Everything wrong with necromancers
1. They need to hit things to succeed.
In many situations; you can have the least available condition cleanse in a fight. It’s true.
Unlike every other class in the game, you rely on hitting enemies to cleanse your conditions. If enemies step out of range of your skill, block your skill, evade your skill, or are currently invulnerable to your attack or conditions or you are blinded or some freaky targeting glitches your cast, or your attack becomes hindered, or several other things; you will not cleanse any conditions. This is why Consume Conditions has become such a staple on necros and also why Staff 4 has been one of two reasons the weapon is ever used (the other being Staff5).
Shouts are also a very telling example of how we are constantly penalized for our class theme. All shouts are only effective in larger fights while warrior shouts are always effective no matter the enemy/ally count effected just like guardian shouts are always effective no matter the ally count effected. Necromancers are the only ones who are penalized for using them against a low number of targets.
2. Necros are designed to be hit.
We are second to the least stability in the game. We are also the class that is supposed to be hit. We are essentially penalized for a playstyle fundamental to the profession. Get rekt necros.
Blocks, Invuln, Evades etc are always going to be better than pure health/armor. Throw in lack of mobility and you have a class that can’t even move half the time. while being pummeled to death. Why? Cuz lifeforce and shroud. I’ll get to that later.
Less retaliation than guards. Guards also have the most blocks which is non-compatible with retaliation. It doesn’t even make sense.
We have only 3 skills that deal with being hit. Spectral walk. Spectral armor. Signet of Vampirism. Three.
3. Blocks > Blinds
You need to hit enemies with blinds for them to work. Blocks work automatically.
Blinds are never successive. They always happen in 1 second intervals at the most. Bocks can be successive; preventing X number of attacks for X duration. Blinds can never do this the way they are now. GG blinds.
If anyone says “yeah we have blocks but you guys have blinds”; promptly facepalm and link this thread to them.
4. It’s the SLOW class
Everything about this is bad. Not a slow build. Not a slow spec. The entire profession is slow. This deserves a slow clap
Slow animations / telegraphed abilities along side nearly zero stability is just Anet telling everyone to focus and demolish the necromancer first. They are the easiest ones to kill and will probably not even get a single skill off if focused hard enough.
Slow projectiles make dodging a piece of cake for enemies. In fact, necromancer attacks take so long that the mathematical chances they are interrupted are so high it renders necromancers activating the least amount of skills in the game. Enemies will activate their skills up to four times as much as you will in any given game.
5. Not an attrition class.
Whatever anyone has ever said about the necromancer, it is not an attrition class. It is held back by devs constantly trying to fit them into this design while simultaneously making other classes/builds more effective in long-lasting fights. I’ve personally played guardian enough to know that this is a fact. Every other class has the ability to last in long fights; and last longer than any necromancer can. This is a fact.
All other classes have manageable ways to allow their other skills to come off cooldown in time for another volley of unavoidable damage.
6. Lifeforce / Shroud is the worst and laziest designed class mechanic.
Not only is it restrictive to our utilities and healing; lifeforce/shroud bar is the entire reason we are left without a million other things. No bocks, invulns, stability, evades, dodge support, stealth, or any real damage mitigation. This one mechanic has its own list of bad things:
- Can be moa’d to nothingness. No other class mechanic in the entire game is so vulnerable to moa.
- Shroud bar is not an equivalent to blocks or invuln. Shroud doesn’t scale as well as invulns or consecutive blocks vs high number of attackers. it will always be weaker.
- Is worse than healing. Look at a ranger and how well they are able to continually heal themselves with no class mechanic required. they are also allowed to use invulnerability and blocks and evades even though, essentially, gaining lifeforce is the same as a ranger constantly gaining health.
- Locks us out of our own utilities. What more can you say?
- Attacks are too slow.
- Life force depletion rate. As stated, rangers heal life just as much if not more than necros gain lifeforce. Thing is; rangers health does not constantly deplete like it does for necromancers shroud. So even after building up all that lifeforce, its just going to be taken away from you passively.
