Guild Wars 2

best way to tank is not through healing and stacked toughness, but through faster LF generation.

with full SR traits, you can be in DS every 7 seconds or so with a full bar. Use spectral utilities, because when you’re hit with them on, you generate an ungodly amount of LF.

then swap to staff and make sure you’ve stacked power.. you should do 2-3k per hit on DS auto alone.

I can’t remember which amulet gives the proper stats, but the one with high power and high toughness, with moderate precision (20/x/x/x/30) will get you a long way if you really want a dagger/x + staff build for spvp.

although, i recommend a condition build for sPvP. positioning becomes a harder factor in PvP and with a dagger necro, that will make life very difficult.

Two races stand out as a clear benefit to me. (from an offensive standpoint)

Asura:

1) Pain inverter. synergizes well vs. mesmers, thieves, and warriors.
2) Power suit is awesome… there are some.. certain consumables used in this form that are exceptionally strong (though i will not reveal them in the forums so to avoid getting them nerfed)
3) technobabble is an additional 2s daze on top of warhorn. with runes of the mesmer and warhorn traits, you can pull off a 6-7second stunlock.

Norn:

1) Your armor looks the best when worn. (big fat norns look good..)
2) Access to snow-leopard elite which gives stealth and mobility. (two things that make the class OP)

glock.2089:

Sheobix:

Have you seen this helpful post by a mathematician player that found Necro is the most balanced/has the ideal split of all classes in regards to toughness and vitality?

http://teamlegacy.net/forum/topic/7265-math-might-vulnerability-and-toughness-isnt-good-in-spvp/page__st__40#entry96024

His formulas, according to my humble interpretation, validate your strategy that maintaining numerical balance of Vitality and Toughness moving forward (through max usage of crest of soldier etc.) is ruthlessly effective:

“Necromancer: base ratio 1:10. Yes, the necro is born perfect! An even split of vitality and toughness from here on out will do him well. (Max/Max 73.2 million EHP, 1:10 Ratio)…Necro is already getting the most EHP/stats possible at the start.”

What is most encouraging about “Juggermancer” is its baseline solidarity appears to offer great flexibility in terms of utility selection/playstyle as you have pointed out several times

Not to mention, I always play better when I am armed with the confidence of having a beastly build (and not fearing any class especially thieves sneaking up on me)!

I have not seen this! But now after reading it, I totally understand and agree with it.

The way I always explained it to someone who whispered me in game was..

if i run with 2700-3000 armor vs. 1800 base armor, i’m effectively doubling my vitality density because i take much less damage per hit than the joe schmoe next to me.

on top of that, if i stack nearly twice the vitality, i’m essentially gaining 4x the survivablity. On top of that, those benefits carry on through DS usage and elite transformations.

end of the day, I tried out my 20/30/10/0/10 condition build version…
It sucks! It just doesn’t live as long as the juggermancer. and staying alive=doing damage longer. staying alive= carrying the team and ressing everyone else.

that, and we still do decent damage. (1-3k per hit is nothing to scoff at.)

Fazzi.4876:

im more a PvE player than PvP, so i wonder if using knights armor insead of pwr/vit/toughness would be better? less HP, still alot of toughness but higher crit would mean more damage? maybe still use the crest of the soldier and you would still be sitting on a ton of HP/toughness in end, just maybe not 28-30k, anyone try it out?

by revisiting your post…
You CAN use knight’s armor instead. if you want more damage a the trade-off of vitality, go ahead. the crests will still give you around 1-2k hp and the traits will give you another 2.5k hp.

(18.5+2+2.5= 23k so you’re in the green zone)

you’re more than welcome! It just took me 13 prior builds of all sorts to find the perfect one that fits to all scenarios, save for sPvP.

LastDarkness.7390:

you have to add proper runes, gear and even foods and such to get the proper effect all while balancing your damage ouput.

this.

the blood traits aren’t there to give us an easybutton way of regenerating 100% of all damage taken in.

If you increased the healing of siphoning by another 100% (even after the 50% effectivity trait) and you want 1k after 10 hits, which is 3.3 chains from dagger1, plus you add consume (which heals anywhere from 7-12k for me) plus if you put in rampager’s gear to crit often, you put in crit-siphon trait, which does A LOT, plus the siphon-on-hit minor trait, plus the well siphoning trait… plus use omnomberry ghosts to give AN ADDITIONAL siphon on crit effect….

you’re asking them to unbalance us? Look, siphoning may lack the potential to be a center for someone’s pvp build, but it shouldn’t be. If you design something in a way that it can’t be killed because all it’s designed to do is regenerate health…

Well, we’d be the new thieves. just trait all into blood, grab a bloodlust sigil and autoattack all day. drop wells and let them suck people dry.

imho, even though i’m a huge fan of the siphoning line and want to see it get buffed just as much as the rest of us, I don’t think a 100% increase is justifiable.

the critmancer build is a rampager based hybrid setup. It uses the crit to proc bleeding and healing to greatly benefit your necro offensively at the same time as defensively.

