Guild Wars 2

Blaine Tog.8304:

Without the Necro, GW2 would lose players. If ANet were to spruce up the Necro, they likely would gain players. The best advertising is word of mouth and it is in ANet’s best interest to have their Necro players gushing to their friends about how awesome a profession it is.

But thats not how business works in reality. Remember, they have finite resources. What is better to spend those resources on. Retaining a large portion of your player base by catering to the high population classes via bug fixes and improvments, or use those resources on fixing a low population class that won’t necessarily bring any new customers and potentially alienate your player base on the higher population classes?

This seems like a poor example to use as support for your argument. If anything, it seems like you’re saying the Necro has some serious love coming its way precisely because of its supposedly-low number of players.

No, its a very excellent example because that is exactly what happened in World of Warcraft. Warlocks were a low pop class that brought nothing to the table except Soul Stone res and Curse of Elements. Mages were better than them in practically every other way. They got completely ignored until BC when Blizzard only took the time to revamp that class and bring them up to par with the other classes because of a paid expansion. Expansions bring renewed interest and new customers at the same time. It was then, and only then, that Blizzard was willing to devote resources into potentially retaining new customers that might be interested in playing the warlock.

When a company works on what will eventually be a paid expansion, they will have a lot more resources dedicated to the task. This means more people to work through the balancing, testing, and bug fixing. Right now, ANet isn’t even working on an expansion. It was only last month that NCSoft even suggested that GW2 might receive a paid expansion. Remember, ANet is NCSoft. They don’t do anything unless NCSoft gives them the budget to do so. Right now ANets primary concern is retention. You don’t waste your time fixing a class barely anyone plays.

What I am saying is, ANet will most likely keep on ignoring us until a paid expansion. At which point they will do a full balance pass on the necromancer because then, and only then, will it make financial sense to do so.

Unpredictability.4086:

Circular problems.

Not many people playing Necromancer > internal ArenaNet stats show this > lower priority for Necro updates as a result of low usage > less updates causes less people to play Necromancer > Not many people playing Necromancer > REPEAT

This is it pretty much. We are a low population class. There just isn’t a lot of incentive for ANet to care at this point. Bug fixes for this class means less bug fixes for the populated class because of time constraints. In fact this is a pretty common occurrence with MMOs in general. The high population classes always get the quick and frequent fixes while the low pop classes get back burnered. Usually what ends up happening is they wait until an expansion to go back and actually take a hard look at the low pop classes and find out why they don’t work or whats wrong with them. The reason for this is because expansions bring in renewed interest and potential new players to all classes.

This exact same thing happened with warlocks in WoW. The few things warlocks were good at (fear, monster kill crits with Curse of Elements reducing resists into the negatives) got nerfed and warlocks in general were forgotten. There were some token buffs such as the addition of a fear effect to Death Coil, but largely warlocks were just not something Blizzard cared about until BC. When BC came out, they went back and completely revamped the warlock talent trees. They also merged several skills together to give warlocks a better sense of utility. This combined with a new expansion (BC was a lot of peoples first experience with WoW believe it or not) which always generates a renewed interest in a game, as well as adding new players, suddenly a lot of people started playing warlock. Warlocks started receiving a lot more attention in the following patches because there were a lot more people playing that class than before..

Insidion the Insane.9752:

I think a video is in order.

Be sure to also include the fact that even with the trait, Reaper’s Touch still only goes about 900 meters instead of the 1200 its supposed too.

Sephius.2876:

I use DW sword and longbow with a power/crit based build and I have a lot of success with it. It’s a lot of fun, the high damage output provided by Final Thrust and the Impale/Rip combo is complemented by the bleed damage (even though I’m not going condtion build). It’s fun going against other warriors with this spec because it’s so uncommon people have no idea what I’m doing— really put out a lot of damage. Worth a try.

Can you link the build you use?

flow.6043:

I can only speak for EU here, but I can’t remember a time when my server was not in T2. However, the new match making algorithm moved two T2 servers up to T1 and vice versa. So now we’ve been up against 4 out of 5 opposing T1/2 servers.
Bottom line: overall no difference in individual skill, just in numbers.

T1 and T2 might be close enough that the only real difference is numbers. However, I remember a time my server was in T6. This was months ago, however. I’ve been in T2 for a long time now. The lower tiers I just remember roflstomping people on my necro left and right while roaming.

