Guild Wars 2

for leveling I always suggest to my guild mates Minion Master build with Staff + dagger or Axe for lvling up faster, an easy start to understand necro play style, also the ability to go full power, condi or even any mixed stats with any weapon and without putting much focus on survivability + the fun of face rolling your keyboard =P

after you reach lvl 80 and understand necro mechanism you can go deeply in Wells for powermancer or Corruption for conditionmancer then more advanced in terror, Death Shroud and other hybrid builds with rest of Signets & Specrtal utilites

also don’t forget to have a look on Namesis guide :
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-tutorials

In open-world PvE, nothing in the game is easier to run than a Minion Master necro. Here’s a quick example of a build that will steamroll most PvE content. Most of its damage still comes from you, with the minions being used mostly for life siphoning and tanking.

If minions aren’t your thing but you still want to focus on stacking conditions, this build will do it pretty easily. It’s still pretty tanky, deals good damage, and in general should give you an easy time.

If you like the idea of Fearing mobs over and over, here’s a Fearomancer build which I’ve been playing around with recently.

And finally, here’s an easy-to-use direct damage build that focuses on stabbing things in the face with a dagger while your Well of Suffering melts them. This build’s Death Shroud skills will are seriously hurt, too. EDIT: I should probably mention that this build is quite a bit squishier than the others and it relies on proper use of your DS for its tanking. But it’s pretty fun to use and the basics aren’t that complicated.

Alright, everyone who says necros are useless and/or not the best at anything: wrong!

If you read something like this you can instantly tell that this person plays only PvE or not a necro at all:

Shafi.8952:

Necros are not much good at anything.
…
Necro is good in spvp. This is untrue
…
Necro is good at condition. This is untrue
…
Epidemic. This relies on other professions to be truly effective.
…
Jake of all trades, master of none. This is untrue

If you think necros are weak in pvp then you have never met a good necro, simple as that. Or you are oblivious to the fact that every top tPvP team runs 1 or even 2 necros these days.

Just some (out of many) examples what necros are best at, simply because they are the only class that has access to it:

Turning boons into conditions: Corrupt Boon and Well of Corruption. Those two skills are the only ones in the entire game which are able do that.
Transfering conditions to your target: There are 5 skills in the entire game. The mesmer’s Arcane Thievery, the other 4 belong to the necro (Putrid Mark, Deathly Swarm, Plague Signet, underwater Life Blast).

So with all those skills, the necro truly is the best condition class in any pvp environment. Other classes might be able to stack faster, but they don’t have those transfers and they don’t have corruption skills.
And saying that necros have less access to different types of conditions: We already had access to every condition in the game before the last patch because of corruption and transfer skills. But since last week at the latest, with Runes of Perplexity, we really have reliable access to every condition in the game.

And btw Dhuumfire fotm builds are not the only strong ones out there. Power builds will rip any bunker class appart just as easily as a corrupting condi necro.

An elementalist dropped this pearl of wisdom on me yesterday in WvW (attachment):
He said he can usually tank 4-5 players, but necros are op and need a nerf because I could kill him easily (and I didn’t use Dhuumfire or Perplexity against him). Dat logic! xD
So if you think that eles are better roamers than necros, you might want to reconsider when you come accross a proper necro.

Necros are decent at quite a few things.

The big one being epidemic, which is the only force multiplier in the game other than quickness. And despite what others above me have said, it dosn’t rely on other professions at all. A good condi necro can stack 12 to 13 bleeds in an AoE rather quickly, and then follow that up with epidemic puts 4 enemies at bleed cap, then 2 enemies half way there. No other class has nearly this potential. This also comes with all of the other conditions that get stacked along the way, such as cripple, weakness, poison, burning, chill, torment, and blind. Throw in other players, and confusion and vulnerability are also multiplied. The biggest advantage here is that epidemic, being a force multiplier, benefits from other players laying down conditions instead of losing out. Necromancer is the only condi class that can claim this, and a good condition necro will disable an entire room of mobs mere moments after entering a room, while doing a ton of damage to boot.

For a good example of what Necros can do, just look at what they do in sPVP. Despite what others above have said, the AoE and disabling potential of Necromancers transfers well to sPVP. The biggest advantage that necros have over other condition classes is that the necromancer can burst long duration conditions. Engineers, rangers, and mesmers all have to slowly build up conditions, or their conditions are extremely short duration. But necromancers lay down long duration conditions, then seal the deal with their deadliest sPVP trait: terror. With terror, the necromancer has a high damaging stun that also prevents condition cleanses, and much to the dismay of low HP classes this can kill an unprepared build outright. They get enough conditions to overwhelm cleanses, which makes them effective in the sPVP scene.