I know I use this video all the time, but i recorded it to showcase a few really strong points of the necro. 1:48 is where the necro shines, proc’n bleeding and healing simultaneously.

The only problem is, critmancers lack toughness due to the gear hole, and the death line doesn’t lend much to the builds thereof except for PERHAPS greater marks and staff mastery.

imo you want at least 500 toughness in your necro when hitting WvW regularly or you will fall to the first noob who builds a glass cannon (100b warrior or any thief)

(powermancer)
power/tough/vit gear (nicknamed ptv gear – soldier’s prefix) is found in Invader’s armor (wvw gear) AC, SE.. etc. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature use this to find more sources.

(higher damage less hp powermancer)
Power/tough/precision (knights) for more crits (more damage) and proc’d bleeding/healing.. forego the vitality and pump more precision. knight’s jewel is emerald.

(conditionmancer)
Cond/tough/precision + cond/power/vit
Rabid + Carrion (Khilbron’s + Carrion trinkets) for stacked cond damage with toughness, vitality, power and precision reasonably balanced in the same range.

(Conditionmancer – Hybrid1)
Full Carrion (cond/power/vit) scepter/w + staff

(Conditionmancer – Hybrid2)
Full Rampager (Precision/Cond/power) Scepter(or Dagger)/Dagger + x/Warhorn//Staff

put points in curses and blood to proc healing and bleeding. D/D is viable as a substitute for scepter due to balanced power/cond dmg ratio and procs of bleeding w/ sigil of earth+barbed precision making it 100% on crit effect.

^ this. blahblah 15 characters

it is a little odd i’ve been using lich with 0 precision to utilize the huge crit chance scaling.. (4% => 50ish is crazy good with no stat investment lol)
versus your normal crit rate and where it gets buffed..

the best way to use minionmancers is to gather up 20 of them, make them go full minions (6 per toon) and do a necro-zerg through a BL and win out of sheer client render lag. since it would be about 120+ things in a group, most of them wouldn’t even render to the screen. think about it… a cloud of invisible necros…

now with stealth!

and 20 charging golems. everyone just lie down.

nerva.7940:

striker.3704:

I can’t edit my post so I’m just gonna reply again. Siphoning isn’t supposed to heal faster than damage, it’s supposed to simply slow down the rate you take damage.

yep, this is exactly what i said on my post. this is the general idea behind it.

striker.3704:

So if you were to hit the enemy with the axe 2 for the 8 x hit and siphon for 25 per hit, that’s a bonus 200 damage on top of 200 HP healed.

these are paltry amounts that add nothing to your survivability. for example, in 10 slices of my dagger, i’ll siphon about 400 HP and it will take about 5 seconds. this is half of someone’s autoattack. get my drift?

Rannulf.9417:

Anyone know what runes and sigil he uses? the amount of HP he regen is impressive.

he’s regenerating life force, not HP =S

Um, no. That was regenerating health points. It was a precision-based proc’ing vamp necro.

regenerating LF is done through Dagger1 and staff1. I ALSO do that well in that vid.

get it right.

also, the thread title is “Siphoning Not a Beneficial Strat. At all”

I see no disclaimer saying this is only for a sPvP standpoint.

as for sigils, i was using sigil of earth, and omnomberry buff for extra 66% crit proc siphoning

the problem is, you’re getting down-scaled to an area, and then your lich for is up-scaling your numbers.

I’m sure there are a lot of numbers being lost with rounding and percentage-based modifiers.

The rotation is a minimal part of the build, as it’s not so much of a rotate/chain build as it is a brawler/duelist type build.

ways to open a fight:
If your opponent is a mes/guard/war with lots of boons, drop a well of corruption. it deals the first 1-2k damage and rips off all their boons. they will either be preoccupied with trying to CC you, or trying to re-stack their boons. this gives you time to counter.

Close with dagger 3, run in, horn4 for daze, autoattack. (at this point, you should have dealt an additional 6-7k of damage)

depending on how they decide to change their play, you will probably have to hit Death shroud, or swap staff.
Ds3+Ds2 to interrupt and close, or Staff5 Staff3 to do the same.

Most of the damage will be done with WoS (if you get a good grip on them) + Dagger Auto w/ staff4. that alone (~4k+6k+3k) will bring down most glass cannons to zero, while maintaining good control on them.

Of course, high toughness and vit lets you apply consume conditions every once and a while to heal to full. It will frustrate your enemy.

====

if you wanted to burst, drop WoS, WoC, dagger3 and dagger auto. once they pop out of immob, drop staff4 and hit ds3 then ds4.

If your foe is a condition-build…
Drop well of power, use the might/retal/fury that you gain and use Ds2 to close and dag3/dag1 to bomb them. if you’re carrying BiP in your bar, use it and go into Lich form. Use lich3 knockdown and use Autoattack (3k per hit) to eat their hp. This applies power based counter-pressure and makes them need to bubble up.