When my server finally moved up from T3 to T2, there was a noticable difference. Not so much in skill, though I do feel that did go up if only slightly, but the fact that people no longer solo roamed nearly as much. Everyone from the 2 other T2 servers would run in pairs or in 3s. Everyone knows that necros are probably the worst 1vX class in the game next to warriors. It was about this time that I leveled a thief as I was simply not capable of dealing with people in numbers like that as a necromancer. My thief and my ranger don’t have this problem and can do 1vX attrition fights easily. Its actually quite funny getting invited by someone you just killed as a ranger and complimented. You almost never see roaming rangers, but that bunker build is REALLY good at attrition fighting. Necros don’t have a build that can last forever like that.

Ezeriel.9574:

^^^Laying down marks makes following you suicidal? Who have you been fighting? …even my glassy toons have enough regen and auto-cleanse that they can ignore marks.

I have to agree with this statement. Necro marks do very low damage and the conditions they cause are no threat to anyone really, which are easily cleansed. Even with a pure glass cannon power build you’ll only get maybe 4k out of staff 4. Other classekitten harder than that with abilities on much shorter cool downs. Marks are also one of the only moves that you can see brightly lit up like a light bulb and they’re a huge dodge through me sign unless you drop them on top of someone.

Bhawb.7408:

The only difference between tier 1 and the lowest tier is the amount of people online, and the quality of commanders. WvWers in general are pretty terrible players.

So you say, but I’ve been on a server that has experienced multiple tier jumps over the last 6 months. There is definitely a higher level of skill that roamers possess at the upper tiers. You would be correct about the zerglings, however.

In the lower tiers, I was able to roam with my necro to some success. I was also able to consistently land my Dark Pact at the lower tiers. People didn’t know how to dodge my telegraphed moves or something. There were a lot less 1vX fights to be had, but they did exist. Its almost impossible to roam as a necro in T2, however. People are a lot smarter about dodging and poking people before committing to a full engagement. I imagine its even worse in T1 as I hear almost no one roams alone any more at that tier.

I’d like to see a video of this in action if possible.

Cristobal.8640:

Always good to read someone who actually knows what he is talking about.
+1

I would like to add that if you wish to do so you can also make a “roamer” type of build that is very effective up to 1v3, of course this means sacrificing a lot of potential for the actual objectives of WvW, but you can do it if you really want to.

What tier are you in that you’re 1v3ing and surviving, and are you counting up levels in this?

5) When they stand around not doing anything.

wiazabi.2549:

@Bhawb.7408

What? arent you kinda disagreeing with yourself?
Fine in high level pve -> higher level fractals don’t really need what necros bring??? Which dungeon needs what necro’s bring anyway :<.

Your not holding your party back -> slightly longer runs. Okay fair enough your not holding your team back your only slowing em down.

So Bhawb pretty much answered your question yes people would rather have other classes.

Its Bhawb. Hes just trying to sound positive or something. I don’t think hes ever played a class outside of necromancer though. I’m not sure he really knows how much necros slow a run down.

rogerwilko.6895:

Bweaty.9187:

Power based, I get excited at a 5k hit. I hear war’s get excited at 35k hit in the same situation.

Wait, what? I am not reading warr forums, nor did I check youtube… Is this for real?…

Yep. Thats with Hundred Blades though. Then there is the axe auto attack which is also pretty insane. I’ll let you see for yourself though. Seeing is believing. The magic starts at 5:00. 5:45 for OMGWTF numbers.

Minions are just bad period. Making them F1-F4 isn’t going to change anything.

ronpierce.2760:

I asked Hamm (PvP designer guy) and he said controlling minions is fine, lack of sunbreaks is fine because DS has fear, and some other stuff. It made me feel very unsure of ANet, it sounded more like too lazy to fix than a genuine “I feel like necros are in a good place”. After asking him a few questions, I don’t feel quite a bright about the future of fixes lol

Doesn’t surprise me. Honestly, if ANet actually thought that there was anything wrong with necromancers, they would have already come out and said something. The fact that there are barely any devs posting on these boards, the only fixes we really get are tooltip corrections and some minor bug fixes while the major bugs are left ignored, and the fact that minions are so hilarious busted right now is a pretty big indicator that they really do believe necros are fine, or they really just don’t give a skritt as you say.

