Guild Wars 2

Recycle.5493:

Sheobix.8796:

Kromsin.6359:

Just move on to another class. Eventually they will fix it.

err, no. how about just dont play with death magic if it really is bothering you (i doubt it’s a horrible problem that prevents you from killing anyone) and play with the rest of our skills.

What happened to the “any class, any build” slogan they advertised so much? We want to play a profession with certain build with working skills and traits, and be at an equal playing field with any other profession, not “oh hey these skills suck because they’re bugged, do play something else instead.”

You can still play MM in pvp if you desperately need a bunker to piss off the opposition, or if you want a more casual playstyle in PvE (if you don’t really care that it takes minions an extra few moments to attack, or for minions to not go galloping off to say hi to a redname) it still WORKS. it works. It’s not trimmed for competitive play, obviously. That’s because of the bugs and lack of solid AI. In no way is there a yellow caution tape surrounding the utilities and trait line whatsoever.

and for the most part, most builds when completely finished are actually pretty balanced. they each have their own strengths, and their own weaknesses. (try rampagers gear d/d + staff high precision power+bleeder with traits in blood for siphoning… actually really good…. or try an axe invuln-stacker that uses corrupt boon/power sig to put all conds on one target and use scepter3 to nuke them…. more or less, you’ll get varied but somewhat satisfying results)

compare that to other mmo’s.. that have stone set guides that outline the best and only viable build in the game that 90% of players use at endgame… mainly WoW.

Xenomortis.5972:

Sheobix.8796:

err, no. how about just dont play with death magic if it really is bothering you (i doubt it’s a horrible problem that prevents you from killing anyone) and play with the rest of our skills.

Don’t spec into the trait that boosts that can dramatically increase the area of your marks? The one that can give your wells the ability to buff your allies? The one that reduces the cooldown on some of your core support abilities? The one that boosts the defensive attribute a Neco is lacking?

Well I guess you can do that if you want.

I trait into Death magic for those same reasons. : ) i don’t have a problem with it, but at the point when the OP is posing that reanimator is making all the necros struggle (what necros are those? may i ask?) all i can say is, avoid the trait line. for the love of god.

Dulon.9347:

I don’t want to say Necros don’t have problems, but the forums are too negative.

…

Yes. This. Point. Exactly. And it needs to stop.

Arenanet made a post about players giving positive and constructive criticism vs. boiled down ranting that ruins the image of the game.

It needs to change.

If i had one wish for christmas, it would be for all the sour necro players who claim the class sucks to just stop posting their negative comments in the forums and just let it be known that there is already a well organized bug thread, and a company filled with passionate developers who actually do treat GW2 like their latest crowning achievement.

we’re not even 4 months in… give it a rest. Use the strong parts of the necro. And if you can’t find the strong parts, don’t play it. Because it is just too much of a hands-on class to play for you.

Druitt.7629:

….

Necromancer traits are useless
Best decision I ever made for my necro (Sarcastic, now a Warrior)
Why do you play Necromancer? (Request to convince them Necro is worth it)
Necromancer Sigh
Necro Sucks -Proof
A Necromancer’s Worst Nightmare
Necros are so worthless….
So really how is the Necro? (Talks about how crappy Necros appear based on forums)
Serious Problem Starting to Trend…….. (Talks about “LFG except Necro”)
I Think I Know Why
conditionmancer for wvw still a joke

And that’s not even counting how many threads get side-tracked with “Yeah, but Necros suck anyhow, so…” kind of replies within threads.

this is pretty much the leading point of my original post. funny how nobody wants to discuss THAT problem, and instead add on to the conga line of “this sucks, wait, no, this sucks!” rants.

sorrow.2364:

Druitt.7629:

sorrow.2364:

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction).

You make it sound as if there are actually different qualities of armor. As far as I can tell, Heavy Armor simply has higher armor values. So if a cloth-wearer and a plate-wearer both have 10,000 armor and 2,000 toughness, they are have exactly the same mitigation.

Or was this just a typo?

But, while having the same toughness, and bonus toughness cap is the same across all professions, not counting traits (in which Necromancers are inferiors anyway), Warriors still have an extra damage reduction of about 200 toughness compared to clothies. I’ve read somewhere it is 9%+ extra damage reduction on 1800 toughness (900 bonus toughness).
Plus, warriors have access to shield, which is another toughness booster.

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)

sorrow.2364:

Sheobix.8796:

I’m only going to address your “lack of defensibility” statement.
My necro has 3000 armor. 28k hp, and 3400 attack. There are a good portion of endgame warriors that don’t even have that. What are you talking about, not being able to defend? we have daze, immobilize, two fears, and a chill if you go d/horn + staff. plus, in DS, your armor still protects you. if you’re running berserkers with no points in death magic, you’re going to die 5x faster than i will. Period. i don’t even have to press any buttons or combos to prove that.