Again, the vit and tough makes HP management a total cakewalk.

I’ll break this down by the areas of play

PvE – Spectral armor is redundant with -33% damage Spectral wall, and the extra stunbreaker is not needed when we can carry Spectral walk, which acts as a better one.
(I will choose Spectral wall for armor any day over Spectral Armor buff, and it can be used by team mates that walk through it)

WvW – Spectral walk is usually on everyone’s bar, swiftness is a given. It serves as the primary tele/swift/stunbreak utility. Again, spec. wall makes Spectral Armor redundant.

PvP – Spectral Armor is pretty much useless, if you are in a situation where you need the -33% buff.. you might as well be dead.

My suggestion would be to replace the stun break with 8s stability. One, it gives us stability, which we are lacking sources of (DS stability isn’t that long and only other sources are in elites)

we don’t need another spectral stunbreak… and the armor buff is redundant with spectral wall which is better.

most players who need that stability would also benefit from the armor buff in that moment. (most players CC then burst.)

thoughts?

doodeyte.7356:

I encourage you to start playing a necro. Regardless of the negative threads you hear about it, I find it to be the greatest class. I’ve played a ranger, a thief, a guardian, and a necro to 80. I love the necro mechanics. Sheobix has summed it all up. My advice though, do not look at QQ threads about necros. almost all of them do not look at the whole picture. You can do pretty good in solo play (damage and survivability wise). However, if you like to play with a group, you will be a great asset for the team when you place a well at the perfect time. I run power build with full knight armor, weapons and accessories in WvWvW. I also have a set of berserker’s weapons, and accessories for solo. I use dagger/warhorn and a staff. imo, I’ve had a lot more fun with the necro after i hit 80 than i had fun leveling. my thief though was the other way around. In wvwvw for example you can convert conditions on allies to boons, boons on enemies to conditions, you can revive 3 people at once from downed state and you can blind up to 5 people around you. Dont forget your lich form… it is awesome for solo play and plaque form for group play. even in dungeons you can bring a lot to the table than some classes would. dynamic event… you can almost tag every enemy and get crazy loot.

So much can be done. I hope to see you playing one. you’ll never regret it. and when you play another class you’ll come back tot the necro… i know i did!

i regained hope in humanity.

play the necro! we’re awesome!

PolarApe.9351:

You get loot bags/badges in WvW? I never do. I leveled from 65 to level 70 in the borderlands this morning, over four or five hours, have 9 badges to show for it. What the dingdong heck is that about?

I did so much damage to so many players over and over, battle after battle, resulting in many many kills. But all for the purpose of apparently ‘setting up’ dozens and dozens of kills for burst classes that do get badges. I broke zergs with kamikaze Plague to DS runs at many groups… look at the half-dozen dead players, hey I did more than half their total health damage to all these people, but no bags anywhere for me.

In contrast, my warrior is 60 and walks away from battles like this mornings with 30-40 or more badges, easily. I have a 30 double dagger Ele, I got 20-30 badges for them yesterday in WvW. All you got to do is watch for any player with low-ish health, get in there and faceroll at them – ta-da, here’s your reward. Not on this character, not at all.

This is one of the most effective large group pvp professions going, and I love that, but there are virtually no rewards for it. Why?

as necros, we get less loot credit for doing less damage than most of the glass cannons roaming in a zerg out there. berserker power/prec/crit geared players will get more badges but die much faster.

i think they should re-code the way it drops, so people get badges for contribution. in the meantime, i have an alt thief that i use to farm badges by roaming spawns/ camps near a BL spawn

^ incorrect. jagged horrors bleed out in a percentage-based manner. no matter the hp level, they will bleed out in equal amounts of time.

the 50% minion hp trait is better utilized by the flesh golem

XiL.4318:

Ascii.9726:

I dont get it o_o

you could of done 4 things in that clip to ‘Maximize’ wells effectiveness:

• Waited on Dagger 3 cooldown.
• Feared the Guardian into the wells.
• Used Lich Form 3 from behind to knock them back into the wells & chill.
• Saved Chilblains to chill them after or just before casting the wells rather then just doing a generic 2-5 nuke with staff.

Mr Freeze video for chill build is hilarious.

that video is sooo good. i love it. one of my favs for life

if you find a pure necro bunker to be lackluster compared to a pure bunker other class, don’t roll your necro to only bunker… you’re wasting the rest of the potential.

min/maxing a necro, once again, i say is not a good idea.

our siphoning is easy to cap out with 20 points in blood and a sigil. use it WITH other strengths in a build… you’ll find yourself doing solid bunkering + lots of other things.