The big confusion people have is that they assume support = buffs and heals. That is a rather shallow definition. While necromancers can give everyone regeneration with marks, protection with spectral wall and wells, and random boons with Well of Power, most of the necromancer support is offensive. Necromancers have the best access to weakness in the game, cutting the direct damage of enemies by 25%. Necromancers are good at stacking vulnerability, which increases the direct damage of all other players by up to 25%. They have good AoE cripple, Chill, and Immobilize, which prevents enemies from escaping as well as prevents enemies from catching up. Then there is boon corruption and blinds, which while some other classes have more access (other classes being thief), necromancer blinds and boon corruption is still extremely useful to the team. Necros also have condition transferrence and corruption, which is superior to cleansing.

One of the cool things necros also have is extremely high Effective HP or EHP. In larger fights the necro has a weakness to being focused, however in smaller fights, Death Shroud provides a large amount of survivability. There are many bosses in the game that have rapid but weaker attacks, and against these bosses the necromancer can face-tank these bosses in bersrker gear. In PVE, against groups of enemies Life Force can regenerate surprisingly quickly, letting the necromancer sit back and blast enemies with a might stacking, vulnerability inflicting, piercing attack that hits for 6k to 8K a shot at range. Necromancers have a high sustained damage, and high EHP combines well with this to make, in all but the worst circumstances, a very deadly combination.

Though necromancers do have their flaws, don’t let that cloud your judgement. There are many things necros do wel.

We are pretty good at fighting hopeless fights, since we can’t get out of any. Don’t ever forget that!

EDIT:
I forgot to mention our useless traits, like Reanimator, and Protection of the Horde, and Dark Armor! We are pretty good at having messed up trait lines!

They bring the creep factor. I mean who wouldn’t want to play someone reanimates corpses then makes them implode for their sick pleasure.

Necros are not much good at anything. There is always another profession that is batter than necro at doing certain role.

People below me might say – Necro is good in spvp. This is untrue, just a few condition remover disables condition necro’s performance; guardians make better bunkers; necro dont have much burst potential to be worth being built to DPS like thieves; Necros hardly have much support skill.

People below me might say – Necro is good at condition. This is untrue, other classes like ranger and engi cant stack more types of condition, mesmer can stack more damaging condition (confusion), gurdians can stack longer conditions (burning), warriors cant inflict more stacks of bleeding with less effort, etc. Edit: forgot to mention the 25 bleed stack limit.

People below me might say – Epidemic. This relies on other professions to be truly effective.

People below me might say – Jake of all trades, master of none. This is untrue, elementalist makes a better jake of all trades due to their attunement swap.

People below me might mention things necros are best at, simply because they are the only class that has access to it.

Palador.2170:

I would like such an option as well.

I know some people will abuse it, but I’ve seen people going around shirtless (and pants-less) already. I doubt we’ll see anything we’ve not seen before.

REAL NORNS DON’T NEED ARMOR!

What are you hiding!? :P

(continued from previous post)

With the pre-nerf version of Deathshroud, if a Necromancer wanted to use it to absorb a singular burst/spike (from a boss, for example), he or she had to make sure they:

1) had built up enough Life Force to be able to enter Deathshroud to begin with (we can’t enter this from unless we’ve built up at least 10% Life Force)

2) Deathshroud itself was off cooldown (untraited, it has a 10 second cooldown after having exited the form)

3) timed their use of Deathshroud correctly in anticipation of absorbing the burst/spike.

It was rewarding to skillfully use our profession-specific mechanic for this purpose; intended or not. Since this was a move almost exclusively reserved for boss fights, it was in no way game breaking or resulting in imbalances in PvP. Though it was certainly used to absorb some bursts from other players – a Warrior’s Hundred Blades or a Thief’s Backstab, for example – it was balanced by the fact that we had to use an expendable resource to achieve this.

It was no more OP than any other class using a block, evade, or invulnerability skill. Exact same concept except that Necromancers have to burn some of their profession-specific resource just to pull off what other classes accomplish through slotting a utility or weapon skill. This would be the equivalent of expecting Warriors to burn some adrenaline to use Shield Stance, for example. Even so, we didn’t complain; we simply adapted and persevered to the point where we were satisfied with the tool that was available to us. It was a simple and elegant solution to the problem of lacking any other form of block, evade, or invulnerability for Necromancers while remaining balanced with the larger game. But now? Now…that is gone.