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction). All professions can get similiar stats without counting HP, but they still have better defenses as I’ve listed.

Daze is only 2 second from warhorn. Immobilization hasn’t actually any defensive capability. Fears are much more of interrupts rather than defensive skills. Chill and snares aren’t that worty in a game in which every profession run with at least one ranged weapon and melee weapons are filled with leaps and movement skills. That would have made sense in Guild Wars, but in Guild Wars 2, snares are worth almost nothing.
Other professions have access to multiple CC skills at the same time which isn’t only the 1s fear. Take Mesmers, for instance. They have a bunch of CC skills, while still having visual confusion and invulnerability.

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.

Knote.2904:

Druitt.7629:

Dulon.9347:

I don’t want to say Necros don’t have problems, but the forums are too negative.

The last time i saw something like this was on the ffxi dragoon forums.
And we successfully managed to damage our reputation in the game to the point
that when you entered a party, at least two people instantly left and just said “loldrg”
in party chat before doing so. Or they asked the leader to kick you.

Thank you! An excellent illustration of what I’m trying to say. It’s already started happening, if some of the posts here (“I see ‘LFG, no Necros’”) are true.

There are people that are definately taking it too far.

PvE especially we’re fine, although if you played other classes up to 80 you may be jelly of their weapon skills, since alot of our dmg is baked into death shroud or utilities.

Higher levels of Fractal may be alot tougher for us necro’s though since agony does twice the dmg to our death shroud which is absolutely insane. I’ve experienced it for myself. So who knows for high end stuff.

i have experienced the same problem. but what can we do? it’s a bug. At least its only fractal that contains agony.

Fenirian.3485:

Thanks for the post, helped out a lot, I usually like to run a class that has summons or sort of dot damage type (warlock, witch doctor, gw1 necro, etc). The only thing I have beef with right now is the lack of AI that the minions have. I’m sure you read A LOT of complaints about it and I apologize in advance if bringing it up gets under your skin, but as a huge fan of being a summoner in other games, I hope you understand what I’m trying to get at. I recently got back into playing and noticed they added a new set of gear called Apothecary (condition, toughness, healing. I think) I wanted to craft that for my necro thinking that could be good for either MM or condition based necro with scepter/dagger combo with staff as swap. Wanted to get your opinion about it and about MM Necros, your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

MM isn’t completely useless. although the AI is in fact terrible, i have seen it used sparingly as a lock-down bunker for s/tpvp nodes in organized play. tanking+healing for your minions is a good way to frustrate someone.

Even in PvE, if you really painstakingly avoid random minion rages that pull docile mobs, you can level with a minion master pretty efficiently, and in dungeons, it will allow you to play a more supportive role as well as drop 1-2 of your minions for the situational well.

Distaste.4801:

Sheobix.8796:

Gluttony.2017:

Could a mod kindly remove the posts from KirinDave and Dredlord? Honestly, you guys can start another thread talking about the effectivness of target the weak, but dont hijack this thread.
Personally, I dont find necros weak, however, to simply perform on the level of a noob thief who justs mugs, backstabbs and then spams HS, you have to put in a lot of effort. Thats probably why most people complain. That, and because our trait lines are just messed up and lack any form of co-ordination. And minions arent exactly reliable (if they dont stand around and actually attack they usually get wiped out with one AoE attack). So yeah, thats my 2cents.

the reason why i don’t call thieves OP (as i play one myself) is that by holding at least 2300 armor and 24k hp as a necro (which is super easy to do) you don’t die from those combos, and the thief in question is left with 0 initiative and 3 utilities to pull from to get away from you until they regen initiative. and they are locked out of stealth for 3 seconds.

my juggermancer takes 3 consqecutive BS combos to get to 0 hp, and i also have a ridiculously tanky and powerful DS and lich form doubles my stats for the duration. sooo…..

really, we have a lot more potential than a thief does. They were built to blow their load like a rhino, but after that they need to dodge like mad or use roll for initiative, or just plain run away until they catch you by serious surprise.

I feel like you don’t have much experience with a thief. First off they aren’t out of initiative after a BS combo, they have 6 left and more than likely 7-8 from regen. Second of all at the very least that BS combo is doing 15k damage(bringing you below 50% health) opening you up for HS spam to finish you. They also aren’t "stuck out of stealth for 3s vs a necro considering they get a stolen 3s fear, giving them ample time to finish you. If you get into DS dodge out of life transfer range then come back and just pummel you. Lich form is a bit tricky but that’s the only time I’d actually run away, mostly just to waste the cooldown :P.