The only response we’ve gotten regarding the actual state that necromancers are currently in hasn’t even been on this board, but on the sPvP forum. That really should tell you where ANets priorities are right now.

Its been 9 months since this game released and there hasn’t even been so much of a hint that they intend to do anything with us balance wise.

Very informative guide. Thanks for posting this!

I have just one question. I’ve seen a variation where people will go sword/torch axe/dagger instead. What is your opinion on using that combination instead of what you’ve got slotted?

spoj.9672:

Couple of my guildmates mained rangers to begin with. Now that they have other classes at 80 they all said they cant believe how kitten ranger damage is in beserker gear compared to other classes. Bows obviously are terrible because all ranged weapons do less damage than melee. But their other options arent great either. Another guild mate obsolutely hated running coe with us on his ranger because he was using the sword so we could stack melee on alpha, problem was he couldnt dodge the aoe’s because of the auto attack. They really are the worst class for pve unless you plan on using them for gathering ore nodes. Warrior longbow beats ranger melee. Would of thought rangers should get best damage on bows.

Aww, yeah!

That guy was pretty funny. Bows suck. :/

Keep in mind I have multiple 80s as well. I have a thief, warrior, necro, engineer, and ranger all at 80. No one else is going to do the level of damage warriors can in full zerker, but warriors are the easiest face roll class I have ever played. They’re boring as kitten and CoF speed runs make me fall asleep when playing a warrior. However, I find that my ranger in full zerker to be a lot more survivable (troll unguent is OP as balls), with the damage not being so bad as people make it out to be if you keep your pet alive and use the right pets. Using a melee pet on Kholer and CoF P1 boss is dumb. They’ll just get ripped to shreds. Should be using a devourer or spider on them. I also don’t use bears. They do next to no damage. If I need something tanky I’ll use a drake. A lot of people also don’t use their heal to keep their pet alive and only save it for when they need it themselves. I also find that most rangers in general have poor awareness of their pets. They let their pets die instead of swapping it out (keeps the CD low) before they go down. Every time you swap your pet, they come back with full life. Remember, your pet is basically half your damage. Keep it alive, and you will easily do comparable damage to everyone else except thieves and warriors.

As far as CoE goes, yeah, don’t use sword in those kinds of encounters. Greatsword or axe all the way. Greatsword block is godmode in CoE. It will block ALL OF THE RINGS as long as you’re not standing next to an NPC.

spoj.9672:

The reason noone wants a ranger is because its like playing with a group of 4. Rangers in full beserker do terrible damage. Yeah sure they can survive but they really are a hindrance. Pets cause problems on jade maw and lupi in arah. Plus they cause aggro problems aswell.

You know, I haven’t really seen this. Granted, I’ve only been playing my ranger for about a month, but I don’t find rangers to be as terrible as people say they are. One thing though, which I notice a lot of other rangers don’t do, is I stay the hell away from the bows. I find both bows as weapon sets to be terribly designed. They both do garbage damage and have some really wonky stipulations (less damage up close, must be flanking to apply bleeds) associated with them to make them work. This, of course, is probably why people have that perception of rangers. Most rangers ignore their melee aspect and try to be the traditional “Legolas” bow specialist that the ranger class usually mimics. The axe, when traited specifically for it, does some pretty ridiculous burst damage with Axe 4 and the axe auto vastly out damages both bows as a ranged weapon.

Sword does some pretty good sustained damage and greatsword has good mobility and defensive capabilities, with good burst options. A lot of rangers also try to play the game ignoring the pet entirely, which you can’t do as rangers have been balanced around having this mechanic. The pet does require a lot of finesse to keep it alive, but it does add substantial DPS to your arsenal.

Ranger and Necro are my two favorite professions thematically, but Ranger just fails to deliver in having a fun playstyle. The weapon skills for Ranger feel clunky compares to other professions and the pet leaves much to be desired IMO. But definitely give both a try before deciding for yourself.

And I also can’t help but agree with the weapons feel clunky part. Especially sword auto which locks you into place, preventing you from being able to dodge. Both bows also feel incredibly weak to me. I feel shortbow needs the omph longbow has, but longbow needs the speed shortbow has. Quite the conundrum.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

I just dont understand how they cant figure out how to at least make minions work right. I have played necro type classes in several games as my main. Necro in Everquest, Bonedancer in DAoC, and Lock in WoW and minions in this game are so bad its like a 6 year old with dyslexia wrote the code.