Retaliation is a good synergetic to this build, if you have an asura necro, using pain inverter for confusion on thieves is the most hilarious thing to witness.

your build is also good. the point of PTV gear+ soldiers is it allows you to really be flexible with utils, elites, and traits. it will rock any way you build it. more power to you for using retaliation.

if you’re worried about thieves, drop well of darkness and hit DS. let them waste their initiative on your DS pool and then begin your rotation. it takes marginal amounts of patience, but that’s how easy it is to win vs. a thief.

my best advice for you would be to take out the 30 points in spite (wth?) and put it in curses. keep the 10 points in soul reaping at all costs, perma-swiftness and the extra crit+DS mod is topping.

10 in death is minimum for greater marks/dark armor (20 is cool, you probably picked staff mastery) and 10 in blood is also good for life transfer trait which allows you to bolster your team mates with AoE healing. the extra 1k hp and 100 healing power is nice as well.

my personal take on your build would be 0/30/10/20/10 with evasive mark in blood for mark of blood on dodging, use scepter/horn+ staff and use Carrion or Rampagers(DPS) for gear until you run CoF or Arah for the Cond/tough/prec gear.

edit: use runes of the afflicted mixed in with other runes to max bleeding duration to make up for lack of spite line)

you could try 20/30/20/0/0 (hybrid w/ scepter+staff) using carrion gear or dungeon obtained cond/tough/prec gear. use sigils of earth in your scepter.

or 30/30/0/0/10 for a speedy flying nuke, same gear.

you could try my juggermancer thread, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Update-28k-HP-3k-Armor-3-4k-Attack-Necro/page/2#post910631 PTV gear necro

conditionmancers do really well in WvW. less people carry cleanses, and when fighting a zerg, BiP+epi is the best thing to happen to the game.

shizo.5698:

gamefreak.5673:

Alex.4186:

how is performing in dungeon? i’m gearing armor and weapon full soldier and trinket knights (without the medallion) to stack some precision, i dont really need 28 k health for dungeon if i have so much toughness, and some more precision truly help

Well you wont be dying easily but i feel running this setup in instances a bad idea since the longer a mob can live the more chances you have for things to go wrong. Instances are one of the few times i will go all out damage whether it be a hybrid of condition and power, too just straight power and or conditions.

With my necros naturally high health i find getting more toughness and health just slows down the group and doesnt add really much else. This is just how I feel about them. I have 5 exotic sets of gear from instances so I could have an armor set to fill any role i want to play as. I can strongly say the more damage the group does as a whole the better the chances the instance will go in most cases.

Everyone does actully have to play, dodge and such but everyone going for damage just seems to work better then everyone trying to build for support and bunker setups.

True, but soldier offers high damage + survivebility.

Full soldier armor/weapons with emeralds + berserkers jwelery, still have 30 cc and 30 cd

shizo sums it up nicely.

the strength of PTV gear is through obtaining a very high and constant(static) damage BASE. That’s through the stacked power. (3400-3500 attack) i said in another post how you could roll this into a scepter necro, and you’d do more damage flushing into curses on top of spite, but you’ll lose bits of your tanking ability as you do so.

in dungeons, everyone going damage is NOT a good thing. for example, run SE and you’ll find your party will wipe often.

the extreme ends of the spectrum of GW2 and dungeons are a full team going Berserker glass cannon, dying in 3 seconds when anything touches them. the other end is, everyone is running a support/healing/tanking toon (guard+staff, water ele+staff, tough/cond/heal thief spamming death blossom d/d, axe necro w/ staff running regen and siphons, cleric’s gear warrior using regen banner effects, etc.) and fights take forever but nobody even comes close to dying.

the best dungeon setup falls in the middle. Everyone with tanking ability + consistent and STRONG dps. not over the top DPS.

nerva.7940:

ok, going with soldier’s amulet then. do i need any precision? even with high power, and no condition/precision, seems im hitting like a wet noodle.

with no precision and +crit dmg mods, you’ll feel like that. A glass cannon necro can output 2x the damage at the cost of 5x the survivability.

eventually you might see that stronger players in PvP run with toughness.

lasting longer and doing consistent dps > dying 50/50 and doing wtfdps

the way the necro was designed vs. how other classes are designed…

other classes cannot live for as long. it doesn’t take much time for other classes to get CD-locked or not have enough healing to offset their damage intake.

as a cloth wearer, with our DS mechanic, and our transform elites, going PTV maximizes our potential and makes us last for crazy amounts of time.

nerva.7940:

i dont see this build being viable for spvp. do you have any experience there? runes/amulets?

it is viable in tPvP but not sPvP.

the reason it is viable for tPvP because if you’re running in an organized team, using lich and the toughness is a very good way to support and kill alongside a team mate.

this build does really well in a duo. It is the last man standing and the one who holds out.

oneking.7396:

Interesting thread and my first necro set was similar to the listed one … for pve its much fun.
Atm i’m not sure to try runes of melandru (-25% Stun and condi duration, 165 tough)
vs soldier crest (120 power, +84 toughness, +84 vit) …. for wvwvw

perfectly viable. in WvW that is actually a better choice just out of pure strategy.

