Guild Wars 2

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I talked to a developer ingame today. Long story short, I feel better about where Necromancer will be.

So what did he say? You must tell us the secrets.

I hate that I have absolutely no idea whats going on. I’m so confused! Mesmers are so foreign to me. People are just killing themselves left and right though.

Ah I see. Thats going to be a problem. Roaming with a necromancer in WvW is like playing Battletoads on the NES, but with only 1 hand. Mesmers, thieves, and elementalists are THE WvW roaming classes and you are going to have a lot of difficulty with the smart ones. Other classes are going to have a much easier time trying to do what you want to do.

Frankly, I don’t have a lot of experience with hybrid builds in WvW. I personally don’t find that they have any kind of survivability. My best advice is to ether go 30/15/0/0/25 power build or 0/30/20/0/20 terror build for roaming.

Are you roaming or running with a zerg?

RyuDragnier.9476:

Last night. 2 Engineers, 3 Rangers. We utterly destroyed all the paths of CM.

I haven’t seen one in months outside of tPvP.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Sure this is only the first 10 levels…

The people who complain “oh my necro can’t bring anything to the table” can shove it, because Necro has something it’s good at, just like Ranger.

Keep playing.

And rangers are right, too. Its not just necromancers with this issue either. Rangers, engineers, and necromancers are not in a good place right now. If they were, you’d see a lot of “OMG YOU GUYS ARE OP” posts and a lot more people playing these 3 classes. When was the last time you saw an engineer in a dungeon group?

I don’t think anyone has ever complained about necros in WvW zergs. But lets be honest here. Does it really matter what you bring to a zerg?

Its necros in PvE and WvW roaming that people have always had problems with.

PinCushion.7390:

Necromancer is an incredibly well-built class.

Opinions. I find necromancers to be haphazardly slapped together and the trait tree to be a complete mess compared to the other classes I’ve played. But again, opinions.

I don’t care about big numbers. Not my beef. My beef is the general problem of anything we can do, someone else does better. I would just like ONE THING that we are exceptional at, and asked to bring. Then there is the major problem of not being able to 1vX anything in PVP with half a brain. 1v1, whatever. 1v2, you’re dead unless you’re facing exceptionally bad (or new) players or up levels.

Regarding the WvW post, I found the comments evenly divided. Good in WvW zergs, bad or “not up to par” in everything else. Seems to be the same sentiment on these boards.

I don’t think anyone has ever complained about necros in WvW zergs. But lets be honest here. Does it really matter what you bring to a zerg?

Its necros in PvE and WvW roaming that people have always had problems with.

PinCushion.7390:

Kravick.4906:

Why reduce an enemies damage when you can negate it all together, right?

Weakness: Endurance regen decreased by 50%; Also does other stuff.

Handy for getting our slow cast time skills to actually land. I’m always amused when some newbie will bottom out his endurance dodging Life Transfer in WvW. Not that I’m awesome at WvW. I just find it amusing.

This quote is out of context. It is in relation to Plague Form. How are you casting anything when in Plague Form? You can only do 1 of 3 things there. Bleed, Blind, or Weakness/Cripple. Cause someone to completely miss their attacks, or cause them to do half damage 50% of the time? What would you choose?

Lolicia.6502:

You’re forgetting the trait ‘weakening shroud’—it provides a very high up time pbaoe weakness.

Ah hah, I did. Thank you for that. Unfortunately, it has an internal cool down of 15 seconds, so won’t always apply every time you go into DS.

PinCushion.7390:

we have lots of access to Weakness

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakness

Lots of people say this, but its not actually true. If you look at the number of skills that apply weakness, we’re tied with thief, and warrior has a much, much more effective way of applying weakness on a target, and keeping on that target, with mace auto attack. TBH, there are actually very few skills in the game that apply weakness after looking at that list. It might seem like we have more access to weakness, but if you look at it more closely you’ll see something else entirely. We only have 5 skills that apply weakness. Two of them are under water skills, which we can’t use on land where 95% of combat happens. One is tied to a utility skill that, TBH, I’ve never ever seen a necromancer use after level 10, and has questionable use in any PVP environment. One is an ability on plague form, which most necromancers never use because blind spamming is so much more effective. Why reduce an enemies damage when you can negate it all together, right? We also have to be IN plague form and glued to a target to keep it applied, which means we can’t do anything else. The 5th skill is tied to a weapon that is only used by condition necros, which leaves power necros high and dry. 2 of these skills apply the weakness to us instead of our target, so we need a second ability just to transfer it, and usually by then the condition has expired.