A BS combo is not the end of the thief, that’s the opener. If it doesn’t kill you there are a multitude of things a thief can do to kill you. Only when things look grim is it time to leave. A good thief is going to BS combo and continue to kill you, not run away and wait for another BS combo. Personally, I don’t even play a BS thief. I play a high damage but decent health/toughness build that is built around dodging, stacking might, using auto-attacks+quickness to get people quickly into HS butter zone. I haven’t had any issues with necromancers, but it’s not like there are a ton of them running around.

I play both classes though. The necro has some neat stuff, it’s just not nearly as cohesive as what the thief has. Even though the thief probably has less overall variety, what it does have all works together very well. I truly await the day that the necro gets an overhaul and becomes cohesive. I also await the day I can make a vampire thief or use traps…

cloak and dagger… 6 initiative
backstab.. 0
Heartseeker.. 3 initiative/per.

base thief ini bar has 12 initiative… executing C+D and Heartseeker twice in a row will blow your initiative to zero. maybe you’ll have 2 left by the time you regen. (regen rate is 1/1.6s) And also, i don’t get hit for 15k damage with the combo, i have 3k armor. at most, i’ve felt maybe 8k total. even on crits. and if you didn’t know, i have 28k hp. So the only loser in that battle would be the thief.

There are a lot of necro players who don’t build PTV-wise and usually bite the dust that quickly. (although I do not. you claim one combo brings me below 50% but in all honesty, it brings me down to 80% at best.. which i can recover with one mark of blood and an immobilize+dagger2.)

i’m sure there is a thief out there that is specced for the long-haul to take me down, but truly i have yet to experience one vs. my necro. besides, the thief can’t exactly heal themselves for battles that last longer than 30s. especially if my power-necro can auto for 2k dps.

these are really good suggestions. I like the first one because it would give another tie between death magic and soul reaping. (think of a bunker MM necro using spectral armor to regenerate all minions and LF bar)

protection is cool. retaliation is cool. people who spec into them get just fine uses out of it. why would we need aegis? no reason. why would we need vigor? to dodge more? no reason.

having another source of stability would be nice, but its not necessary for me to win. having it in SR grand trait and in elites is sort of situational.

I actually find one of the necro’s strengths to be that it doesn’t rely on boons at all. sure, having a boon or two running really amps us up, but we don’t need them running to be efficient. (as opposed to the sea of boons guardian that drops in moments when you nerf him with a corruption utility)

not relying on boons is a good thing.

Kromsin.6359:

Just move on to another class. Eventually they will fix it.

err, no. how about just dont play with death magic if it really is bothering you (i doubt it’s a horrible problem that prevents you from killing anyone) and play with the rest of our skills.

If i need to apply 30 seconds of reprieve for team mates in a dungeon when being gangbanged by melee mobs… spam 2.

if you want to lengthen your bleed rotations while waiting for cooldowns while off-tanking… spam 1.

spam 3 and run if you’re horribly outnumbered. all normal damage dealt towards you will be halved. (or just use 2… blindness is cool.)

classes who heal the best (outwards-wise) go in descending order: Guardians+staff/mace, Water Ele+Staff, Necro+Dagger/staff2+Full blood traits.

As for combating squishiness, invest in toughness (makes your healing go a lot farther) and makes your Deathshroud last longer than 5 seconds.

please tell me you aren’t a full rampager necro or berserker necro with no toughness or vitality.

because you will die.

guaranteed.

i think the thread title is a little misleading. i personally have never experienced a problem with JH ressing foes. simply put, kill everyone before JH is even noticed.

otherwise.. i don’t think the reanimator trait makes all necros struggle. re-name thread. cool.

Mammoth.1975:

Aga.8641:

Mammoth.1975:

Someone has to kill the treb. Eles and necros do it best, but eles have better mobility.

What on earth are you talking about? Necros aren’t the WORST at killing trebs, there’s 1 viable spec for a necro to run in PvP, that’s conditions….condition specs do not kill trebs. If you’re running any other spec as a necro you’re completely useless to your team, so it doesn’t matter if you can kill the treb of not.

Sorry, that’s not correct. You can fill in for an ele just fine, providing just as much benefit to your team in fights, downing the treb almost as fast and more reliably. The problem is that it takes you so much longer to get there, and that means more shots fired, which is why people use eles instead.

Xom.9264:

I dont think many of the paid teams run necros at this point in the game.

