Guild Wars 2

So far I have seen nothing to vindicate Necro as a great PvP profession, either. I won’t flat out say you shouldn’t play it, but you should be prepared for a frustrating, uphill battle against “common knowledge” and having no blatantly powerful or tricksy mechanics like Hundred Blades, Heartseeker, Cloak, Phantasms, or Shatter.

Your most powerful abilities are still arguably weak; as you said, they have a lot of ramp-up time and as should be evident our CC has very short duration, as where in PvP the things that matter most tend to be active survivability, burst and control.

I have typically run a staff/wells build which I refer to as the ‘siege Necro’. That has problems when you’re not attacking or defending walls, however, because people just roll out of your wells and you’re pretty ineffectual for the next 45 seconds. I’m gonna try out a specialized Death Shroud dancer for a bit tonight and see how it functions in the open field and smaller skirmishes.

Kayotik.5790:

I also like how the staff turns into a shadow-scythe when you cast/attack.

TBH that is very cool. I also like the angry shadowy ball you turn into when you go into Death Shroud.

Zelthios.5902:

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.1.7.18.0.0.0.0.0.107.108.125.126.129.0.0.0.0.0.0.317.322.0.0.0.0.346.347.0.366.368.0.0.20.0.25.25

Do what you will, nit pick and what have you.

I don’t get it. I thought you might have something like this in mind, which is built around pulsing DS every 5 or so seconds for constant Fury, AoE healing and conditions, frequent fear and CC breaks rotating with regular dagger siphons, axe “burst” and retaliation:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQUQRBIhdu1IjW0e2myGDfCYmh3bHf4YqHu3O6A;TABg0ynEOJdS9kyJKcM4IwxijDHJOLKGUsxYiB

What you linked doesn’t seem as revolutionary; it’s a pretty typical conditionmancer that dabbles in wells and a larger life force pool.

From what I can tell, Life Force is normally 100% of your max Health. So by completely neglecting Vitality, even with the 30% extra Life Force pool from Soul Reaping you have a pretty shallow Life Force pool.

The issue I see with this build is actually building and maintaining enough Life Force to keep going in and out of DS, especially while under fire in a realistic PvP scenario, unless you are spending zero time in DS to prevent it from being drained… in which case you’re not using any of your traits for Life Blast/Plague Blast so what’s your main source of damage? Staff marks? Dagger or axe auto-attacks?

I dunno, but for some reason DS dancing doesn’t seem very sustainable to me. Maybe I’ll give it a bit of a go tonight and see what’s up.

I have a Necromancer at 80, a Thief at 22, a Guardian at 12, a Warrior at 10, an Engineer at 9, a Mesmer at 7, and a Ranger at 6. The Necromancer in full Exotic gear, whose playstyle I have greatly enjoyed, is now shelved because any of those others I listed have substantially better return value for time invested; the Necromancer is so very ineffectual, even at the things they’re supposed to specialize in.

I got more kills (did more damage, applied more pressure, contributed more to my team’s efforts, etc) with a level 6 Ranger yesterday in a 30-minute grand melee where 60 of us sieged a keep with 20 defenders and 30 counter-attackers outside than I normally do during a whole night of active WvW with my Necromancer.

It may be fun to feel unique because you’re playing that one-off profession that very few others are playing and you can finagle some use out of it, but in the end you’d simply be more effective at accomplishing whatever objective you’re going for by using any number of other options.

Tried since launch to work with Necro. As a disclaimer, I only really play WvW, but I’ve put together a full set of exotic 80 gear for a power/precision wells build. I’ve also tried out conditionmancer, spectral skills and a minion/conditions hybrid build; none of them were as useful as the wells build. Even the wells build did not seem as useful as anyone else using most any other profession/spec.

Finally over the weekend I tried out a backstab/shortbow Thief at level 20 in WvW. I have to say I can’t imagine wasting more time trying to develop my Necro; it feels like ‘throwing good time after bad’.

As a Thief I have at least equal group and personal utility, exponentially better time-to-kill, far better on-demand mobility and survivability… and I get to dress my character in sexy leather armor.

roachsrealm.9284:

what’s everyone complaining about? I’m loving my necro and I’m not having any problems enjoying the game. I can solo anything but a champion and I can run across whole zones quickly. What’s not to like?

Solo PvE is not among my concerns for Necromancer. There are some aspects of solo PvE area that certain builds can have a tough time with (conditions builds attacking structures, minion AI, flesh golem underwater, etc), but overall it tends to be acceptably balanced and interesting.

PvP serves quite well to highlight the Necromancer’s deficiencies. That’s the area where many are really looking for some improvements. You can finagle some wins with a Necromancer, but you’re relying more on the inexperience and ineptitude of your opponents rather than the robustness of the Necro, and other classes would have fulfilled that role better.

Yeah, I wouldn’t mind knowing if it’s worth continuing to pursue this class at this point. I enjoy the necro style but not the awful details of its execution. It’s nigh impossible for me to believe that we haven’t heard a single thing about it.

Maybe it’s not unreasonable to conclude that the lack of any comments from the developers or community relations reflects an general apathy about the profession.

Oh, good; I was ever so concerned about the fate of hammer Guardians. I’ll surely feel better about going home and loading up my Necro. o.0

Wow, you have got to be fighting some extremely sub-80’s in those sequences. XD

I rarely manage to find the sort of action you’re showcasing here; maybe I should poke around the remote parts of the borderlands more.

D’oh! And here I just transferred to Devona’s from Sorrow’s Furnace to find a tighter and more organized WvW community. Sounds like things are evening up a bit more, though? If so, that’s great.

The butter situation really is out of hand.

Here’s Deadfall, level 80 Necromancer in transmuted Tier 2 Sylvari cultural armor.