I suppose if you want to include blast finishers you can say we have access to 6 ways to apply weakness, but then you have to include other classes ability to do this. This still ties us with thief. TBH, they do it more reliably because Poison Gas lasts longer, can be kept up indefinitely, and the thief can spam Cluster Bomb on it to stack the duration a heck of a lot better than we can, and still maintain decent AoE DPS. From a PVP stand point, in order for us to blast finish weakness, we would have to use one of our condition transfer abilities, which IMO is a waste for using just to apply weakness.

EDIT: I totally didn’t scroll down far enough. Missed the traits that apply weakness passively. This now pushes thieves ahead of necromancers. Thief has a minor trait which applies weakness every time they poison someone. Because of the way that tree works for thieves, they automatically do this when they steal through 2 minor traits. Thieves only need 15 points into this trait line to do this. This now means that Poison Gas can naturally cause weakness and thieves don’t even need to spam Cluster Bomb to blast finish. Thief dagger auto attack chain now also applies weakness on the 3rd strike, which means they can keep weakness up continuously. Spider Venom now has a dual purpose, poison and weakness. Necromancers obtain the ability to apply weakness through the 30 point trait “Target the Weak” in curses. Lets be honest, if you’re going that far into curses, you’re condition or hybrid spec, and you are not taking Target the Weak.

4 more ways for thief, 1 more way for necro.

DOUBLE EDIT: Forgot Weakening Shroud. Unfortunately, it has an internal cool down of 15 seconds, so won’t always apply every time you go into DS.

Andele.1306:

And actually no i dont bother with Line of sight outside of random spvp matches

Ugh, dude, no. This kind of mentality is exactly what separates the good players from the bad players. LoS is a very valid and commonly used tactic in speed runs, where the efficiency that we talk about takes place.

Talentless.5708:

What build are you running?

Well that depends on where I am.

tPvP: Anything and everything. I’ve tried it all and each build has its pros and cons. Can’t really say I run one thing here.

Dungeons/Fractals: Nemesis hybrid build 30/30/0/0/10

WvW: Either 20/20/10/20/0 or 0/30/20/20/0 when in zergs. 30/15/0/0/25 or 0/30/20/0/20 for roaming (I don’t roam very much on my necro any more, not very viable in my tier).

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t even know if a shred of what Andele said is true, but kitten is it convincing.

The real tricks to convince people that play the other classes whether its true or not.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I’m sorry, but I laughed when I read Kravik saying that Ranger pets are better than Necro minions. I’ll say this now, while it’s true the Ranger pet heals itself outside of battle and that can help quite a bit, the problem is that the AI for it is so horrible that the pet itself is a joke. Not to mention most people ignore the pet and aim straight for the player, which is easy to do since you only have to avoid 1 thing, compared to 4. I’d rather have your 4 minions than my pet, especially since those 4 minions can keep people occupied long enough for the necro to kill the opponent (it’s how I keep losing to necros in 1v1 in WvW, especially since they keep hitting for decent damage). The Ranger pet, however…you’re lucky if anybody aims for it. <_<

Also, Necro’s not the worst class to play as. If anything, it requires some skill, similar to Engineer and Ranger (and surprisingly I’m starting to like necro as much as my ranger because of some of the similarities they have for my playstyle).

Grass is always greener I suppose. What you describe isn’t the problem necros have, however. I wasn’t arguing the usefulness of the pets themselves like you seem to think I am. I was arguing the ability to control pets directly being more useful, and better, than what necromancers currently have. Its actually getting necromancer pets to attack is the problem, not the pets themselves. If you’re new to using necro minions you’ll run into this problem eventually. Especially the melee minions. The ranged ones don’t have this problem for whatever reason. People say its because of pathing, but I’ve had them bug out on completely flat terrain just as much.

Pet AI is bad across the board and isn’t exclusive to necromancers. We just see it more often because we cannot directly control them. Unlike Mesmers, whos clones/phantasms will stick to its target like glue until it dies, necro minions have a habit of randomly losing aggro and standing around, not doing anything. Flesh Golem is very prone to doing this for some reason. Rangers never see it as badly as we do because they have a simple override function in the ability to tell their pet to attack. Once a ranger sends his pet on you, especially in tPvP, they stick to you like glue for the most part. I’ve had ranger pets chase me all the way from one point to another in tPvP, well beyond what people would consider normal aggro range. Extremely annoying and keeps me in combat, preventing me from regenerating.

