Guild Wars 2

asimo.6354:

Not understanding some of the jargon here: I have an offhand Dagger so Dagger 3 doesn’t help and no Focus so Focus 5 is also irrelevant, and not sure what DS is. Also what do you mean “clean up your targets without having to down them”.

As for the interrupts or stuns: in PvE, outside of Orr, there aren’t so many stuns that getting a little close is impossible. In fact you can probably get through most content without ever really needing Stability except for maybe a few bosses.

Like I said it takes just a few seconds to reposition yourself and lay down a Well. I find this to be a very mobile game and players are on the move quite a bit so squeezing in for a Well drop then retreating a bit isn’t that hard especially with an AoE Cripple, Chill, and Fear.

You should probably learn more about how 2 play necro before trying to give advice on the forums and certainly before attempting to defend your advice against critique.

See you in a month or two when you have put some more Necro experience notches on your belt.

Focused Rituals gives you ranged burst potential that you cannot achieve otherwise. Drop Wells, Control with Marks/dagger3/focus5, swap to DS and clean up all your targets without having to down them.

You will most certainly be interrupted or stunned if you try the same thing from melee range. Having no stability and no quickness makes Necro burst near impossible within melee range.

So yes Focused rituals does give you access to much you are unable to do.

We don’t have one of these threads because Necro has very little noticeable impact on the larger player population. The reason thief has that thread is related to players, who aren’t running thief, taking issue with thief doing 35k damage in 2 seconds, and Heartseeker spamming for the win. They wanted to consolidate all the “thief is broken OP” posts into a single thread.

I am pretty sure the balance lead designer plays a thief so they will always been slightly OP. Happens in every game, whoever gets to make the decisions gives themselves a slight advantage, subconsciously, regardless of their own intentions. Human brain is what needs a patch.

Necro has no such impact on other players in PvP so no such thread needs to exist. Mostly because the core functionality of what it means to be a Necro, MINIONS… don’t work right. And of course a multitude of traits that seem awesome on paper have little to no noticeable impact because MINIONS DON’T WORK OUTSIDE OF SITUATIONAL PVE AND TROLLING 5x Minion Master TOURNYS…

At least not competitively. I am not saying a rank 40+ can’t get naked, drop all traits, and run full minions to farm up all the tasty rank 1-10 players. We can. Its hilariously easy because 99% of new players have “tip of the iceberg” syndrome. They see the tip and they are convinced that’s all there is because that is all they can see. Makes it pretty easy to roll them as an experience tourny player regardless of skill level.

But competitively Minion Master is useless. Minions are dead before attacking if they attack at all, even with 50% more HP. And the delay between their attacks is so long, that even with every damage trait assigned, your pets still combined to less damage than a single Staff 2 bleeds. And that Staff 2 also gives regen in AoE so its pretty much a healing skill not a damage skill.

The supposed tools if you are trying to go defensive minions. Those are sekc right, click a skill and if you pet survives for the 10 seconds it takes to execute, the skill misses to range or is obstructed leaving you with a mammoth cooldown on a skill that lasts half a second and 90% of the time fails…

Necro is full of enormous cooldowns on skills that have no meaningful impact. This severely limits viable Necro builds. And the majority of those that are viable, rely on bugs to be competitive. Not to say Necro can’t build a brutal support/condition or a kitten DS/Power/Toughness roamer, but that’s all there is. That makes us Warlocks. Not Necros. Which, after playing a Necro in every major MMO since March 1999, I find personally offensive. I was sold on the Necro with Minions. What I got was the Warlock with wells and epidemic.

There is one issue you can fix immediately that will drastically lower negative thief sentiment. There is one specific gripe I hear about thief consistently.

Heartseeker, HEARTSEEKER, HEARTSEEKER

Seriously. Just get rid of Heartseeker spam and people will stop complaining about thief overnight. Even if you make it a stacked ability with 3 tiers and it is game breakingly more powerful than Heartseeker spam, as long as people no longer see HEARTSEEKER, HEARTSEEKER, HEARTSEEKER, followed by the rez button, you will no longer need sticky threads like this. 100% Guarantee.

Effek.4653:

There you go, A necro complaining their class not fixed while they didn’t get it they come into Mesmer channel and making sure Mesmer getting the bugs too. Hilarious people.

I secretly main mesmer. Mostly because 80%+ of the class mechanics are bug free and it is competitively useful in all available content (some cases uniquely useful like jump maps and keep siege and structured PvP…and PvE)

Where as Necro mechanics are based about 30% around minions which don’t work, forcing Necro to focus even further to remain competitively useful in most content, requiring multiple gear sets, multiple bugged skills, and professional attention to detail.