To make matters worse, they already have a functioning minion code in this game. It belongs to the Guardian spirit weapons. They are functionally minions in that they are completely autonomous for the most part (they attack only what the guardian attacks) and they never spaz out like the necro minions do.

LastDay.3524:

tl;dr: All the best tools Necromancer has are situational and thus unreliable.

Also Arenanet addresses Necromancer problems so rarely that Necros feel abandoned.
I think many have dropped their Necro mains and picked an another Profession by now.

Lets not forget the issues with minions either. Half the time they stand around and don’t do anything outside of tPvP. It really is a mystery why minions work 95% of the time in tPvP but fail so miserably in PvE/WvW.

Also pretty much how I feel right now. Abandoned. I leveled a ranger last month. Haven’t touched my necro since getting 80 on my ranger. People whine on the ranger forums about how bad rangers have it. I honestly don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Coming from playing a necromancer for 8 months, rangers are kittening amazing and I love playing that class. Its the attrition class I’ve always wanted necromancers to be.

The issues have been discussed ad nauseum for the last 8 months. It honestly feels like ANet is ignoring us at this point. Best thing to do is read this thread. While it is from a PVP perspective, some of it pertains to PVE as well and sums up our problems very nicely.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-state-of-Necromancer/first

There are a lot of fur and hair colors, among other character creation options, that were taken out after beta. There is also a blue, and dark blue fur color that some NPCs have that I want to have on my charr characters, but can’t because ANet took them out for some reason. I would really like to have the fur/hair colors back at least. :/

Adding them back would guarantee ANet at least another $20 from me. :p

The new condition won’t fix the underlying problem here. That necromancers are just really bad at being an attrition class currently. Adding one ability isn’t going to fix this problem. We need more than a simple skill addition to bring us up to par with the other bunker builds in this game. ANet is very slow at fixing things (if they even fix the problem at all, GW1 had tons of things that were never addressed), so people putting all their faith in this one skill are going to be seriously disappointed I think.

I seem to be having a problem with this. Most of the time when I command my brown bear to use Shake it Off while I’m in combat, the skill fails to activate and instead goes on a 5 second cool down. Yesterday this happened 6 times in a row in WvW attempting to remove a large stack of bleeding. In WvW, I keep my pets on passive so they’re not running off. The pet was standing next to me and not attacking while this was happening.

Is there a known cause for this, or is it just random?

vicious.5683:

all in all:
-quick full nerf before release
-slow (each 3 months) buffs to fix the mess

They haven’t even been doing that. The only thing they’ve out right buffed was Axe #2 twice by 10% each (axe as a whole still sucks VERY badly), which put that one skill back to what it was in beta. Everything else has just been tool tip and minor bug fixes.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t think weakness is meant to be strictly damage reduction, you have to remember that it completely nullifies vigor, in addition to having a decent damage reduction (certainly not huge).

The other problem would be if weakness became too strong as a damage reduction mechanic; as it also stacks with protection. Meaning weakness would not only be (on average) a 25% damage reduction, but now protection is mitigating 33% of the damage left over, meaning you would take about 50% damage.

It already does this with non-crit builds.

Bhawb.7408:

For PvP, issues are a bit more complicated. Its not that weakness, poison, and chill are weak (in fact, letting chill stay on you for a long time will devastate just about any build, weakness nullifies vigor, poison craps on a lot of healing), its that the other forms of support are much easier to utilize. You can stick a guardian on a team, and it takes very little coordination for him to do his job. I think Necro support will see more play when teams are much more comfortable with playing with the more difficult mechanics.

The biggest buff to weakness would be to remove the stupid critical hit clause. IMO, weakness should be a flat 50% chance to glance across the board. Critical hits or not. It never made sense why critical hits ignored weakness.

flow.6043:

Tenderly.7019:

Increasing our fears from 1 second to 2 second can go a long way.

With that change a terror build would have a standard 3-4 second fear on every fear skill. That’s like ~5k damage for fear alone.

Why would that be a problem? You do realize that the other classes are capable of doing that much and more with their skills in the form of direct damage, right? AKA, instantly? 5k damage over 4 seconds is a far cry from 5k instant, and would only be achievable with condition builds. Necromancers have zero burst capability as a condition build, so that 5k damage wouldn’t even be followed up with anything major.

I remember some where that ANet said that they want condition damage to be on par with direct damage. Well, without burning, necromancers are not on par with that ideal.