Now if the ranger pets themselves are useless or have bad in combat functionality, I don’t know. Don’t have a ranger. Just know from observation that when a ranger pet is sent after me, they never drop aggro unless I kill them. Its easy to bug out necro minions if you know how to do it. I do it all the time on my thief by abusing stealth. Getting the necro pets to reengage mid fight is often problematic for necromancers.

spoj.9672:

All true but a zerker necro actually does more damage than most classes except warriors and thieves. And boon stripping is very useful on some bosses so it gives them that edge over the other non tier 1 classes. But as you said from a dps stand point they arent optimal and mesmers can boon strip pretty well aswell as providing the group with timewarp. So its kind of just how it goes seeing as efficiency is very important in high skilled dungeon running.

Boon stripping isn’t really an issue in PvE. You can still brute force your way through protection with an extra warrior or thief easier than bringing someone dedicated to the task of removing it. Even then, you’ll find maybe one boss in the entire dungeon that will have boons that you might want to consider having them stripped. Its really not worth it from that same efficiency standpoint. Or just bring a mesmer, like you said, so you can have your cake and eat it too.

In PVP thats a different story entirely, but even still, the classes with boons you want stripped will just reapply those boons faster than we can strip them. This is because they either have passives or more active skills to grant those boons, at much shorter cool downs, than we have at removing them.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t cast a minion and then lose all my damage for 20-30 seconds, I cast my minions and then have most of my damage except for a 20-30 second interval on death. Minions work completely differently from other damage skills.

Good point. Still, 30 seconds is too long for them to be considered disposable. Especially since they do not regenerate their health in between fights. You might win your first fight with them, but as soon as the second one starts, I guarantee those minions aren’t going to last longer than a few seconds. This will severely hurt your damage.

I honestly, don’t feel the hate isn’t unjustified. The way PVE is set up, its really the most efficient thing to just plow through everything with raw damage.

Condition manipulation is really more of a novelty in dungeons more than anything. To be frank, its more efficient to clear them out right rather than trying to get people to stack on one point (which will get people killed more often than not) so you can use Putrid Mark. The cool downs on our condition manipulation skills are also rather long for them to be used very often to the groups benefit. Every class has at least one way of removing conditions on themselves. If you bring a guardian, conditions on the party aren’t even a factor.

There is also the condition cap to consider. Raw damage is always useful no matter what the circumstance is, but you get two people who apply conditions in a single dungeon and those two peoples DPS is literally cut in half. The 25 stack cap on bleeds plus the way poison and burning stack duration instead of intensity, you’re handicapping yourself with more than 1 condition build. The necromancers direct damage doesn’t even come close to that of a thief or warriors, so why even bring a necromancer for that role? There are even some bosses (namely in CoE) that actively clears their conditions, nullifying the entire class completely if they’re traited that way. Going direct damage, you don’t even have to worry about this possibility when joining a random group, and necros are only mediocre at direct damage. Not bad, but not great, either.

This is why people hate on necromancers. Its all from an efficiency and utility stand point. Is the hate really unjustified when you compare necromancers to what other classes bring to a group? I personally don’t think it is. When I do dungeons on another class, I notice that the dungeon run does indeed go noticeably slower, and they’re not really doing anything or bringing anything that can’t be better serviced by another class in that role.

Bhawb.7408:

Kravick.4906:

30 seconds is a pretty long time in this game. Especially for a skill that is supposed to be disposable. In combat, 30 seconds is excruciatingly long if its something you rely on for damage.

Epidemic is the single only utility skill that we have that is on a lower CD than all our minions except our elite and Flesh Wurm, and Flesh Wurm dies the least of all our minions. By that, I’d say minions have manageable CDs.

Thats the point I’m trying to make. The other classes utility slots are actually filled with utility skills. Necromancers are the odd ball class and we actually have to use our utility slots for damage. There are very few attack skills with a cool down that long on other classes. If they are that long, its usually because it does a truck load of damage or offers some amazing utility along with it.

30 seconds for a basic offensive skill is extremely long by comparison.

Poplolita.2638:

Could you at least try proving me wrong instead of throwing me, yet again, another one of your ad hominem? At this point, your use of the word “trolling” comes as an excuse from your misunderstanding of my posts. I even clarified that I was talking about accessbility on an on demand vigor buff the op was asking for ( blood is power+well of power gives 10sec vigor ) and not if t was efficient or not.

I’m sorry, but looking at your post history, and my past dealings with you, you’re just not worth trying to have discussions with. Every time I have tried, all you’ve done is twist my words around and throw insults. Even when other people, people whom I don’t even know, come and point out your flaws in logic, you still flip out, insult people, and try to twist things around in your favor. You’re also entirely too hung up on semantics and you just argue in circles. Its pointless.