I much rather play my poor broken mesmer and slap my face on the keyboard to win than have to time every ability in the proper order to stay alive while actually doing damage… which seems more like an after thought than a strategy on my poor neglected broken mesmer that is only viable in 100% of content at a highly competitive level (and even massively over powered in some content).

So hopefully Mesmer gets fixed so my I Win Button has a lower Cool Down.

Cempa.3645:

FireSnake.7536:

Hello,
I play necromancer since bwe, this is the only build, i think, where you can use axe for your main weapon

Tank/Retaliation necro spec
a range is good and you can keep distance/kite
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjMad7hbab87JCJFNzaQP217rFlC4tOA;TsAA1Cto6y4lwLbQuukBtEZUwMBA

in this build you will have:
retaliation(reflects damage based on level and scales with power) from shroud, #3 of axe and heal.

this is +400-500 dmg to axe

vulnerability from #1 of axe, #4 of focus, spectral wall, #1 in shroud

+60% might duration
+40% boon duration

The damage you put out is beyond low and as soon as people realize this they will just ignore you and leave you to last.

You need more DPS if you want to main Axe in the way of:

1) High Power
2) High crit
3) Golem with 30% more dmg and 50% more HP

With those 3 you will still do less dmg than a Condition 30/30 Necro! Axe is that pathetic.

I don’t care what metrics Anet has in-game kill time is our metric and Axe is pure fail.

First, I Laughed Out Loud at your advice. Second, still Laughing one sec.

The person you quoted gave you a very powerful tanking spec and you argue against it by saying, “WELL YEAH SURE BUT WHEN PEOPLE STOP ATTACKING YOU ITS LIKE YER NOT EVEN FIGHTING”.

Maybe I am the only one laughing. But I am certainly laughing out loud at you.

MysticoN.5068:

I havent realy tested Retalitaion to much in this game. I understand it scale from power, how much do Retaliation proc on this build?

I guess Retaliation is as good as it gets with a build like this.

Retaliation is great when it lands but there are exploitable bugs that prevent it from doing damage.

Pinkus.2860:

Pretty sure Retaliation is calculated based off the opponents power, not your own, as they are the one hitting you.

I can be just as sure Retaliation is calculated by how much force is applied when I smash my mouse on the table like a spastic halftard and scream POTATO!!!

But there is probably a more reasonable way to determine how retaliation damage is calculated.

PolarApe.9351:

I hate playing the character that way.

Translation: I hate playing games (which are just complex organizations of rules) by the rules those games are made of.

Has it never occurred to you that you don’t want to play a Necro. Rather than trying to turn a Necro into Polly Prissy Pants so you can have a tea party, how about you diversify your experience catalog a little bit and get back to us.

Kill.6973:

@ Fynd

I’m pretty sure Jon Peters knows what other classes staves auto attack speed is at. It is pretty obvious how bad necrotic grasp is, and needs no further explanation.

Where you serious about the “logic” for a staff auto attack being stronger than the scepter? In that case a sword should be in par with a greatsword or hammer when dealing damage. Get real, there is no argument there.

p.s – Forgot to mention but your facts are completely wrong. They changed spectral grasp…not necrotic gasp. So even if i did not mention in my first post, what you said about the speed with the 2 slowest auto-attack projectiles in the game is false.

Actually all weapon choices should be balanced to offer the same benefit to any desired play-style. So there is a very reasonable argument.

Also staff auto attack can be completely avoided 100% of the time by anyone paying attention to the Necro, and about 90% of the time by anyone not paying attention, yet still mobile. Staff 1 is consistently avoided 75% of the time by AFK players, players attempting to rez allies, and a shocking 30% of the time by those downed…stationary…HOW THE HELL DID IT MISS… targets.

The exception to these observations being the AFK player, also downed, with no allies to assist, and the Necro completely stationary, Staff 1 hit 100% of the time… every time.

So pointing out exaggerations of any kind is pee in the ocean.

To be fair it does say the enemy has to “Stand” on them. But really Marks should have a trigger ability so they work on objects and downed players.

The nuance of placing a tainted mark on a downed ally so that others are forced to be tainted if they want to help him is completely lost on the greater audience accustomed to remote detonators, rocket launchers, and a big fat I Win Button on no greater than 38s cooldown or the whole Universe might end.

Wells Vulnerability, Blind with chill/blind trait make team fights seem like 5v1. You run that and Mesmer Time warp, you might as well be fighting NPCs in the starter zone.

I know we’re supposed to play nice but I see too many stupid.