This is not correct either, which kind of turns the rest of your post on it’s head. Necromancer players may even be slightly over represented on the leaderboard.

^ mammoth is correct here. my cookie-cutter condition necro always finished top of the leaderboard at the end of tPvP matches i do with my guild in vent. other necro on our team plays minion bunker, and he solo locks down a control point for the whole game. i also see it played in sPvP frequently.

as for necro mobility to get to treb, horn5+s.walk will get you there really dang fast.

i believe i read somewhere that they acknowledged that they are working on giving minions normal regen like the flesh golem…

just work around it for now. use staff/2 and invest in Death/Blood

Dredlord.8076:

yeah all in all that was a pretty ignorant post Druitt

the necro has come a long long way since release because of the “dedicated whiners” youre talking about

you’ve been bashing on posters who have explained in articulate detail their points, as well as provided helpful information on using the Necro to succeed.

Please stop insulting other players who work hard to provide advice or beneficial information.

Or.. just leave. thanks!

Futuro.8036:

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Did I mention I run epidemic? I can keep bleeds, vulnerabilities and chills up on most enemies at most times, so 6% by myself, not including all the times I damage targets while they’re weakened, crippled, immobilized, feared, blinded (this is quite often). Then throw on all the other times targets are confused, burning or poisoned along with any other classes who apply the same conditions I do. I’d imagine it’s considerably higher than the 2% you seem to think. Or maybe I’m playing my class wrong.

So what your saying is you first have to get chill on the target THEN you have to get poison on the target THEN you have to get weakness on the target THEN you have to get your bleeds on the target for you to get 8% extra damage THEN you have to rely on ANOTHER class to get burning on the target THEN you have to rely on ANOTHER class to get confusion on the target for the 12% damage increase

OR a warrior just needs to auto attack to get 10% extra damage

why don’t you just use dagger4, staff4, plague sig (lol, that was a joke), or cleanse conditions? most of the time, you can take all that bleeding, and give it right back to them with a single button. if they blew their cleanse early, just bubble up and /laugh while they realize they’ve killed themselves.

oh, btw, if you’re really butthurt about warriors getting 10% bleed, go pick up scepter curses grandmaster trait for +33%, hemophilia for +20%, and maybe points in spite (% condition duration) with tasteful uses of afflicted runes to absolutely overshadow the stupid +10%.

for future flamers that keep pointing out that minions AI are junk, which must mean necro is a broken class because a popular playstyle is rendered ineffective for competitive play…

please just stop. you’re beating a dead horse. and i never stated in my OP that “minions are NOT broken. PLAY WITH THEM ALL DAY.”

wait for them to improve minions. because honestly, i’m pretty dang sure they know they suck already. until then, play with the other 30ish utils and large array of traits given.

Asmodean.5820:

When you take into consideration that the class is supposed to be an attrition class which it is hard to get away from according to the devs ask yourself if the class really fits that description.

That aside I don’t like the drama here. Is the class “broken”? For me that would mean unplayable without being no fun at all. Nope, by no means imo.

Is it great and do the traits offer a lot of interesting synergy? Does the class support many builds which are interesting to explore and really competetive? I don’t think so either unfortunately.
Especially the minions are a catastrophe. Even with a working AI their abilities would be pretty bland (ok, maybe that’s about taste but I no minion has a “cool” or “unique” ability).

Also bleeds get removed so often in fights were many people are involved and take a long time to stack up again to a serious level – long time in comparision to the huge numbers of direct damage you can eat during that time.

Whatever, I haven’t seen any class patch notes and I guess they will try to make money with X-Mas stuff so the most sensible thing is to play something else while coming back now and then to play a spvp game for fun. That’s win-win for me /shrug

if you can’t tank and mitigate damage with the many tools available to the necro while spamming scepter1+dagger5+ds EB proc+BiP+staff2 all day, maybe you shouldn’t play a necro at all. because spamming all that stuff minus BiP is so easy. you can stack 20k of bleeding every 10 seconds or so, so whats the complaint? it’s not like classes can cleanse all their conditions every 10 seconds or so. for example, last i checked, Guardian’s contemplation of purity condition cleanse utility takes 60s to recharge. if you’re not downing them within that 1minute time frame, you need to quit playing necro.

playing smart. it goes a long way. play other classes, study them, and learn how to attack them at the right time. sometimes, all it takes is waiting for the first 5 seconds of engagement, when most players hit their skill-chains and are left with a bar of cooldowns.