SallyStitches.4096:

I S/TPvP, and I wanted to try necro for a change of pace. My necro was actually my first level 80. PvPing with my necro was like banging my head against a brick wall. Either I wasn’t doing it right, or it’s that weak compared to other classes. Unless someone can enlighten me, and tell me I was probably doing it wrong (MM build), then I’ll shelf it for now.

You need a team that doesn’t have a problem building around you as a necromancer to be successful in tPvP with this class. Unlike the other classes, necromancers require support from their team mates in order to not get destroyed constantly. Other people are necessary to protect you and peel other people off of you. This is one of the primary reasons you don’t see any necromancers on the top level teams. They’ve all expressed their opinion that having to baby sit this class is overall detrimental to their team composition. The other classes all have ways to reduce or remove pressure themselves through various means. Necromancers have no such mechanic. ANet thinks Death Shroud does this, but it doesn’t.

I managed to eventually get myself the Champion Phantom title for my necromancer without having a regular team. It was quite painful to say the least. Exactly like you describe. Banging my head against a brick wall. I’ve tPvPed with a couple different classes since then. I’m absolutely terrible at engineer. To much APM for me I suppose, but even then I did so much better playing the engineer in tPvP than I ever have with the necromancer. I play a ranger full time now in tPvP. I can actually bunker on points and not get killed in two seconds in team fights now. Its… pretty obvious the necromancer has some serious balance issues at this point.

People say there is this skill cap that necromancers have that is supposedly higher than the other classes. I disagree. If anything, engineers have a way higher skill cap. I believe the skill cap for necromancers is really the same as everyone else TBH. There are only so many possible skill combinations that can be achieved. The only thing that really requires some time to learn is when to DS flash dance against certain classes for proper Doom usage. IMO, the truth of the matter is this. Necros that “do well” have a team backing them up. Thats it. I’ve run into some of the big named pro necromancers before while in tPvP. By themselves, they didn’t really strike me as a threat. I was able to handle them just like any other necromancer. However, running into some of the big names that play the other classes is drastically different. They actually manage to be a serious threat, and its apparent that their skill level is above mine, or perhaps they’re running a build designed to beat my build at the time. In any case, necromancers don’t generally pose a threat. They only reason they’re targeted first is because of possible Signet of Undeath, and the fact they don’t have the ability to protect themselves. They’re easy kills basically.

I’d rather see greatsword, but whatever.

darkace.8925:

Kravick.4906:

Yep, that about sums it up. I’m really disappointed with the living story content. To make matters worse, you can’t even do the content any more because ANet took it out.

So you’re upset that you can no longer run content that you didn’t even like?

Where did I say I didn’t like it? I said I was disappointed. I loved the Flame & Frost dungeon. The end boss was the funnest boss fight in the entire game. How awesome was it that you could change the dynamics of the fight based on who you killed first? I’m disappointed because I can no longer run the dungeon. The content leading up to it was extremely meh, however. 2 short solo instances and some Fed Ex quests. Not something that should have taken two months to develop.

TRON.1085:

Flame & Frost in 5 seconds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_EyctmFyx9M

Made by Desild

(look closer)

Yep, that about sums it up. I’m really disappointed with the living story content. To make matters worse, you can’t even do the content any more because ANet took it out.

soul marks is borderline op (from 0 to full ds just from your enemies being piled up)

What? This is NOT how soul marks works. It gives a flat 3% when the mark is triggered. It does NOT, I repeat, does NOT give 3% per target hit.

Somebody said that integrating soul marks into basic staff skills would make it too strong in wubvwub.

Who said this and why? If they did this, it would go a long way in solving the issue condition builds have in generating LF. As it is, they have only two ways to get LF in the middle of combat, and thats staff auto (never hits), and Scepter 3, which gives so little return that if you have 0 LF, you don’t even get enough LF to flash for as skill.

PsionicDingo.2065:

Initiative only affects weapon skills. Chill will affect speed and utilities.

Initiative has it’s own drawbacks, namely that you can’t swap to another weapon set for fresh CDs, as you’re still at the mercy of your ini regen. Assuming you’re chilling at the right time, you’ve robbed them of Shadow Step or Refuge, and getting that Infiltrator’s Strike or CnD to clear Chill could be that much harder.

