a viable choice over their alternatives. If the values are too high, make them lower, but the first priority should be that they aren’t rendered useless when combined with our class mechanic.

Unholy Fervor

One week before the patch this trait was previewed to give 10% more damage to all skills against vulnerable foes.
They changed it again and now it’s basically a weaker version of our old Axe Training. (like the axe was that strong it needed a nerf…)

Spiteful Spirit should not have an icd (like Weakening Shroud).

It just doesn’t make sense for a trait that is already gated by life force and the cd of Shroud to additionally have an icd of its own.

Barbed Precision

This trait was changed from 66% to 33% proc chance.
After the past week’s uproar on the forum about this (completely unwarranted) nerf they apparently decided to increase the base duration of the trait from 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds, so it would total 3 seconds with the merged 20% bleeding duration, but that doesn’t fix anything.
The best part about this trait was that you could actually see an increase of bleed stacks if you were under the effect of fury or changed your gear to something with more precision.
But now Barbed Precision is purely based on getting lucky with rng, even with full sinister gear + Deathly Perception + Target the Weak + fury + Spotter + Banner of Discipline.
They basically increased the damage potential with the duration buff, but the actual usability of Barbed Precision in terms of buffing skill rotations with a slight bleed stack increase just doesn’t work anymore. It can’t be controlled with a proc chance this low and is really just pure luck now.

I don’t understand why they nerfed Barbed Precision in the first place, but for all I care the duration of it could be 1 second, just bring back the 66% proc chance. Please!

Soul Comprehension

Weak. Armored Shroud and Beyond the Veil are superb traits, how does Soul Comprehension still exist after the rework?
Even MM necros who have minions dying around them all the time can’t make proper use of this trait. (in part because you don’t get the life force of nearby deaths when in Shroud)

Mark of Evasion

Triggers out of combat. Clearly this is a big issue in PvE, but also a slight annoyance in PvP.
The only other damaging on-dodge trait in the game is Uncatchable (Caltrops) but this one is a major trait, and also, thieves have a lot of other ways to avoid combat without dodging.

Blood Bond

Unlike the real Vamp Signet, the lesser version doesn’t work in Shroud.
Also, this trait should be changed to not require facing your target. It’s less of an issue with the real signet, but with this trait you can hardly control when and on which target Blood Bond is going to trigger.
For example: marks can be cast backwards, so do some boon corruptions like Corrupt Boon, Well of Corruption, Unholy Feast (Spiteful Spirit), then there’s Mark of Evasion, Weakening Shroud, Epidemic… the point is, we have a lot of aoe skills that can inflict bleeding on targets that are standing behind us, in which case the lesser signet will trigger but miss and the trait will go on cooldown.

TGA, this is all you need. Great post.

1. Not using DM. It’s defense is entirely selfish and is debatably strong compared to other lines.

2. I haven’t tried condi specifically because I am seeing diamond skin eles.

3. I ran a cele build that was fun, and I actually saw Nos running something very similar so I must have been onto something. It seemed very strong in the right situations, but definitely had a weakness.

4. You already have feedback but here is more: I’d rather have no cooldown reductions than the changes these skills received. The trait makes these skills worse and this hurt builds. And yeah flesh golem AI is awful.

Seems to be rumblings of necro being op, and seeing a lot of posts except from mesmers about the changes being underwhelming.

I actually think that’s a sign of a good patch, especially for us.

Cleave with dagger and warhorn if you can. Otherwise you can plague stomp if you take plague. But the best choice is always cleaving to farm them for life force, and then blow anyone up that tries to rez.

Ragnarox.9601:

Roe.3679:

“Necros might be competitive pls nerf”

They are not competitive their dmg is out of the scale now. And lots of ppl playing them and using that advantage while they can.

Enjoy while it lasts.

Those making claims need to support it with proof. All I see are people, as usual, complaining that a formerly weak class is now potentially strong only days after the balance patch.