Yukishiro.8792:

Necros have plenty of passive defense, but he’s right that warriors have a built in +250ish (IIRC) armor advantage. Not to mention warriors have access to way more mobility and 100% avoidance like block or vigor or even the 5 second 100% invuln trait.

likewise, we have a freaking UTILITY that almost gives us 5s of invulnerability. it’s called well of darkness. 5s blind in an AoE!

not to mention, their boons like vigor come from a 40ish second cooldown shout that takes up a utility slot. if you wait for them to pop all their defense while they try to go to town on you, drop a single well of corruption, hit BiP, hit Lich, and you’ll kill them in 12 seconds or less while their shouts are cooling off. also, to get sources of healing/siphoning, they have to buy sigils, runes, take the regen healing skill, and invest in banner passive regen effects. their regen stacks by duration only, and caps at a certain number per-tick. (last time i tested this on a friend, i geared him in full cleric’s exotics and get got a 35second 12kish regen banner- 300ish per tick which re-applies until the banner is gone) but that’s what you get out of stacking a specific stat. We have a whole siphoning trait line, wells can siphon, sigils that synergize really kitten well with those traits, Regen for ~1.2-2k on staff2 (which also trigger with mark of blood dodge trait), Dagger2(if you’re ballsy to cast it) and consume conditions, which is hands down one of the best healing skills in game. And that’s what i get out of NO GEAR.

my point i’m trying to make with this wall of ragers on this thread is that they’re pointing our weaknesses while trying to support their claims with “this class can do BLAH, it’s waaaaay better than us, therefore our version sucks and makes us less viable”

but the flipside is, we have access to a huge variety of other things that those classes on their own DO NOT HAVE.

The way the game is balanced is by giving specific classes access to slightly better mechanics than other classes.
What necros have is a SOLID access to everything (except for block, aegis, and mesmer clones… rofl) and a build-able potential for each.

Asmodean.5820:

Sheobix.8796:

3. 2s fear is an amazing and very long fear for battles. every 15s, that’s a very good tool. don’t underestimate fear. What I don’t like, though, is how long a warrior’s knockdown lasts. This does not mean we suck, it means other classes may have slightly unbalanced skills.

You just said in an “inverted” way “we suck” because that’s the essence if many classes have better skills .)

i never said better skills. they have skills, period. we have skills, period. one of their skills may be a tad long when invested in. (by like, one second for my tastes. it’s an opinion.) but then again, i could easily avoid being trapped by warrior knockdowns by breaking their line of sight and waiting for their repetitive combos.

Also, we have slightly unbalanced skills. get over it. who the hell can revive an ally in DS by hitting F+F1 at the same time? its a total troll tactic that most players who /whine ignore.

sorrow.2364:

Druitt.7629:

sorrow.2364:

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction).

You make it sound as if there are actually different qualities of armor. As far as I can tell, Heavy Armor simply has higher armor values. So if a cloth-wearer and a plate-wearer both have 10,000 armor and 2,000 toughness, they are have exactly the same mitigation.

Or was this just a typo?

But, while having the same toughness, and bonus toughness cap is the same across all professions, not counting traits (in which Necromancers are inferiors anyway), Warriors still have an extra damage reduction of about 200 toughness compared to clothies. I’ve read somewhere it is 9%+ extra damage reduction on 1800 toughness (900 bonus toughness).
Plus, warriors have access to shield, which is another toughness booster.

and we have access to a second refillable health bar. your point is? most of your arguments are stated without regard to the fact that we have a plethora of other tools available to us. if you’re going to sit there and not use ds3, dagger3, horn4, staff3, staff5, spectral grasp interrupt, well of blindness… plague form, death shroud AGAIN after regenning from spectral use and damage soaking…. then you’re plain dumb.

warriors have a few sources of CC just like us, and a shield. ever heard of using your skills at the right time to interrupt him?
(btw, all the cooldowns in the skills i JUST listed refresh in perfect rotation.)

Gluttony.2017:

Could a mod kindly remove the posts from KirinDave and Dredlord? Honestly, you guys can start another thread talking about the effectivness of target the weak, but dont hijack this thread.
Personally, I dont find necros weak, however, to simply perform on the level of a noob thief who justs mugs, backstabbs and then spams HS, you have to put in a lot of effort. Thats probably why most people complain. That, and because our trait lines are just messed up and lack any form of co-ordination. And minions arent exactly reliable (if they dont stand around and actually attack they usually get wiped out with one AoE attack). So yeah, thats my 2cents.

the reason why i don’t call thieves OP (as i play one myself) is that by holding at least 2300 armor and 24k hp as a necro (which is super easy to do) you don’t die from those combos, and the thief in question is left with 0 initiative and 3 utilities to pull from to get away from you until they regen initiative. and they are locked out of stealth for 3 seconds.

my juggermancer takes 3 consqecutive BS combos to get to 0 hp, and i also have a ridiculously tanky and powerful DS and lich form doubles my stats for the duration. sooo…..

really, we have a lot more potential than a thief does. They were built to blow their load like a rhino, but after that they need to dodge like mad or use roll for initiative, or just plain run away until they catch you by serious surprise.