No offense, but I really don’t feel like wasting my time with people like you. I come here for intelligent discussion. Not trollling.

Only 2 minion skills are on longer than a 30 second CD, one of them is an elite, and the other is going to be 32 seconds in most minion builds (with CD reduction trait).

30 seconds is a pretty long time in this game. Especially for a skill that is supposed to be disposable. In combat, 30 seconds is excruciatingly long if its something you rely on for damage.

Pendragon.8735:

Abandoned isn’t the right word, more like they think we are fine, done, or in a good place. Which if you only want Necro to be a support character I guess flies. But doesn’t stand up to the sales pitch of any professions being able to perform any role.

This pretty much. Which is unfortunate. Statements from the ANet dev team pretty much allude to them thinking there is nothing wrong with necromancers currently. Their customer base disagrees with them, however. The majority of people I speak to about necromancers thinks we’re weak as kittens and don’t bring much to a dungeon group. Our damage is mediocre compared to other classes and our support isn’t nearly as good as what other classes can bring. They also find that most of the time we’re easy kills in PvP. I find this to be true when I am on another class and end up against a necromancer. I don’t know if its because of my intimate knowledge of this class or if its because they really are weak, but I always just roll over necromancers in PvP when I am playing another class.

No one likes playing unappealing classes, and currently necromancers are tied with engineers as the least played class. Both have severe design flaws which I’m not going to go into right now. Because this game is designed around mobility, dodging, and avoiding incoming damage all together, necromancers are seen as pretty weak. Having played other classes that can easily move around the battlefield and avoid damage completely when necessary, this perception isn’t without merit.

Can a necromancer kill people in PvP? Sure. Can they survive when needed in PvE? Sure. Unfortunately the mechanics given to them are no where near as efficient, or as effective, as what other classes possess.

CHIPS.6018:

When War Machine stack for team heal, they don’t ask for “Well of Blood! Blood!”. They ask for “Water! Water!”.

I am not going to write another long post to prove myself. I know what I am seeing.

You’ll actually get yelled at if you drop Well of Blood since its a light field. Then you’ll get told to GTFO of the zerg if you can’t follow directions.

Poplolita.2638:

I’m not talking about efficiency, I’m talking about accessibility.

“What I noticed is that Necromancers have a pretty nice on dodge trait that gives regen and causes bleeds, but they have no way to increase energy replenishment.”

“no way to increase energy replenishment”

Note the context next time when you are responding. Thank you.

Yet again you’ve proven you have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not even going to bother dismantling your post again. You’ll just respond with more trolling and word twisting like you did before.

Poplolita.2638:

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Be fair, it isn’t just vigor. No blocks, no invulnerable, no attacks that evade, terrible mobility, no knockdown (except Golem), knockback (except lich #3), or launch, no stun (daze is not the same thing), no reflect or absorb projectiles.

Necro does a lot of things well, but avoiding hits isn’t one of them. Thats ok, just really makes building a good one more difficult.

BTW, popping 2 utilities in exchange for 10s vigor is not what I consider to be sound tactics, so you really shouldn’t even count that as an option.

Doesn’t hide the fact that necromancer does have access to vigor via well of power. Did you ever try converting 10+ stacks of bleed in pvp? It gives you 30+ seconds of vigor.

Its more efficient to just transfer them back at this point. You don’t need dodges against other condition builds. There is no point in avoiding them when you can turn their own attacks against them. Its the burst builds you need dodges for.

Ramiah.5648:

And using the justification that they brought a necromancer is EXACTLY like saying they brought a knife-wielder to a gunfight. Just because that dude has a knife and he’s on their side, doesn’t mean the guy with the machine gun is any less effective. But, which would most people rather have?

I’m partial to shanking people, but thats just me. I really wish I had a Swiss Army knife that had a gun attachment though. That would be totally cool.

Ezeriel.9574:

Roll an ele, they can do everything but tank.

I dunno, pure bunker eles are pretty ephing ridiculous too.

For the same reason when Charr use Lich Form they suddenly become human. Time and effort going into making multiple lich form models was better spent else where.

Blaine Tog.8304:

There are a few that break the mold, but even then not as much as I would like. When I look at that gallery, I see a strong pattern emerge.

Trench coats. Trench coats, EVERYWHERE!

Blaine Tog.8304:

Ah, but it does! Attrition builds can only work if they allow you to survive through burst, which is exactly the point of the big health pool and Death Shroud.