Life Force isn’t health, it’s that extra green bar you get to use for your F1 skill Death Shroud. Also, the few skills besides your actual heal (Consume Conditions, Blood Fiend, Well of Blood, etc) that do give you extra healing tend to return relatively small amounts of health.

What you typically do as a necro (non-minion) is to get into combat, lay some conditions or build stacks of vulnerability while accumulating Life Force, heal if you’re low on health, then pop into Death Shroud and spend your Life Force as both a health shield and to power your other DS-specific abilities to as extra damage and utility. Then pop out of Death Shroud and repeat.

You’re mostly not going to do incredible damage as a Necromancer (with some exceptions), but you’re one of the most innately resilient classes on the field, especially when specced and gear for it.

So… if the Soul Reaping trait bonus works as one expects, a 30k+ HP necromancer could theoretically have 40k worth of DS? If so, that’s one hell of an extra health buffer!

Even if it were terribly slow (like, 0.05 of normal player movement speed) it would be nice to be able to fix tiny positioning issues, such as:

• My Flame Ram is 2 feet too far to hit the gate.
• I didn’t see that small ripple in the terrain that clips the bottom of my Ballista bolts 5 feet away.
• @#$! tree branch right in the path of my treb fire.

Also, watching defenders accidentally edge siege engines off the ramparts would be hilarious.

Malpractice.7850:

That sucks
See, thats what i DONT want. They need to (IMO) let overflow players/plyers in Queue waiting into servers like that to play.

I know while im waiting, id love to join a random server to help out., I doubt id even accept the Queue when it popped to go back to mine :p

I would absolutely join a low-pop server’s WvW instead of (or while) waiting in queue.

I know it would throw off their server rankings, but a big part of the reason I’m on my Sorrow’s Furnace is because my GW1 guild moved there and I don’t want to not be able to PvE with them. Until we have word on Guesting, moving to a different server isn’t really a good option for me.

Bloodtau.4672:

Then don’t randomly spam them then.

“Oh, look, a Guardian; we’d better not shoot their zerg. At all. Ever.

…

Drop ’em and bend over, I guess?"

It’s not particularly effective to forgo the use of siege weapons and try to coordinate only single-target attacks with perfect strangers over keep walls.

What I do in WvW:

• Death Magic/Blood Magic/Curses trait lines that focus on staff/well/survivability major traits.
• Gear for power (and precision secondary) plus a mix of vitality and toughness.
• Run around with Staff plus Axe or Scepter/Warhorn (secondary set is mostly just for utility speed/snare), Well of Power, Well of Corruption, Well of Blood, and one other utility skill.

In sieges (defense or offense) or, my favorite, fights at the entrance to resource camps, I find the middle of the enemy team and slow them (using some variety of chill or cripple), then dump all my marks and wells. Sometimes I can down a half-dozen people when I unload, and send many other diving out of the way and scrambling for defensive cooldowns. This is especially nice with WoC stripping nasty boons like Retaliation and Protection during my AoE burst.

Other than that… equip Warhorn and Spectral Walk so I can run towards/away from battles really quickly. :p

All of the above posted issues with minion AI, traits and scaling apply, but my absolute favorite is running around Orr with the Flesh Golem elite. Nothing like needing to wait 60 seconds each time I cross a stream. Even better is when I need to make a beachhead assault tuned for land combat and he’s (of course) on cooldown.

That’s… really funny. I’m for leaving it (and other interesting places to build siege weapons) in the game, even if I’m aware I’ll only be in position to use it 1/3 of the time.

Having played the necro since launch in PvE and PvP, I have to agree with you on most of your points.

However,

-5% power is a bonus to healing.

• This is not useless. With a high power/healing build (and there’s gear to support it) that gives me like an extra 75 Healing.

- Gain stability for 3 seconds when you enter death shroud. – Seriously does ANYONE on any server in this game use this? Has anyone used this EVER?

• I certainly have in some builds. One of the more frustrating things I’ve experienced is to pop into Death Shroud and hit Life Transfer only to get pushed/pulled/stunned/etc, which blows half of the reason for my using it. Stability lets me reliably get that channel off, and in general to use Death Shroud to break an orchestrated CC chain being executed on me.

These:

-Summon Jagged horror when you kill an enemy.

• As noted, doesn’t even live long enough to find and attack an enemy and doesn’t do any noticeable damage even if it does get a hit off.

-When you kill a foe, you lose a condition.

• I need condition removal to assist me in killing that foe (not to like, staunch the bleeding afterwards or something)

-Gain +20 toughness for each minion under your control.

• I take Death Magic in most PvP builds because toughness is one of the most useful stats and Death Magic is needed to support the Staff. However, that is a waste of a trait slot for anyone and everyone in PvP except for that oddball guy with a utility minion out.

-Deal 5% damage when your health is above 90%.

• This is such a marginal buff with such a specific and unlikely precondition as to be nearly worthless.

-Siphon health whenever you hit a foe.

• Siphon health does maybe 10hp base.
• Siphon health with 1500 Healing (not sure it even affects the value) plus the 50% boost heals for maybe 17hp with an attack (out of 25k+???). Assuming roughly 1 attack/second with the scepter or axe, that’s a paltry 1k hp over a full minute-long battle. Absolutely worthless.
• Siphon health doesn’t even work with Staff auto-attacks.

are all just as useless as you make them out to be.

I’d like to add:
- Increases the area of marks and marks cannot be blocked.

• Marks can definitely be blocked, specifically with the Aegis buff and possibly other active abilities.
• None of the marks show an increased targeting reticle.
• Mark of Blood does not show increased area when put down.
• #3 triggers against foes in an increased area but only actually applies its effects (damage, chill, etc) to foes within the smaller area, so it actually misses anyone stepping into the area of the mark after it has been cast on the ground.