Truth be told, Infiltrators Strike has such a low initiative cost that it can practically be spammed.

woeye.2753:

And as others said condition damage is pointless with all the condition removal.

I can’t believe I forgot about this. Yes, this is also something that desperately needs to be addressed. The amount of condition removals in this game is absurd, to be frank. This might not be such a problem if necromancers didn’t have an “eggs in one basket” design when it comes to dealing condition damage. Bleeding, thats primarily the only source of damage that condition builds have on a necromancer. What is the first thing that gets removed when someone uses a condition cleanse? The bleed stack. This is mainly because of the last on, first off condition removal system we’ve got in place. Necromancers have no way of covering their bleed stack because of the auto attack on scepter. Its completely one sided how condition necromancers primary source of damage is countered so easily.

I keep having after thoughts. More I’d like to see addressed.

The longer the fight takes, the weaker the necromancer gets because of the Death Shroud Mechanic. We have no reliable way of generating Life Force outside of dagger auto attack chain. Condition builds are especially prone to this as they have no reliable life force generation with their weapon and utility skills. Our heal abilities do not scale properly with our inflated health pool. In fact if you look at all of the classes heals side by side, necromancers heal for approximately 1k less than everyone else, but our heals are all on a 5 to 10 second longer cool down. In longer fights, this REALLY adds up. Life siphon has a negligible effect and doesn’t even come close to being strong enough to to allow necromancers the same kind of attrition that ranger regeneration builds have. Speaking of the ranger regeneration bunker build, this is how I see attrition combat working well in GW2. Being able to out heal your opponent, but not having a direct burst heal to do it with is exactly what I love about that ranger build. It easily out attritions necromancers.

I can’t stress this enough. With the current tools at necromancers disposal, there is no way that necromancers can be remotely considered an attrition class. They can’t even 1vX in any situation in WvW or tPvP. My ranger using the bunker regeneration build has no problem taking on 2 and 3 people at once and holding out, a lot of the time even winning those fights. I can survive practically forever because of how amazing Troll Unguent is. I can still be killed by a burst class who knows how to time those bursts, but its amazing how long I can last on a ranger, and how much better rangers are at attrition, compared to the necromancer in 1vX fights.

One more thing I’d like to bring up. Even if you trait entirely for Death Shroud and focus all of your build on that one aspect of necromancer, you’ll never actually kill anyone with it. Life Blast doing less damage when at or below 50% Life Force really kills any kind of viability traiting for Death Shroud might have. It is so easy to knock a necromancer out of Death Shroud, let alone put them at the 50% mark. There is no reason to stay in Death Shroud other than to flash it to use one or two skills, or to use it as a damage sponge.

This class is not an attrition class. It isn’t even close to being an attrition class with the current skill set that necromancers have. This class gets beat on so badly by the other classes. I feel ANet is putting way, WAY to much emphasis on Death Shrouds ability to protect the necromancer and draw out a fight. The truth is, Death Shroud does not work as an attrition mechanic. We do not have enough ways to generate Life Force (especially as condition builds), and its just to easy for people to punch through it to serve its intended function. Two or more people can rip Death Shroud down in a matter of seconds. Necromancers can’t even defend themselves against two or more people as it is. No escapes, so necromancer just takes it and gets flattened.

Poison. Of all the classes that have poison, necromancers are the worst at it. Look at the duration and cool down of the thief, ranger, and engineer abilities that apply poison. Now look at the abilities and cool downs of the necromancer abilities that apply poison. Do you notice a disparity? Necromancers have the least up time of poison by comparison. You mention that necromancers are supposed to have better access to poison than other classes in your class philosophy. This needs to be addressed.

Traits being spread out among multiple trait trees is also a major issue to me, and for necromancers this is an all over the place problem. “All over the place” in that our traits that serve to improve a certain aspects and utilities are spread out over multiple trees, and so far deep into those trees that you can never actually specialize with a particular utility set (wells) or weapon set (staff) due to the placement and location of those traits.

Necromancers suffer from some majorly egregious trait placement as well. One in particular are the dagger traits for necromancer. When every other class wants to improve their power damage, they put trait points into their power tree. Those classes have obvious power weapons, which have traits in those trees that improve those weapons. For warriors its greatsword and axe. They get major bonuses in damage and weapon improvements from both the traits and the stats gained from the points invested in that tree. For necromancers? We have to go into our Blood Magic tree to get the dagger improving traits. Main hand dagger is a power weapon. Off hand dagger is a condition weapon. What is the logic of putting the dagger traits in the vitality/healing tree, when these stats don’t improve this weapons functionality at its intended role? That would be like warriors having to put points into their defense tree if they wanted to get traits that improved greatsword damage, or having to put points into their power tree to get traits that improve shield defensive capability. It makes no logical sense.