To be clear, I’m speaking conceptually. I’m not claiming the Necro’s tuning is perfect.

I’m speaking from experience. In PvE, nothing ever bursts you so you’ll never see it there. PvP is an entirely different ball game. It is not uncommon for people to easily burst through your DS with a single combo. It generally absorbs no more than 2, maybe 3 hits before its completely gone. This burst often continues through your DS and into your normal HP if you’re facing a high burst classes like thieves, mesmers, or warriors.

Thieves can, and will, out attrition a necromancer quite easily if they play smart. Constantly going into stealth to regenerate and popping up with high damage attacks. The amount they regenerate while stealthed is quite substantial, and they don’t even need +healing gear for it to be that effective. Fortunately for me, having played a thief for a while, I generally know how to counter them. However, if I am playing condition build, there is a type of thief that no matter how well I play, I’ll never beat. This thief is typically known as sword/dagger thief, and will most definitely out attrition any necro build.

You can’t even make the argument that guardians aren’t better at attrition. Then there is the insanity that is the bunker engineer. Its really a toss up which is better at attrition. Guardians or Engineers. Both of which just put necromancer attrition to shame.

flow.6043:

Kravick.4906:

The staff fear, quite frankly, isn’t any better because its tied to a weapon that can’t even stand on its own. If staff was a weapon that was capable of being the focus of a build, I’d change my mind on it, but personally I find the staff to be extremely weak as a weapon.

Dude -.-
I’ve postet my build over two weeks ago. It’s a staff build, as in: standing on it’s own, build-focus and everything… and I incorporate terror too.
Maybe you’ll see it in action when we have our EU necro tournament.

Staff hits like a wet noddle even when fully traited. This is mainly due to its hybrid design. The same problem occurs with warriors and one handed swords. Split focus weapons have, in other MMOs, shown to be poor concepts that might look good on paper, but never pan out in practice. This has not changed in GW2.

Staff is not a stand alone weapon by any means, and going by what I’ve read on these forums, most necromancers agree. Its a weapon you swap to for a specific purpose and then put it away as soon as humanly possible. It simply does not have the damage output, or staying power, to be considered anything other than a support weapon. Theres also the major problem of the auto attack projectile being laughably easy to sidestep unless you’re at point blank range, which is where you don’t want to be with a 1200 range weapon.

Monoman.2068:

Kravick.4906:

2 seconds of fear is still pretty kittenty when you have to invest so much to make it last those 2 seconds. Especially when everyone else gets it 3 seconds base, and they can still improve the duration further if they wanted to make a build around it. I would much rather have the 3 second fear with the longer cool down, as I feel it would be a hell of a lot more useful than what we have now.

You forgot that a thief can actually kill you in 3 seconds.

Oh I didn’t forget. Its what I do on my thief when I fight necromancers. Get them to about 50% HP, hit the fear, CnD → Backstab, they’re pretty much dead. Conditionmancers are especially easy for me to kill what with having so many ways to remove conditions.

Its part of the reason why I find 1 second fears to be rather useless for anything other than an interrupt, and even then there are better mechanics to do even that with, like knockdowns, knock backs, daze, etc.

Blaine Tog.8304:

It’s a light-armor profession that’s supposed to win wars of attrition, and it’s supposed to be better at manipulating conditions than other professions. It doesn’t get blocks or invulnerables or serious mobility options so it’s supposed to be able to deal with spike damage simply by having a bigger health pool (and using Death Shroud for clutch absorbs).

Which doesn’t do to well at the attrition part.

Monoman.2068:

I remember when I would make my friends huddle together in my well of blood, I still get made fun of for that.

I’ve actually seen this get people killed in WvW. Rather than spreading out, they all stood on the well. Then a warrior rushed in, hit them all with Hundred Blades -> Whirlwind combo and just wrecked them. I’m sure the warrior was glass cannon, but still. I found it hilarious that a necro ability designed to support people ended up getting them all killed. Then I felt depressed after I realized what just happened.

Pendragon.8735:

Lily.1935:

Also. Epidemic doesn’t make the few conditions the necromancer does have any better. It is good, but out of the other skills they have this isn’t justification for how poor almost everything else is.

I would easily give up epidemic if we got all the things we lack/need. I think its overrated, especially now. Sometimes when I’m trash farming, I will change it and forget to reslot epidemic, and groups still die almost as fast, because its kind of redundant to what the Necro already has a lot of, AoE conditions.