Even if it is the intent to introduce block, evade, or invulnerability to the Necromancer profession as compensation for losing this functionality of Deathshroud, I will go on record right here and now by stating I don’t want any of it. I don’t want a one-button-click-get-out-of-jail-free-card; YAAAAAAWN. I LIKE the fact that – to absorb burst/spike damage – I have to carefully manage my Life Force and skillfully time my use of Deathshroud. It makes me feel like a Necromancer – transforming into a dark wraith straddling the line between here and the afterlife – to absorb that which would otherwise kill a mere mortal.

Lastly, it’s a validation of what makes Necromancers what they are. Both in-game and out-game, we’re beaten down, focused, trod on, neglected, and forgotten. But we rise from the grave stronger each time. We took an underdog class and made it viable despite a history of long-standing bugs, broken fundamentals, and a foundering vision of how exactly we fit into the game. We took our crippled profession-specific mechanic and turned it into a functional invulnerability skill. We did that…not the devs…US!

Revert us back to the Deathshroud we’ve spent the last 11 months forging into our own!

oZii.2864:

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Once again demonstrating that in changing Deathshroud from our downed state to our profession-specific mechanic, errors and oversights were introduced that have persisted for 11+ months. Name any other class who’s profession-specific mechanic has been as borked for as long or as badly as our’s:

Warrior? Adrenaline working as intended, unaware of any major revisions.

Warrior class mechanic was messed up since the game launched. There is a trait in strength for 50% endurance when you land a burst skill didnt work with sword main hand since launch.

Major revision for warrior burst mechanic was the same patch necro received dhuumfire. Before if you put 30 trait points into discipline you got a game changing 3% extra damage on your burst skill was like that since launch till the dhuumfire patch. Now 30 trait points gets you 30% recharge rate. Those are just off top my head might be more but not sure.

Just pointing it out for information though.

Without intending any disrespect to the Warrior profession, the issues you’ve mentioned lie with traits that affect or synergize with your profession-specific mechanic. As unacceptable and frustrating as that may be, the adrenaline mechanic itself, however, works as intended.

In other words, when you attack a foe you gain one strike of adrenaline. Your adrenaline bar fills up as expected. When you reach the pre-requisite amount of adrenaline for each stage of your bar, you are able to use that resource to power a burst attack.

Contrast this with Deathshroud in which Necromancers had a bug that made us lose Life Force – our profession-specific resource – at twice the intended rate when taking damage. The mechanic itself is fundamentally flawed at the source (and that’s just one example of the problems we’ve been plagued with in regards to Deathshroud).

The analogy would be if – as a Warrior – you gained 10 adrenaline and rightfully expected the first stage of your adrenaline bar to be filled, ready to power a burst attack. Instead, there’s a bug which makes it take twice as much adrenaline – 20 strikes – just to fill up the first bar on the adrenaline meter (even though it’s been stated it should only take 10 strikes to fill). That would completely undermine the entire Warrior profession – regardless of which specific build you choose – would it not? This is the situation the Necromancer class has been laboring under for the last 11 months.

Some of these issues are – finally – being addressed. At the same time, though, the devs turn around and nerf a major function of Deathshroud which did work by improving our survivability against burst damage while still remaining balanced. It’s existed for 11 months without issue. Now, without any rational justification, they’ve nerfed it and – in so doing – removed the only burst/spike mitigator available to Necromancers.

Whether or not this was an intended use of Deathshroud is largely irrelevant in my opinion. It was the Necromancer community’s creative solution to a problem while under duress. We have no access to block, evade, invulnerability, leap, stealth, nor vigor. If we have used up our limited dodges, Deathshroud’s former ability to absorb a single burst/spike attack was our only survival option. Now…that has been stripped from us.

Even if this nerf is paving the way to grant a block, evade, or invulnerability skill to Necromancers, I don’t want it. It’s certainly the case that I – and, to be certain, many other Necromancers – have already developed the timing and twitch muscle memory for using Deathshroud as our burst/spike mitigator. Beyond the inconvenience of having to abandon a learned behavior, the deeper issue – for me, anyway – is the satisfaction of having a higher skill cap and cost : benefit associated with using Deathshroud in this manner in conjunction with how it fits the profession’s theme of riding the razor’s edge between life and death.

(continued in next post)

Ranger’s alright roaming, but the thief can roam just as well, disengage better, get his kills quicker, and he’s still useful in a teamfight due to stealth allowing him to harass the backline or skirting the melee train with s/d evade spam.

Ranger’s fun, but the pet is just a really broken mechanics and your utilities and traits are not as polished as the thief’s.

Asking on the ranger forums may get you a biased asnwer but i’ll do my best to leave my opinions out of it. Theives have been nerfed to hell and back, being forced into a very small choice of builds that are actually effective. Ranger has gotten some great buffs, including stealth on the longbow to really mix up fights. I personally wreck most thieves on the battlefield with my signet power build, however if I come across a skilled thief, I find myself in some trouble.