Necromancers are incredibly easy to run away from. The other classes mobility skills out pace our lack of mobility skills, so even our one gap closer and multiple chill effects are not enough to keep someone in combat with us if they decide they want to leave.

Fix it or don’t fix it. I don’t care any more. I’ve stopped caring about this class. I’ve wasted so much time, effort, and in game money on this class trying to make it work in all facets of this game. Rolled necromancer on day one. Its been 9 months. I’ve lost all my patience waiting for the attention this class needs. I can’t wait any more.

I know these are bad players you’re facing, but the necromancer one really makes me depressed. He used spectral walk and still couldn’t get away. Just… wow. Poor necros

Blaine Tog.8304:

The Moving the Goalposts was your addition of the “no upleveleds” criteria. And you’re perfectly in your rights to call those videos less impressive for you, but they are examples of Necro 1vX.

No, it isn’t. I have always said no up levels. Even in this thread I stated up levels don’t count before you even got involved. Up levels are a non factor in any engagement in WvW. They do more harm to their own team than good as they bring nothing but the ability for their enemies to rally from their deaths. Saying they’re examples of 1vX is just down right asinine, and insulting to this class. You’re basically saying that its perfectly ok for necros to be handicapped in these situations when every other class has a build that is capable of 1vXing level 80s.

Honestly, people like you on these forums are really starting to kitten me off. This masochistic view you guys have where its totally fine for necros to need their hand held in PvP is really doing a disservice to this class and those that have been pointing out the major flaws of this class for months now. We have people making honest to god excuses for why minion AI is bad as it is and being apologetic about it. ANet had a perfectly good working minion AI with GW1. Hell, ANet has perfectly good working AI with every other classes pets in GW2. Look at the guardian spirit weapons for crying out loud. Those things ARE minions too! ANet has no excuse. No excuse what so ever. Its down right appalling the state this classes mechanics are in currently. Then there is the whole shenanigans with the downed state HP thing that we’ve been kittening about for months. Turns out, the reason they couldn’t reproduce it is they kept testing it in the mists, when we’ve repeatedly told them it doesn’t happen there!

Maybe you’ll start to understand my frustration now. Or perhaps not. Honestly, I don’t give a kitten about this class any more. I’ve spent to much time, in game money, and effort trying to make it work. I roll any other class and instantly start doing better than I ever have on those classes in just a few days at being level 80. My latest level 80 is my ranger. A class that supposedly has trouble in WvW just like necro, except it doesn’t. Rangers are amazing roamers and do extraordinarily well at attrition fighting using the right build. You know what? People are actually calling rangers OP. No one has ever called necromancers OP.

TLDR: kitten sucks and I’m done. I’m playing a ranger now. Hell if I don’t get just as many bags as my necro and I’m doing a lot more for the team than any necro does.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Kravick.4906:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Right, try it again, I fixed the link and added another.

Also, simmer down there, Tex. It’s just a game. No need to get nasty about it.

Ah yes, all those up levels that didn’t exist in the videos I posted, except the 6 up levels that jumped the ranger, who promptly stomped them into dust. Leeto also wasn’t 1v4ing like the ranger and engineer were. Any time a necro does 1vX, its always against up levels. Kinda hard to lose against that. Now try it against two level 80s and get back to me.

You had less than 5 minutes from the time I fixed the link to the time you claim to have watched the two 10+ minute videos. Putting aside the obvious Moving the Goalposts fallacy in your objection and putting aside that my original point was about 1v1s, not 1vX (trace back the conversation chain into which you inserted yourself if you don’t believe me), it’s chronologically impossible for you to have watched all of both videos.

And hey, putting all that aside, another 1vX video, this time with no upleveleds as far as I can tell.

It was Leeto 3. I have already seen that video. No goalpost moving here. Leeto 2 also had up levels, but as well as assistance from random strangers. Have already seen that one too. Have I mentioned that I have already searched for these videos and have never found anything even remotely close to what thieves, elementalists, guardians, engineers, and rangers are capable of doing?