They are not exaggerated at all. if you don’t experience the same success that I’ve had because I’ve practiced much longer with the tools given to me, then that is solely your loss.

Yukishiro.8792:

I do love my zero recast epidemic!

P.S. You do realize epidemic only spreads to 5 targets, right?

and chillblains hits 5 targets with greater marks. if you’re good with fastcast enabled, you can get 10 people when you turn around for 6 seconds. not a big deal. play for a while and it becomes second nature. (3 + 7) or if you remap your binds, it’s even easier.

use either wvw rare trinks until you get ptv trinks.

Yukishiro.8792:

Sheobix.8796:

another point: has anyone ever tried using focus chill, blindness chills, and using Epidemic to slow down the whole head of a wvw Zerg? do you know how valuable that is for one necro to be able to give a low-manned counter zerg an escape?

Only if the zerg is a bunch of pve heroes who don’t know about condition removal.

Necros arn’t bad but they are definitely broken. Not in the sense of being unplayably bad but in the sense of having a bunch of bugs that fundamentally break aspects of the class. Minions being the most obvious, but DS itself is still horribly limiting the way it cuts off access to your utilities and heal skill, doesn’t let you finish, doesn’t show what conditions are on you, etc etc.

and when they blow their condition removal, they waste a utility or trait cooldown. go figure. drop another chillblains. turn and /epi again.

blurps.2340:

All classes in GW2 are playable and the differences in performance are smaller than in msot other titles even after years of “balancing”. Necro is the least polished though and really needs a pass ( or two ) over traits and abilites. Many traits just outright suck and the setup of the trees is terrible.

not completely, but i do agree it could use some degree of polish. personally, i wish the trait line attribute bonuses were set up like the thief’s.

Druitt.7629:

digiowl.9620:

Druitt.7629:

Mesmer clones are made of paper and certainly don’t buy you anything in PvP.

In terms of damage perhaps. but they excel at confusing the human element at the other end. This more so than PVE mobs that can happily ignore clones and make a direct line for the toon.

From what I’ve read, an experienced player can straightforwardly tell illusions from the Mesmer. They don’t necessarily hold the same weapons as the Mesmer, they stand still and use their weapon skill #1 repeatedly, you can throw a mark on the real Mesmer and it sticks, etc. I’d be fooled, but that’s not saying much. I’d also imagine that AoE or bouncing damage eliminates illusions rather quickly as well.

Not useless, but not some huge defensive capability that Necros can’t make up for.

I always know the real mesmer from the clones. simply look for the player outside both of your and their own ranges, trying to run out of your sightline. a lot of mesmers drop their clones and let them do the work, and try to run out of your sight. every clone standing still, walking slowly towards you while attacking, or not using any skills are clones.

Just look for the guy not walking in a line towards you. target him with Ctrl+click and stack chill/fear. it will keep him from popping his clones.

digiowl.9620:

Sheobix.8796:

Death shroud is not a useless power build tool.
Trait 25 points into blood magic, DS4 will heal you for roughly 1/5 your hp as well as heal your teammate’s hp bars by 1/5 to 1/4. (Thieves and guardians with low vit will thank you a lot)

Huh?

Unless you time it so that you start DS4 the moment you are about to run out of LF, it will cut off the instant you try to drop out of DS.

Btw, did you really need to spam 5+ threads with a link to this one?

the Life transfer trait does not heal your hp bar. its an outwards heal. other sources of vampirism such as food, sigils, or runes WILL heal you. Wells that tick for hp also. if you notice what threads i posted this in, you’ll understand the problem with many new player being turned away from the class.

sorrow.2364:

I’ve played 350 hours on my Necro and 500 hours on all my character and I partially disagree with you.

Of course, Necromancer isn’t that broken to be unplayable, but it is by far on the weak side.

I’ll list you some reason because I think Necromancers are worse than other professions:

dot dot dot.. blah…

I’m only going to address your “lack of defensibility” statement.
My necro has 3000 armor. 28k hp, and 3400 attack. There are a good portion of endgame warriors that don’t even have that. What are you talking about, not being able to defend? we have daze, immobilize, two fears, and a chill if you go d/horn + staff. plus, in DS, your armor still protects you. if you’re running berserkers with no points in death magic, you’re going to die 5x faster than i will. Period. i don’t even have to press any buttons or combos to prove that.