Swagger.1372:

@ sheobix

why not use AC weapons too ? for pwr/tou/vit

You can. I just like the look of SE vs. AC.

well, except for the helmet.. i had to learn to love that one.

glock.2089:

Question for Sheobix:

Only thing I’m confused about this build is where does your condition removal come from, could you specify in regards to condition removal which remains vital in WvW?

thanks for posting this great build!

Consume conditions, and staff 4. if you also run with well of power, that’s three sources of condition removal.

if any/all of those are on cooldown, sitting in DS takes the damage without a hitch.

most of the time, i can play the necro to 15% hp and pop Consume to regen nearly all of it back when i let them stack conditions on me.

As for those wondering if this is a good build for PvE and dungeons, it is.

if you run dungeons with more balanced warriors/engis/thieves that aren’t glass cannons, your damage output should be roughly right under theirs, while maintaining better consistency in your DPS. The result of such is that you’ll gain aggro early in a battle, and the warrior should end up bursting which trades aggro. when he starts to go down (quickly) popping DS4 w/ life transfer blood trait should re-aggro to you.

trading aggro is one of the strongest tactics in game for PvE, and this build perfectly synergizes with team-play with other hearty classes.

as for solo PvE, you can always find much more phenomenal success with a full condition necro, but that’s because BiP/scepter + epidemic is just sooooo goood.

otherwise, solo PvE is still super easy. if you rolled this as a hybrid, you can easily take out 20 orrian spectral jugs at the same moment.

Maven.1690:

This thread got my attention but I am more a fan of bleed and dots than the raw dps skills
So I made my necro with all exotics with the following build
0/30/25/15/0
I have about 25k hp 1600 toughness 1400 condition dmg.
Ill be taking it out for a spin in wvw tonight.

I think the extra tankiness and boost to healing will be a huge boon and combined with my dodge marks and dropping bleeds when going into ds itll be fun to see if i can outlast my competition in 1v1s

this build is pretty close to what i will run in a month or so. except it will be 0/30/20/10/10 for perma swifting and extra DS flesh. the minor in death isn’t important to me

Fazzi.4876:

im more a PvE player than PvP, so i wonder if using knights armor insead of pwr/vit/toughness would be better? less HP, still alot of toughness but higher crit would mean more damage? maybe still use the crest of the soldier and you would still be sitting on a ton of HP/toughness in end, just maybe not 28-30k, anyone try it out?

I apologize, i was too lazy to actually put down the most optimal gear setup for the build.

It is NOT by using knight’s trinks. those are easy to buy though, so i use them until i get inavder’s earrings +emerald pendant + lost seal of usoku(s), and invader weps.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Like Dipsy, I chose the rare Strong gear, but got the COND DMG/Prec/Tough. I then added Emerald orbs (PREC/Tough/Power) to all pieces. Most jewelry is Rampager (PREC/Power/CondDmg), also with Emerald orbs.

With 20 pts in Curses, I have 48% critchance before buffs.

Toughness is 1326, but health is only 22.7K.

Just a different way to go if crit% is a higher priority.

I actually plan on having con/tough/prec gear and use carrion trinks for the less-hp high crit chance condimancer version of this build.

good eye! read my mind

Panhauramix.2784:

I’ve tried this build, almost all exotics etc, and I love the tanking/surviving/constant dps ability. I could run from Greenwater to my spawn while been shot and chased by 3-4 defenders and waste them instead of dying on the spot.

I do find that I lack some burst though, when WoS is on cooldown, what do you think about Close to death (30/0/20/20) instead of your build for added burst when they’re down to 50%?

this is also a very strong trait spread. As i believe my OP suggests, the traits for this specific setup are EXTREMELY flexible.

i myself may move things around between curses, death and SR

Fireline.6093:

Necro aoe isn’t high enough to be of concern. Must be speaking of other classes.

scepter, dag5, staff2, EB proc on DS, BiP, and epi…

you’re kidding, right?

^exactly. even if you choose to cap blood magic (which i personally will never do)

you have 40 trait points left over.

most of our useful traits are found at the 20-point mark. (imo our grands are not that appealing)

but still, you stated it yourself, a necro w/ some blood magic can siphon just as well as a max-siphon necro.

I find that to be a huge bonus. use it, mix it in.

sorrow.2364:

Sheobix.8796:

obviously you’re a player in the minority of necromancers that suck, otherwise you wouldn’t be arguing that the class sucks. all of those conditions you’re trying to discredit are actually great tools to use when you’re fighting someone. if you’re ignoring them, then you’re not using about 1/3 of the utilities/skills in your bar.

immobilize does have defensive capability. if you use it on someone, break their line of sight (as in, get behind them), they can’t cast the majority of their utilities or skills on you. not to mention the extra second it takes for them to turn around and look at you.