It’s unique in being able to spread other players conditions, sure, but I find most other professions don’t actually have very long conditions or durations, so mostly you end up spreading your own, or maybe 1 or 2 seconds of burning or confusion, its not that big a deal outside a very dedicated team organizing everything to a T. Most of the Necro playerbase is not in that environment, so doesn’t ever approach having it be maximized in the way the devs likely feared or rated it on.

I have to agree with this. Especially the part about other classes conditions not lasting long enough to take advantage of them. Its nice hitting a fat stack of 25 bleeds with Epidemic, but I find that the stack disappears so darn quickly after the epidemic goes off. Maybe if conditions lasted longer in general, but as it is, confusion duration is so low that I almost never see people killing themselves on any confusion stack I Epidemic.

The core concept of the necromancer is that yes, we are supposed to use our DS to mitigate incoming damage. Rather than avoiding the damage completely like every other class does, we’re supposed to just take it, but shrug it off because of our large HP pool and DS. The flaw that many people soon realize after playing the necromancer in PvP is that when you compare them to classes with blocking, invulnerability, invisibility, teleports, the ability to stack vigor, and other general mobility skills (swiftness is not mobility, its a speed buff, different mechanics) it falls way, way behind in terms of survivability and keeping up/away from your opponents. DS is fine for avoiding damage in PvE. Nothing ever hits hard enough for DS not to protect you there. Hell, it completely avoids the instant kill hit from Jade Maw. Sure, it eats all your LF, but you have tons of ways to generate LF in PvE, so that should never be a problem. It isn’t til you start doing PvP that you start to see the major flaw in its design.

In s/tPvP, its an extremely scarce resource for many builds, and you have to rely on other people to help you make kills to generate that LF. This is why people say that necromancers need support in s/tPvP. Every time you start a match, any LF you have is always set to 0. This leaves us at a huge disadvantage starting each match. Its also rather difficult to continuously generate LF, as it requires you to be in actual combat with players. Chances are you’re also going to use up any LF you may have generated during your fights just to stay alive. Its also possible for your LF to be gone the instant you use DS because of burst combos from certain classes. Sometimes they wait for you to use it just so they can burst it all away and leave you disadvantaged for a while.

In WvW, LF generation is a lot less of a problem because there are NPCs and critters you can go beat on to generate it. However, you’ll soon discover that the second you go into DS, it disappears almost instantly because of how much burst is being thrown at you (even more so in WvW than s/tPvP). I’m not even joking when I say a mesmer or a thief can burst all of your LF away in a single attack combo, and a warrior can literally one shot all of your LF with eviscerate or hundred blades. This is mainly why people have taken up the habit of “flashing” DS to use a single skill. Go in DS, use your skill, get out of DS before it gets eaten up. In Zerg vs Zerg, DS isn’t going to save you, because by the time you need it, its already to late.

This game is designed with dodging and mobility as its primary method of avoiding damage. When you then add a class that cannot dodge as effectively, and completely lacks the necessary in combat mobility required to perform adequately in comparison to the other classes, you end up with a rather lack luster profession. Seems like it might work on paper, but in practice, it fails to deliver up to expectations. This is mainly why necromancers are regarded as the worst roaming class in the game.

TLDR: DS is good in PvE and works great. Because of the obscene amounts of burst that other classes are capable of dishing out in PvP, plus our general lack of mobility, DS is a very bad mechanic is sadly holding this class back.

Lily.1935:

Alestes.4081:

Lily.1935:

Epidemic doesn’t make the few conditions the necromancer does have any better.

If you think necromancers only have a few conditions then you still have a lot to learn about the class.

Anything less then all but one condition for the master of conditions is “only a few” In my eyes, the only condition the necromancer shouldn’t have access to is burning. And fear doesn’t count because its going to end before you finish casting epidemic.

I can’t remember when this was said, shortly before BWE or during BWE, but necromancers were promised access to confusion. 8 months later and we’re still waiting.

And yet all the updates they’ve given us has been rather poor. Look at the Southsun debacle (its still useless content that no one visits). The “Living Story” content is very shallow. Even fractals, which had the biggest impact on actual game play, was only 9 very short maps. The Battleground update that was supposed to be, “Game changing!” (ANets words) ended up being nothing more than a meaningless set of levels and ultimately pointless siege specialization. Nothing actually changed. Don’t even get me started on the patch that was supposed to be all about improving tPvP. The leader boards are also a completely joke. If you look at all the content that has been added to the game from release up until now, very, very little has actually been added to the game. By now, most MMOs would have had an expansion that would have given us tons and tons of new content, skill updates, new skills, new weapons, and balance fixes. So far, all of ANets balance fixes has been ignoring the obvious OP kitten, taking a sledgehammer to classes who’s abilities are already under performing, and giving miniscule, meaningless boosts, to skills that seriously need improving.