I challenge players who claim ____ sucks on a necro to actually stop and say _ rocks on a necro. Then go play another class to 50-80 and understand how well off we are. We have LOT of strengths. It doesn’t mean we have no weaknesses. Every class has a weakness. But the fact is, we have a lot of strengths.

I’ve lead way too many fractals where the party would send ME in SOLO to go revive people one by one because i was skilled enough and lucky enough to have plague/ds/hp/consume/WoP/WoD/Staff5/Staff3/staff4/DS3/DS4 and having them all cooldown well before i need to say “oh kitten*” Because honestly, we can kite for days. If you’re a player who keeps whining that the necro sucks, obviously you don’t know how to change out your utilities, hit ` for your other weapon set mid-battle multiple times, or how to bubble up in Death shroud.

Storm of the Ages.9076:

Well we are not completely broken, but we do have certain things that are holding us back from being what we are meant to be. I am a 400+ hour necro main and I can see alot of these things.

1) Minions. …

2)Life siphoning. …

3)Death shroud. …

4)Yes the bleed cap! …

5)Jagged Horror. …
There are plenty more things that hold us back but that is all I will say for now. Anet did fixed the major issues with life siphoning and made out plus life force trait actually work so it is a step in the right direction!

I already stated that minions suck. pretty sure almost everyone, save for newbs, is aware of that. it doesn’t force anyone to play that way. in that respect, people need to work past it until it’s changed and stop crying about it. It clouds the forums when people can better use their time for looking at useful information.

Life siphoning is actually very strong, but shouldn’t be your main build core. I think people are expecting vamp necros to be godly unkillable players that can spam dagger2 and regen all their HP. Do you want the class to become a bwe1 ele with healing staff? No. If you use vampiric traits in combination with tanking, control, and conditions, you’ll understand that its a very strong and solid mechanic as it is.

Death shroud.. Try hitting F then F1 closely after. You’ll be surprised what you can do in Death shroud. (i’ve sit with high tough/vit necro healing a whole HP bar on a dead player while tanking burn mobs all around me. that’s pure gravy)

Did you know you dont need power or condition damage to maintain Minion Damage? minions’ damage scales with level only. if you’re really whining about /afking in front of a boss spamming scepter1 and hitting a bleed cap, go swap out for full minions and watch them do ~1.5k dps while you watch TV. Players who sit playing with the exact same utils as a necro are throwing away the potential inherent in our utilities for each scenario.

And personally, i’ve never had a problem with the jagged horror aggroing things. If you’re walking through an area, maybe you shouldn’t be killing random mobs then trying to run through a sea of red mobs. personally, every time the JH spawned for me was when i was taking out at least 10 mobs at once. In those cases, it was minimally helpful. But still helpful.

another point: has anyone ever tried using focus chill, blindness chills, and using Epidemic to slow down the whole head of a wvw Zerg? do you know how valuable that is for one necro to be able to give a low-manned counter zerg an escape?

1. I posted this thread in other threads to bring the other threads to the top of the forum to prove a point. There are a lot of new players, and many butthurt players not giving the class a fair shake.

2. all of the “weaknesses” that people are stating in a rage on this thread, stating that other classes have it better, they don’t realize that it doesn’t mean EVERY SINGLE MESMER/EVERY SINGLE WARRIOR/BLAH has access to that trait/mechanic/spec to outdo us. It is foolish to claim that everyone is better than us because they simply have access to something more efficient. Most of the time, if someone specs towards that mechanic, they produce other weaknesses in their build.

3. 2s fear is an amazing and very long fear for battles. every 15s, that’s a very good tool. don’t underestimate fear. What I don’t like, though, is how long a warrior’s knockdown lasts. This does not mean we suck, it means other classes may have slightly unbalanced skills.

4. Transform elites. On my necro, i can pop BiP, have 4k attack, then pop Lich, and get 6.5k attack. hitting lich3 for knockdown and setting lich1 for auto-attack will absolutely EAT a player’s health bar in 5 seconds or less. NOBODY can complain that you can pretty much get these results just by slotting BiP and lich. No traiting required. Stop complaining that it sucks.