2s daze is great. it’s not crap at all. you talk about it like it’s not enough.

if you stack chills, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chill its a 66% snare and 66% cooldown debuff. if you’re so set on arguing that other classes can just dance around you, chain their uber skills like there’s no tomorrow, maybe you should try chills sometime, and watch them hit a slog.

we have two main fears: staff5 which is an AoE (always useful for gaining footing in a 1v3) and Ds3. Ds3 is nearly instant cast. (hit F1 and 3, it registers pretty quick) and provides you a fear that works as an interrupt, even if you’re on the ground.

I would like to point out a valid part of your argument, about mesmers having a bountiful amount of CC as well as the clones and invuln, and i have found them really difficult to kill even when i have my eye on them. i pray that they get nerfed again someday. but still, this does not make the necro a crap class. it only states the mesmer as an exceptionally strong class.

Without considering the uncalled insinuation about my skill, you have listed all the Necromancers defensive capability which still are way subpar compared to other professions.
Want some raw comparisons?

Take, for instance, the Warrior, which is more similiar to Necromancer due to the high health pool.
An hammer warrior can easily outperform all the CC capability of Necromancer with just weapon skills, all this without considering the tons of CC skills Warriors have as utilities (lol Fear Me, Kick, Stomp, Bull’s Charge). So, if in your opinion CCs can be considered as defensive features, Warriors are still better than Necromancers.
Warriors are in a better position also when talking about Immobilization.
Just to say few:
Throw Bolas, Pin Down, all cripples + Leg Specialist.

So, as you can see, about CCs and Immobilizations, warriors are still above Necromancers, while having better armor, better damage reduction skills, invulnerability, better mobility etc.

As I said many times, snares isn’t a great deal because of the huge amount of leaps, huge amount of condition removals and short duration of chills. Also, I have noticed that usually Chill doesn’t trigger the increased cooldown time, just try from yourself.

So yes, Necromancers are weak when comparing to other professions.

Sheobix.8796:

wow! 200 toughness! and a shield! what an OP advantage warriors have over us, ranged and melee, controller, condition toting, spectral walking, life leeching, blood boiling reapers of souls with many many many lifebars! -_-

oh god, not to mention we are CLOTH WEARERS. we’re like, on the other end of the armor spectrum, right? i’m surprised there isn’t more of a gap. (as i trait in Dark armor for the extra 400 toughness to piss on the nearest warrior with his disk of metal)

So.
9% extra damage reduction on 900 bonus toughness and 18% with no bonus toughness are worse than a trait which gives you 400 toughness while channeling and prevents you to take Greater Marks… lol

About the list of Necromancers “advantages” just read above.
LOL @ Life Leeching

and you still proceed to list every source of one single condition, and fail to realize if you rely on using all of them, that’s all you will have.

if you’re so set on complaining about every single imaginable thing about the necro, why even come to the forums? what, to learn? obviously not, because so far you’ve claimed to know exactly how pointless everything on the class is.

So you log in to troll.

please leave, there are players who want to learn, and they can.

Kisses.1054:

Necro dps sucks.
And since this is by now a pve game THIS IS IMPORTANT.
I dont care if everything is viable, i care how fast they can do it.

Proposed solution: buff all necro skill damage by 100% in pve only.
Pvp: who cares it is a joke anyway

we are actually the best class to play in pve as it is…

and in pvp, if you’re moderately skilled (which most are not and therefore ragequit) you can outdo any opponent with minor challenge.

sorrow.2364:

nerva.7940:

im not saying everything is fine and dandy, but that hater just wants to see necros fail. that’s just not the case.

Or, probably, you are just trolling everyone saying that Necros are fine while obviously aren’t.
You said QP ranks, there are only few Necros on a majority of Guardians, Thieves, Mesmers and Elementalists. You should have took a look at it. Necro are underepresented in tPvP.
The point is that there is absolutely no point to play a Necro when everything you want to spec into there is some other profession which can do it way better.
But, of course, you are a troll, so there is pretty much no point into arguing with you. It is pretty obvious seeing the way you entered in the argument.

you’re the only troll, trying to knock down every valid strategy listed by any player here.

Any class can min/max to do something better than us. But you still fail to see that they become a one-trick-pony.

We have a lot of tools that more than make up for our jack of all trades build design.

Control Core.1079:

Just giving my opinion here. I think the deathshroud ability is mostly useless. The reason being that almost every player knows what it does. When you start that giga drain pokemon skill you’ll get interupted within a second or people just start dodging. I only use it for the fear that only lasts for 2 seconds.

No choice in good elite skills is also something that bugs me. Where is Spiteful Spirit for instance. Next to this if you don’t use a dot build you could just as well play an elementalist. Necros don’t need a buff in damage, just more options, as of now I find the class very limited in its options.

A good opponent will always interrupt your dag2/ds4/axe2 channels. a better strat would be to trait bleeding on crit, use sigils of earth, and then knockdown your opponent and use DS4/dag2.