Blaine Tog.8304:

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

I wanna just ask question to all necromancers . If you could reverse time , would you choose necro second time or something different but no necro .

Absolutely not. I love my Necro. She’s awesome and great fun.

I would have definitely not wasted my time with necro. This class isn’t getting any kind of fixes any time soon. Devs have already stated that it won’t be for another two months until they actually consider looking at another balance pass.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Right, try it again, I fixed the link and added another.

Also, simmer down there, Tex. It’s just a game. No need to get nasty about it.

Ah yes, all those up levels that didn’t exist in the videos I posted, except the 6 up levels that jumped the ranger, and were completely ineffectual at doing anything to him. Leeto also wasn’t 1v4ing like the ranger and engineer were either and in several segments he had assistance from a random ally that showed up sometimes. The ranger had 0 assistance of any kind.

Any time a necro does 1vX, its always against up levels. Kinda hard to lose against that. Now try it against two level 80s and get back to me.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Kravick.4906:

Blaine Tog.8304:

He made an absolute statement about the Necro. All you need is one counter-example to disprove an absolute statement.

Which you provided none of. Show me a video of a necromancer doing attrition like the ranger and engineer videos I provided. Oh, thats right. You can’t, because they don’t exist.

Oh look, how easy that was!

Your link goes to google. Sorry, but the burden of proof is now on your shoulders ATM. I’ve provided my proof. You must provide proof of your counter claim. Telling me to “search google” is just a pathetic cop out and shows that you have none.

Blaine Tog.8304:

He made an absolute statement about the Necro. All you need is one counter-example to disprove an absolute statement.

Which you provided none of. Show me a video of a necromancer doing attrition like the ranger and engineer videos I provided. Oh, thats right. You can’t, because they don’t exist.

Bhawb.7408:

Because they are balanced that way; each class has different methods to attain balance, otherwise it all comes down to every class needs to have access to everything.

In addition, they need to actually spec into it, in some way. A thief needs to take shortbow or shadowstep, elementalist needs Blink/dagger offhand, and Mesmers have nothing comparable to what DS 2 used to be. While it can be argued that those are minimal “give ups”, since most of them are fairly good anyway, they do have some marginal economic cost. Necromancers had absolutely no cost for their mobility, it was 100% inherit in every single Necro build.

90% of thieves run shortbow AND shadowstep because of the ridiculous mobility they bring and the fact that its a stun breaker. You can make that argument about mesmers and elementalists though.

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

nicodemus.3812:

Death Shorud #2 was ground targeted!?! Bring that back imo. Would love to have some real mobility.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since beta, always mained a Necromancer and that change was for better. That skill was ridicously OP back in those days, period.

Anyway, I think if they make the claw travel a bit faster we will notice a nice improve on mobility in general

How? How on earth was it OP? It functioned no different than the elementalist, mesmer, and thief versions, and in the case of thieves, they have multiple teleports like that and one of them has no cool down. If its not OP on elementalists, mesmers, and thieves, how on earth is it OP on a necro?

Andele.1306:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Necromancer_traits; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_UzwdXK5CU and for lich http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfE_Xu9H1Bw at 11ish minutes – just from beta 1 to 2, on the old press demo/alpha lich dropped a orb/urn that had around 50k hp (but low armor) and made lich immortal till destroyed (2 was a 3 second 1 minion spawn, 3 the vuln, 4 aura of chill, 5 aura of fear), DS let you absorb life force while in in and upon exiting worked like spectral walks second activation (you ported to where you entered DS).
Also we had pretty much permanent stability, perma retaliation, DS was a stun break and in addition to corruptions there were sacrifices that gave condition like effect for user hp, also like every 4th ability siphoned hp (as seeon on warhorn and staff in TBs video).

Also sweet old 50% damage reduction for 11 seconds on a 60 second cooldown from Sarmor…

Oh my god… what the hell happened? Those historical traits sound absolutely amazing! Skills that sacrifice health? A trait that allowed your staff to track its target? Why was this scrapped?

Panhauramix.2784:

stuff…

Then I decided to make a test. Those guys didnt want to budge from the camp (same 3) and I wanted data. I’ve logged on my mesmer, engi and guardian and tried to take the camp/stay alive while dealing with those 3.

…more stuff

I’ve done this before with my thief, ranger, and engineer. My experience has been exactly the same as yours.