I think a lot of people don’t want to see that necros have it well off. we have a HUGE variety of extremely useful utilities. Our class design isn’t a tight one, it’s a widespread one. The reason why other class traits seem better is because a lot of their inherent playstyle revolves around their f1 skill (i.e mesmer traits are a lot about phantasms and what they do, thief traits are geared towards mobility, stealing, fury for crit, and power) but as necromancers, we have traits that improve MANY of our weapon sets, utility types, and class mechanic efficiency. for example, 30 points in Soul REaping and your DS mechanic becomes this super-recharging fast-cast fast-cooldown trolling machine. I’m not blowing hot air. I’ve made builds that can walk across a whole WvW borderland with 4 people chasing me, not dying no matter how hard they try to chase.

striker.3704:

+30% boon duration to your other boons is worth a lot more than a measly +10% more might.

I absolutely understand you, iceflame. As a 450+ hour Necro player, it was time to put the foot down on relatively new players shunning the class. it’s the jack-of-all-trades that can also be the master of a couple things.

keep working on it! you’ll figure out the strengths.

morsel of advice, endgame gear should either be Power/tough/vit for powermancer or cond/tough/precision for conditionmancer.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/On-necros-being-broken/first#post856843

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/On-necros-being-broken/first#post856843

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/On-necros-being-broken/first#post856843

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/On-necros-being-broken/first#post856843

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Update-28k-HP-3k-Armor-3-4k-Attack-Necro/first#post856503

I wrote this thread to address the re-occurring “i want to roll a necro, should i?” threads. I’m disappointed with how many players are turning away people from this profession.

Just because we don’t win with ease by min/maxing two stats doesn’t mean we suck.

Some of the best players in gw2 are necromancers. We’re a complicated class. intelligent playing will get you far.

I also wrote this thread to point out some very proud strengths that are in the class as it is right now. I’m tired of people whining about parts of the class that don’t actually have problems if you just build it right and use it accordingly. The point of the trait system isn’t just to make it so every single button press should exude OPness, but that a players can pour thought and invest time into crafting a specific character that destroys their target in a way that isn’t easily stopped by the opponent hitting one skill. (short version: you can’t stop us easily.) i.e thieves can be stopped with well of darkness, and even though condition removal can remove a current stack of bleeds, doesn’t mean we don’t have daggers, staff marks, control skills, Death shroud, and many sources of blindness on hand— oh, and most of the time, when a player hits their condition removal, it has a long cooldown. be persistent.

Death shroud is not a useless power build tool.
Trait 25 points into blood magic, DS4 will heal you for roughly 1/5 your hp as well as heal your teammate’s hp bars by 1/5 to 1/4. (Thieves and guardians with low vit will thank you a lot)
Trait into Soul Reaping for Death shroud cooldown, LF decrease modifier, and Fear modifier. You’ll have a super long instant fear on cooldown every 15 seconds. Beat that.
DS2 is a crazy good gap closer (it homes in) if you are locked out of swiftness utils or skills. pop DS, hit 2, un-DS, and begin your chain. As soon as the hand lands, you’re on top of your target. Don’t wait for it to fly. it’s meant to be timed.
DS1 is a fantastic weakener, opener, might builder, or solid Auto-attack to use while you wait for your opponent to burst/open on your LF bar. With 10 points in soul reaping and spite, you can make it build might and vulnerability on your foe per hit. Get sum.
You don’t need to have high power to use any of those strengths. Not to mention its a second refillable life bar. (figure out your LF generation, you can pop it at least 3 times full in a hard-locked duel)

We are not unwanted in dungeons. People ask for the Wells a lot in fractal. Well of Power, Well of corruption, And well of darkness are extremely useful safety fields as well as combo openers for your team. WoP can be used in the Giant Fractal at the part with the fire fields. WoP gets rid of the burning while you use the chaos hammer.
Well of Corruption can be used to absolutely NERF guardians and warriors to heck when they rely on Boons to bolster themselves. Guardians without boons and no condition removal= 15k hp at best with nothing but raw armor in your way. Think of how you can destroy 15k hp. Well of Darkness provides safety from the awful Thief combo, protection from a cluster of high-power mobs in a dungeon, and combined with Plague form: darkness, you can provide 35 seconds of mobilized invulnerability to your team from any power-based mobs. No other class can do that. Not even with aegis, walls, and reflections.

tbh, just because they say they want a war/guard doesn’t mean they never want a necro. the party could be a party full of clothies or DPS needing some healing or tanking. Warriors and guards do just that.

I have never run into this problem.

jalmari.3906:

Sprawl.3891:

I don’t believe bleed duration duration and scepter duration stack in the spite line, so might want to re-spec that.

Those don’t stack? Well gee, I’d appreciate confirmation on this. I have one useless trait then(

Spite adds condition duration. The curses Grandmaster trait modifies scepter durations. Two seperate modifiers. They will stack, but it is a percentage on a percentage. Either way, I’ve found the weakness trait to be more useful than the scepter trait.