You’ll stack bleeds, do moderate damage, and/or regen about ~2k health.

as for crappy elites, we have two of the best, actually. Plague form – 2x HP and toughness, and button mashing for weakness/blindness/bleeding? mmmm yum.
Lich form? twice the offensive stats? knockdown, spawn 5 jagged horrors, autoattack their HP to nothing? yeah.

lets look at the thief…
Daggerstorm – stupid short stability, melee can walk next to you and clobber you in seconds.

Thieve’s guild – kill your thieves in moments. what a joke?

Zoke.2147:

Dredlord.8076:

Druitt.7629:

Fiery Greatsword is a niche at best. It has a cooldown, a time limit, a charge limit, and it replaces your 20 weapon skills (counting attunements) while active.

Holy kitten cat katface!!!

you guys get 20 weapon skills????

surely to get to use the extra 10 you lose access to your heals and utility skills as that is double what most other classes get for weapon skills?

I mean at the very least while using all these extra weapon skills your UI is mostly removed right? one shouldn’t get that many weapon skills and still be able to see things like endurance and buff and conditions, amiright?

U sir have won an internet, pls redeem it on my FB page.

IMO necro’s are the type of mess that’s going to need an expansion before the devs ever put enough thought into it to fix. Two lowest played classes are necro and engi because both are the worst when it comes to mobility, and in a game like this mobility is blood, I don’t care how much HP or toughness you give some one the only real tankiness or surviveability in this game comes from the ability to recover damage, or the ability to avoid damage or disengage. Of witch necro is the flat out worst in the game, bar NOTHING, no class has weaker or fewer mobility options than necro, although in this argument Engi’s have to use a lot of weird tricks and be pretty quick with turning their camera’s around…

dagger2, DS, spectral utils LF gen, plague, Dark Armor trait, LF transfer trait used at end of DS bar “lifewrap” effect, and…. oh god, it can’t be…. CONSUME CONDITIONS.

yeah. our heal skill can heal the most in the game without a single point of healing power. if you figure out how long you can wait until you pop it and gain conditions.. just laugh as the opponent balks when you heal for nearly all of your hp.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Sheobix.8796:

First off, I’d like to state that necros are not “broken”.

Awesome. Glad to know I can finally come back to this game and play a Minionmancer and be as effective at DPSing as a warrior . When was the patch where they fixed minions again? I still cant find the notes.

now i know you’re trying to piss me off, but really, go read the rest of the post instead of looking at one line and trying to misconstrue it to what you can rage about.

Again, do you really think minions are a good idea if you want to play competitively? hmm.. no, unless you use flesh golem for some special purpose.

And think about this: if we could all faceroll like a warrior by just spawning minions, you’d realize every single necro would do this, right? minion’s damage do not scale with any attribute, their damage is locked to level scaling.

So every necro would be able to put their trait points into anything (wtf?) and just make all their utils minions and /faceroll

just… you need to shut up.

I’m reaaaally getting tired of people complaining that things are broken because they can’t just run berserker’s and spam ONE skill to win. (hm… i’m thinking of crap thieves that die in two hits…)

Tuccos.8592:

I got my Necro to Level 20 finally and that only because i have a few 80is already and got bored so i rolled a necro alt to try out this class.

I am shocked how bad the design of this class is, The signets, the traits the Utilities they all look like designed in the last minute before release.

>> Pet agro is almost impossible to overwrite by the player, i can do what i want the enemy wont get off my pets and so after every fight my pets are at 5-50% HP

>> whats the point of playing with almost dead pets all time ? Why arent these beings healing up ? Give all Necro Pets regen now ! i am sick and tired of running around with a almost beaten pet army.

>> Blood fiend can heal me but not himself ?? Blood fiend should be an group AoE heal effect to round up the necro.

>> Blood fiend takes more agro than anything else, he should not take any agro at all, and the Blood fiend needs to heal himself

>> Bone Minions often do nothing, they just stand there and die… ??!!!? What is that ?? Anet wasnt able to fix this until now ??

>> Lack of good passive Signets.. A little bit Power and 10% runspeed are the only usefull signets so far.

>> Utilities are all on horrible long cooldowns, most of them need to be reduced by at least 50%

>> Dead Shroud is a complete fail. Its slow it ends to fast and the skills are mostly fail designed. The LF AoE is the only i use and thats on 35s cooldown…. omg !

>> the Trait Vampiric Precicion Siphons 8 HP on a critical at level 20 ???? What is 8HP at level good for ?? my goodness this should heal for at least 25HP per crit

>> Traits , i checked them all and i see many things that should be exchanged

>> Who needs DS traits ?? Lifeforce ?? I want normal Hit Points as Necro and not Lifeforce ! overall i have no interest to use this Dead Shroud at all.

>> Minions , whats the point of these endless long cooldowns after a minion died before i can resummon him ? Why cant i just recast and summon my pets like in othergames ? why do you let me wait 30 seconds before i can continue to play ?

From all classes i played Necromancer makes no sense at all.