I’m not sure whats going on at ANet right now. Their actions and whats going on with the game are contradictory to what they’re saying.

Bhawb.7408:

1) Whose pet is better is debatable, it just depends on what your intent is
2) The fears don’t even begin to compare. Thieves get a single fear, only against necromancers, on a 45 second CD; warriors get a single fear on an eighty second CD that only lasts longer than ours if you are close enough; every Necromancer gets a fear on a 20 second CD, staff gives us an AoE fear on a 40s CD, we can also get 2 fears from flipping boons, one from being stunned, and one from being downed, can be traited to do huge damage per tick, and can be traited to have double duration. It is incomparable what we can do with fears and what they can.
3) Epidemic. A single epidemic totally and completely outclasses everyone else’s condition application.

Ranger pets can actually be controlled. This alone makes them infinitely better. Then theres the fact they heal themselves out of combat. This makes them a lot more useful and gives them a lot more sustainability between fights. Right now, I have to switch my skills out, wait 20 seconds, and resummon my minions if I don’t want them to get killed by the first thing that hits them after every fight. Its extremely annoying and doesn’t add any kind of depth, fun, or unique mechanic to this class.

I’d rather have the other versions of fear. They’re better, and they’re all AoE by default. You can do a hell of a lot more with 3 seconds of AoE fear than a paltry 1 second single target fear. 1 second fears are nothing more than a glorified interrupt. I’d rather have a stun or a daze than a fear if its only going to last 1 second. The staff fear, quite frankly, isn’t any better because its tied to a weapon that can’t even stand on its own. If staff was a weapon that was capable of being the focus of a build, I’d change my mind on it, but personally I find the staff to be extremely weak as a weapon.

2 seconds of fear is still pretty kittenty when you have to invest so much to make it last those 2 seconds. Especially when everyone else gets it 3 seconds base, and they can still improve the duration further if they wanted to make a build around it. I would much rather have the 3 second fear with the longer cool down, as I feel it would be a hell of a lot more useful than what we have now.

Epidemic is crap now. I would have agreed with you before the nerf, but now its not even worth the space it takes up in a utility slot. Its just to easy for it to flat out fail. You already know how I feel about skills that I find unreliable. Furthermore, balancing an entire class around one skill, a skill that is only useful to one specific type of build, is horribly bad game design. I would suggest you play an engineer and then come talk to me about condition application. Just as many bleed stacks, plus confusion, poison, and burning (oh god, the burning is so beautiful and does soooo much damage). Its not even comparable I’m afraid. Engineers can do all of this AoE as well. Epidemic doesn’t even come close really because all we have is bleeding and poison.

It is no secret that this class lacks proper design direction. Its trying to do to much and failing to do any of it properly. It also doesn’t help any that we’re suffering from a severe case of, “Afraid of being over powered” syndrome by the developers because of some one trick pony build in BWE. A build that still exists on guardians, engineers, and elementalists today.

Bhawb.7408:

The Necromancer is a theme they brought over. There was no possible way they could have recreated everything a Necromancer was in GW1 while losing at least 50% of the skills, and having totally new mechanics. It wasn’t a direct transistion in the slightest, it was a theme (curses, blood, death, minions, etc) that they then applied to a totally different game.

The GW1 Necromancer is, and always will be, exclusive to GW1. If you don’t like the transition, you outlined why that is a totally valid feeling (I miss a lot of what you mentioned), but this isn’t the GW1 Necro, this is an entirely new game, with new mechanics, and as such a whole new Necromancer profession.

Regarding the actual mechanics we do have vs other classes, the complaints are absolutely valid. Necro pets vs ranger pets. Necro fear vs thief/warrior/ranger fear. Necro condition application vs other classes ability to apply conditions. Our ability to group support vs guardian/elementalist ability to group support. The disparity is staggering in what we can do vs other classes.

Regarding fear, it was supposed to have been our class defining skill. Instead it got gutted, given to other classes, and ours was nerfed into the ground. All the while the other classes that got it got to keep the original versions.

As someone who has played necromancers in GW1, I feel exactly the same way you do. Yes, I read all of it. Its pretty much spot on IMO.

Andele.1306:

Third, Necro skill cap is higher than Ele skill cap (DS, Elite potency and permanent passive , its just that Ele learning curve is vertical while necro is a nice climb up hill that later turns almost vertical.