It also depends greatly on what you’re looking for. Both classes are, I would say, two of the best roaming classes in wvw. However if you’re looking for larger fights in a wvw scenario, thieves may have a bit more trouble with that than a ranger.
Thieves have been nerfed nearly every patch leaving them with few options, however if you have a bit of skill you can work wonders on a thief.
Rangers are still severely underestimated but not without reason, pets have yet to get an AI tweak and are still, for the most part, useless against enemies that have a lot of AOE.
For pve, I would recommend a ranger, the mobs cant really kite your pet so you can easily get max DPS, also if you ever do go downed, Lick wounds is probably the best downed skill in game.
In a roaming wvw scenario I would recommend a theif, they have great mobility, much greater than a rangers, and stealth allows for quick escapes if you find yourself face to face with a zerg.
Zerging in wvw, I would say a ranger, with piercing arrows we can dish out some nice mutli target damage and can offer some support with healing spring.

Little sloppy explanation but I hope it helped. Coming from a ranger I would say roll ranger for everything, but we do have our weaknesses, so maybe try both classes out for yourself

For some reason, I always thought torch will be a great weapons for necros and both torches scream necro IMO
And plz, stop with that “necros don’t burn villages” kitten. fire is not an element (shocking right?) and guess what: without life, there can’t be fire, so fire consume life and who consume life? That’s right, our beloved necromancer

Necros should never have been given burning.
Torch looks awesome, though.

Necro is definitely the best aoe char in the game, Epidemic alone is AMAZING for PVE content as it insta kill most reg and veteran mobs (if you have stacked your condis right). Necros also have the ability to switch from a condi build to a dps burst build for single target play ;just in case you have another condi on the team and only need to keep up 25 stacks. ((PS. Necros can get about 20 stacks of bleed on their own….) Plus using a hybrid build means on top of stacking bleeds poisons and burns, we stack a good amount of vulnerability that helps the whole team.

Even just outside of that, necros have fear to scare away bosses that are attacking a char trying to revive, and chill that can give a healer more time, stop a boss from slamming your “tank”, or sticking a boss in place ie. important in fractals, or shutting down thieves in pvp. And if you really wanna be team friendly… Signet of the undead generates life force (good for a burst dps build) and then will revive up tp 3 chars in an aoe….. They can condi transfer from allies to themselves and then send them at an enemy and keep them there.

Really a Necros main problem is the conditions build is a VERY POPULAR BUILD, …. rangers run it , engineers run it too, necros run it, and even thieves run it….. So finding a versatile build is on you…….as is being useful to a team….. I have never been insta kicked from a group for just being a necro….. I have however been kicked once after my party decided to go all zerg warriors of which I have non.

Unfortunately necros are usualy kick on sight when ttrying to get into a pug group

mattattack.1673:

I kind of feel the same way, necro’s can be used for wells.. but in a sense i feel like we are a very selfish class compared to other classes that can provide other buffs. We do have condition removal which is nice but yes I am leveling a necro at the moment and I honestly am kind of scared to keep leveling him because it is such a rollercoaster of nerfs/buffs. One second we are underpowered and cannot get a kill, the next we are extremely overpowered.

weve never been that extremely over powered , the ppl that say it never learned how to kill a condition necro and started whining when we were given burning as well (no necro asked for that btw , so thx for that needless addition as a reason to nerf us)

Grimwolf.7163:

OHKOs and massive Health pools are THE two worst methods available for inflating the difficulty of a fight in any game. They’re a lazy approach, and a symbol of bad design.
Reason being, they’re severely detrimental to the enjoyment of the fight.
No one likes an instant loss out of nowhere, and no one likes tickling an enemy to death for literally minutes. Combining the two would immediately destroy the game for anyone.

It’s a classic mistake.

I think one-shot mechanics are fine, so long as there are tells or patterns so you can be ready to counter them. I’ll agree that some of the bosses have poor tells, but a majority of the fights were pretty fair.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CONSIDER THIS.

+1000000

The only reason i can’t finish the gauntlet is because im colorblind, and can’t see the circles at the last boss!

+1 on the ability to change the colors of all types of aoe circles. The colors and non-solid pattern of the flooring that was chosen is what’s blending in the (very) dull red circles to the floor and causing issues for those of us colorblind in Red. Considering this has been a heavily requested feature since beta, I don’t even know why we’re still discussing this…

In the short term, if it were possible to zoom the view out further, perhaps we could actually see the clouds above and attempt to predict where the ground target boundaries actually are in hopes of getting through this last stage before the content gets pulled.

peter.2738:

Let me see:
- This achievement: kill 100
- That achievement: kill 100
- Next achievement: defeat 100
- Kill that 3x
- Get this 30x

Can you make grind more obvious…. I wont make any of that on purpose.