Ranger 80, Warrior 20, Engineer 20 , Elementalist32, Thief 80 , Guardian 47, Mesmer 35

All classes need some fixes but Necro really needs a complete re-design…

Start to give Necro Minions HP regen out of combat and improve their AI…….

i prefer to level my Elementalist next……

p.s i just tried Reanimator “JAGGED HORROR” >> The minion is dead before i can attack another Mob because its bleeding ? What is that please ? and even on a 30 sec cooldown ?? come on…….

(edited about a minute ago by Tuccos.8592)

wow. play it past 20 and come back here, or else don’t complain about all of the less-useful parts of the class. (troll attempt.. why are you trying to play with minions.. read a little in the forums a bit)

I can go ahead and whine about the thief in a similar fashion. (omg guys i played to 20 thief and the only good utilities and skills are cluster bomb, heartseeker, c&d, backstab, … with utilities always blinding powder, shadow refuge, and speed sig…. kitten the elites!)

we have a lot more potential than a berserker d/d + sbow thief or zerger warrior.

i agree, axe could use some love. i know friends who like the range over damage factor, but i’ve found it to be a little too weak in damage for my tastes.

You’d probably benefit from increasing the curve for your max damage a little more. a 30/20/20 build with staff + axe/x setup isn’t pushing the potential for what traits you’re picking up.

personally, tPvP wise, I found dagger>axe because the channeled skill does more damage and siphons health.

30/30/10 with bleeds for utilities, rely on not being seen and closing/finishing your opponent quickly. staff + dagger/dagger (in this case, dagger OH > Horn because you have dag4 for condition transfer+blind and dag5 for AoE bleed when closing the gap)

use rampager’s or carrions. BiP/lich can buff you up to relatively same stats as a powermancer situationally.

1:57

it’s not supposed to be OP so as to make all of your regained health completely offset damage taken. use it well, and it is a strong addition to a necro.

and this was BEFORE the patch.

^this. It has a lot of bugs, which is not ignorable, but it still is a successful class. (fix rate is slow, but its not like we lose to absolutely everything)

Trinkets can be found in the WvW badges trader exclusively.

Higher-quality sources of power/vit/tough (as in, ascended or similar) will be:

Emerald Pendant, Lost Seal of Usoku(rings), Koss on Koss(Back item)

For highest PTV gain:
AC/SE/Hotw/Godkarma/Invader’s gear (any fill of these.. same bonuses)
Emerald Pendant
Lost Seal of Usoku x2
Invader’s Earrings x2
Invader’s Weapons
Crest of the Soldier x14 (for two-weapon full setup) which adds 20/14/14 to PTV in all your armor. (use these instead of jewels)

Roll one. a few of the best ranked players in pvp play necros.

our potential is currently expressed through 3 out of 4 “viable” build paths. Variations usually fall between two of each.

Powermancer
Conditionmancer
Hybrid (usually dag/dag or scept/dag)
Minionmaster (Not fixed for competitive play in pvp)

You’ll usually find people leveling with conditions/spreading or minions+AoE healing in PvE.

When you pollinate your play into WvW, you’ll see more spike damage power builds using dagger, sometimes even axe (for personal preference, some people are willing to sacrifice marginal dps for range)

If you play a lot of s/tPvP, you’ll find high damage stacked skirmish builds (hybrid: 30/30/x/x/x) maximizing crits, condition damage, power, and condition duration with emphasis on placement and skill.

as necros, we have one of the highest base vitality pools in game (matched with warrior) and access to high armor levels as a cloth wearer.

Some people may state that other classes can stack bleeds faster than us, but at the end of the day, we can stack them more consistently, from a range, from a multitude of sources. In the same manner, we can control (and cleanse) these conditions back to our targets, which is a foremost condition advantage necros have over any other class.

Death shroud primarily serves as a secondary HP bar, and will give you rollercoaster-like varying performance as you level your character, change your traits and gear, and learn to “master” (more like incorporate) it into your favorite build. once you settle at level 80, it can prove to be a very strong and sometimes advantageous mechanic.

Many of our traits are broken (noted: minion AI is extremely weak, gluttony modifier in Soul reaping tree is total bunk, siphoning in Blood Magic is slightly lower in potential viability than most players would like although still solid if used correctly in PvE.)

As glass cannons, our high vitality and bubble-up DS mechanic makes us a slightly less squishy glass cannon than other caster-classes.

As tanks, we have ridiculous and awesome potential in all areas of play. At the cost of attack power.

Healing is 3rd best (under guardian with mace/staff and water elementals with staff) in my opinion, outwards healing is very flexible as a off-support playstyle as long as you have 15 points in blood.

It is a complicated class with many bugs, probably some of the most. Agony deals 2x damage in Death shroud.

it relies on a lot of skill, and some friends have associated the playstyle closely with how an engineer plays.

Roll one. If it’s a little mysterious in terms of how to make it shine, roll a different class.

But the necro has great potential.

you can shroudstomp with ds, just hit f1 and F at the same time.