Honestly, I don’t feel this is true. I believe this is just what we keep telling ourselves to make us feel better about the current state of necromancers. There is only so much you can do with 10 skills plus 4 from DS. I really believe this is a problem with game mechanics that are holding us back. I can pretty much pick up any class without any prior experience and still do better on it than I can currently on my necromancer, and I’ve been playing necromancer since release.

Sororita.3465:

tier 1 wvw:
Thief,Mesmer,guardian

tier 2 wvw:
Warrior,Ele

tier 3 wvw:
Engy, ranger,necro

Based on how easy the class makes it for you, tier 3 classes have to work much harder in my experience.

I’d bump the engineer up to tier 2 honestly. The HGH condition build is leagues better than necro/ranger at roaming. I’d also swap guardian and ele positions.

OPs video is also quite depressing, but nothing that surprises me TBH. Its been said many times by many people already. Anything a necro can do, some other class can do better.

Frankly, none of the necromancer builds feel adequate to me. Theres always something that feels lacking no matter what I do to try and compensate.

Current state of necromancers honestly reminds me of rangers and elementalists from GW1 after they added hard mode. Constantly being held back due to design mechanics. Despite the many complaints about this philosophy of balance design, ANet remained stubborn and refused to do anything about it. Rangers were never seen in meta groups, and elementalists were always told to dual class monk and heal, as that was all they were good for. In the end they had a pretty low amount of players playing them just like necromancers in GW2. I honestly don’t believe this problem will ever be addressed by ANet. They seem pretty adamant that nothing is wrong with necromancers right now. Meanwhile, necros in GW1 were considered top meta in just about everything. I miss the old necro. Necros in this game is a sad shadow of their former glory.

Bas.7406:

Just making sure everyone is ready to go today :P.

I’ll be ready.

Arvid.3829:

Kravick.4906:

The warriors axe auto attack beats necro dagger auto attack by quite a large margin too.

You mean to say that the best sustained damage weapon on the best sustained damage class outperforms our dagger? Omg, whatever are we going to do now?

All kidding aside, yes there are still classes with better weapons. Yes, there are classes that can just load up on a bunch of +damage%, +crit%, +crit damage traits. But still, calling dagger mediocre damage is saying that 90% of the weapons in this game perform below mediocre damage… It’s my opinion that you need to adjust your definition of mediocre in such a case.

You’re taking what I said out of context. Yes, it is mediocre damage. I will explain why.

Necro dagger has no other abilities that lend itself to anything but mediocre damage output. Auto attack doesn’t make the weapon good. Its just damage to supplement what you’re doing in between ability usage. Perfect example is the warrior greatsword. It has a horrible auto attack damage output, one of the worst in the game actually, but skill 2 and skill 3, as well as certain traits, turns the entire weapon set into a damage powerhouse. The damage output of those two skills alone, as well as having such low cool down on both of them, over shadows the fact the fact that the auto attack DPS is horrible.

The same is true for Necromancer dagger, but in reverse. Auto attack damage is good, but the other two abilities (and any offhand we have to go with it) will never put out enough damage on their own to boost the weapon set any higher than mediocre. You can’t just look at one ability and say, “Its the highest X in the game!” without taking into consideration of what else the weapon has. Doing so puts everything out of context.

Arvid.3829:

Sheobix.8796:

The dagger provides speedy mediocre power based damage, but lacks the base ratio numbers to be able to hit for numbers higher than 3.5k without too much unbalancing of your stat and trait spread.

Except that our dagger has one of the highest DPS chains in-game…

But without other high damage weapon abilities to accompany it (weapon based abilities like Hundred Blades, Backstab, etc), the overall damage output you get is rather lackluster by comparison to other classes weapon sets. By itself, when you compare the ability sets other classes have on their weapons, the auto attack by itself only puts out mediocre damage. The warriors axe auto attack beats necro dagger auto attack by quite a large margin too.

They’ve already been buffed, which means they used to be worse, but yeah, they are pretty useless.

Panhauramix.2784:

They’re smaller, LoS is feet to feet, they can’t see the feet of their target so they panic. Guess sometimes they can’t see their own feet too, so they double panic.

A small bandaid that I would take, if not for the laugh: When they enter Panic mode, they jump to see if there’s a feet near, if they see one, they charge it and explode. We could all have small bouncing undead kangourous instead of squirrels!!

I support this idea.

God, I need a better mic. I sound terrible.

Looking forward to the next event. I can’t wait!

Scepter can’t hit the windows either.