And this is where people fail to see the forest for the trees.

I’m already halfway into two of those kill 100 achievements. Why? Because I was grinding and trying really hard to get them? No, not at all. It’s because I’m running the missions associated with the new content, and simply by doing the content I’m automatically completing the achievements.

This isn’t a grind, you are getting rewards just for doing what you would most likely do anyway just by doing the stuff they made for you.

Even get 30 balloons can’t be considered a grind when all you’re doing is walking to a balloon, maybe doing an event associated with it, then walking up the stairs. There is no serious effort involved, just go do the thing.

I think it’s ironic that many players point to Flame and Frost as a really good example of how to do the Living World updates…when people seem to forget the massive amount of complaining that occurred since there were very few things to do over 4 months. It makes me wonder if all of them were there from the beginning or if they just showed up in the last month to do all the content that had been added in the previous three months.

Honestly, I think players are focusing too much on the achievements and not enough on just playing the game.

I’m having fun with this event so far. Clearly it’s not for everyone.

wookiee.4631:

EDIT: “Dragon Bakitten?” What’s wrong with the filter? Maybe it wasn’t too fond of DB either. lol

You put “Dragon Bash” and “it” together, didn’t you? It triggered on those last four letters, ignoring the space.

The game have an UI. Use it or left IMO.
A modified UI can give some advantage… Skills positions, colours, Bars positions… A user with the default UI play the whole game and the user with the modified UI play the same game with ( maybe) some advantage ( More free space in the screen for example).
Its true that the default UI can be better but if you play pvp with a modified UI you maybe can have more free space in the screen and see the player that with the default UI you cant see it.

Please, The read the word MAYBE before flame me.

P.S: I play a lot other games where addons are “must be” and sincerely, they are a game killer. For example: You need X addon/mod for be better in PVP bcoz with the addon/mod you have more data about ( put here anything like agro, rage, HP, mana, etc, etc..)

In terms of combat, you’ll actually become a hinderance keeping your eye on the UI.

In terms of PvP, if you use addons, it may give you an advantage (why else would you use an addon in PvP?), which would mean other people would need to use them to stay even.

In terms of gathering, there’s no need, since no-one can take your nodes.

Combat parsers…well…elitism.

The only things I could see addons being useful for is gear management, which could also be implemented by ANet anyway.

I would like to suggest having an in-game add-on that can show the work rate of each player in a party. In terms like dps, damage absorbed, heals and deaths. This way we can avoid being partied to players who simply press the (1) auto attack the whole fight, we can also classify players who try to work better on dungeon to those who simply sit and leech. In the long run this will encourage players to be more productive specially on dungeon parties.

I have started to play my Necromancer but there are a lot of issues with the Trait lines. You usually have to invest deep into traits you don’t need to properly play your character. For example: Condition build necromancers will run with the staff/scepter and you need to invest 40 pnts in two different trees (Death Magic – staff mastery & greater marks, Soul Reaping – soul marks). This leaves me only 30 points for curses.

Ideally in a condition build you would prefer to run Spite (condition duration) and Curses (condition damage) but because of the way the tree’s are laid out you are handicapped with trait selection.

The simple fix would be to clean up the tree’s and put the weapons in their proper trait lines. I propose something like this:

Spite: Power, critical damage, axe, dagger (this makes sense for power type builds)
Curses: Precision, condition damage, scepter (main weapon for condition builds)
Death Magic: Tough, condition duration, staff (staff is also for conditions, defensive)
Blood Magic: Vitality, healing, focus, war horn, (these are support type weapons)
Soul Reaping: Life force pool, boon duration (only thing left so put these here)

Please consider these changes as I think they make more sense then the way the current trait lines are laid out.

Thank you
Smeaghoul

So let’s get this straight, everyone who took part in whole voting shenanigans got some worthless representation buttons that can’t be used for anything, BUT everyone who just piled them up and ignored whole vote event can now sell those tickets and get money for it.

Seriously? You reward people who DID NOT took part in this vote event, while people who did are left with pile of useless crap.

I don’t care about the money, but its rather unfair towards everyone who used them and participated to not get treated equally as those who DID NOT!

The only reason I voted Keil was because she seemd fair in contrast with Evon who seemd greedy. So my decition was basicly based from the stroy in candidate trials. Other than that I had not even a single clue wth should I vode, witch is very lame.