- Necro
- The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.
Reading through the various comments on each class, I found myself thinking the necro doesn’t even come close to living up to it’s own descriptor.
…they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights.
Unfortunately necros are the only attrition based class. Such a description has NEVER been used to recount another profession in GW2. I can’t seem to even begin to properly describe the let down that such a dynamic is actually part of our balance, when none of the other professions are attrition based. The only comment that keeps popping into my mind over and over is, “Well, in an attrition necro vs necro fight, we can guarantee that a necro will win.”
The only fights that remotely resemble attrition based gameplay would be going up against a profession running a bunker build. Between the passive and active healing those builds maintain, and their cleansing capacities, our condition based builds fall embarrassingly shy of acceptable.
…and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills.
This is another comment from the quote that really felt far from being unique, and definitely not something that allows the necro as a profession to overtake our opponents. Yes, we can interrupt, and we have few options. The primary downside to this is, all of our interrupts are such a short duration, that we don’t actually have an opportunity to capitalize on these moments. The responsiveness of our interrupts are also extremely clunky.
The most common example would be attempting to interrupt a heal our opponent is about to cast. The average cast time of a heal across most professions is 1s. If the necro is mid cast on another ability and attempts to interrupt, the queue system is such that by the time our interrupts are done casting themselves, they are too late. Staff 5 is 3/4s casting time, Warhorn 4 is 1/2s casting time, Spectral Grasp is 3/4s + projectile travel time, and Flesh Golem Charge is 3/4s cast time + 1-4s before the pet may actually initiate the ability. DS 3 is instant, but switching takes 1/2s, and we have no visibility if the recharge when not in DS form.
…allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.
This comment actually makes me pity anyone that thinks it’s remotely true. Necro is the ONLY profession without a burst speed weapon attack, or utility ability. The only utility that ‘could be’ used as a teleport is Flesh Wurm. But with the 1-1/2s cast time, it cannot even conceivably be used as a gap closer. If you’re chasing after someone and you cast it at max range, by the time it goes off, you’re practically standing on where it spawns. EVERY other profession in the game has a means of disengaging the necro from combat, and once outside cast range, the necro has ZERO CHANCE of catching up to them.
The fact that it has been stated over and over that necros can keep opponents in combat, aside from it being completely untrue, is utterly disheartening. Every comment of this sort should include an asterisk that reads ‘So long as they remain in range, and do use their abilities to get out of range.’
Did anyone else read that quote and think to themselves that the current version of the necro in-game doesn’t live up to that class balance description?