Minion AI makes using Minions with the current system, THE MOST SITUATIONAL MECHANIC IN THE GAME.

Arguing that using corpses would be too situational is like floating in the middle of the Pacific and having an argument over MAKING THE OCEAN TOO WET IF YOU PEE. Holy potato loving tardstorm.

Necro is for summoning the dead. Not the dirt. You epic wastes of consciousness. Go play a thief or a ele and stop trying to drop deuce on everything it means to be a NECRO.

This message brought to you by What it Means to be a kittenING NECRO.

Necro should raise the dead. Pet AI is really making minion use, at all, cumbersome. Being able to raise corpses as active skills would be way preferable and more fun for sure. At least Necro wouldn’t just be a fancy warlock that way.

hackks.3687:

XiL.4318:

hackks.3687:

How does high burst require Minions? When I think about burst builds minions are not my first thought.

Yer a necro. Not a warlock. I know with broken AI it seems like we are warlocks but they are going to fix the minion AI problems. Then you will be able to use traits like Minions do 30% more damage and have 50% more health and siphon health on hit… etc.

You will be able to blow up a bone minion and know that it will hit for full damage every time. Your Flesh Golem will attack your target instead of the terrain object standing next to it.

Power/Minions/DeathShroud builds will be extremely powerful burst and bunker for almost the same reason. Mostly that Minion AI will work correctly.

Maybe I am a Warlock. I don’t like minions/ai/pets at all in pvp let alone having to rely on them for my class to function to it’s fullest. The best part our skills are the utilities too. It’s really hard to think of filling up those valuable slots with…. ew…. Minions…

Yes because what kind of drooling potato fan would roll necro for the minions… pfft.

Mrbig.8019:

Leuca.5732:

A friend and I have had quite a bit of success with Dagger/Focus and Axe/Dagger weapon sets.

and how do you deal against shatterkitten mesmers ?

i find mesmers extremely difficult to handle without AoE effects, and i hesitated a lot before giving up the greater marks. And now i struggle a lot more against them.

Really, i’m not being sarcastic, i just want opinions.

You want to destroy all mesmer regardless of the build or their cooldowns?

Greater Marks, Dodge Mark, 3% Life Force per Mark, 50% DS cooldown reduction.

Juggle your DS with your utilities and even a full shatter with time warp is nothing.

hackks.3687:

How does high burst require Minions? When I think about burst builds minions are not my first thought.

Yer a necro. Not a warlock. I know with broken AI it seems like we are warlocks but they are going to fix the minion AI problems. Then you will be able to use traits like Minions do 30% more damage and have 50% more health and siphon health on hit… etc.

You will be able to blow up a bone minion and know that it will hit for full damage every time. Your Flesh Golem will attack your target instead of the terrain object standing next to it.

Power/Minions/DeathShroud builds will be extremely powerful burst and bunker for almost the same reason. Mostly that Minion AI will work correctly.

striker.3704:

XiL.4318:

Also @people hating on focus 5 should stand closer to their targets while using focus 4 and rethink your arguments.

That has nothing to do with focus 5. That’s simply stating the power of focus 4 in a close combat situation.

Chill is a gap closer that also slows skill use. It closes the gap AND makes it safer to be that close. Necro who don’t know this are probably doing it wrong and casting focus 4 from range or wasting immobilize and having their target cure and dodge away. Unless they Q hot matches all day long against R1s. But then who cares. I can farm R1s naked with no traits.

THIS IS SIMPLY STATING: you no meaning my understand.

High Burst and True Bunker both require functional minion AI. Without that you can only reasonably fake it at an amateur level. Competitively Necro is synergy/support and ground targeted rez.

Watch for Minion AI fixes and then start thinking about bunker/burst builds.

Dulon.9347:

XiL.4318:

The second issue is reverse scaling where siphon traits get < 0 and start healing mobs.

That information is outdated, it was fixed in the November patch.

In PvE and WvW a life siphon build works fine.
Life leech runes/sigils, power/precision/toughness gear, omnomberry pies, axe/focus
and dagger/dagger as weapons.

sPvP is a different matter though, since you lack the food and knight’s gear has
vitality instead of toughness there.

Siphons still hit < 0 with reverse scaling, and Vampire builds in PvP are the only viable support/bunker without pet AI fixes.

But tell me more.

The Siphon Mechanic and/or traits that affect it are bugged. The healing doesn’t scale at all with damage or with healing power so there is no gear benefit to siphon whatsoever. The second issue is reverse scaling where siphon traits get < 0 and start healing mobs.

So yes there is clearly something wrong with Life Siphon. Minions also don’t siphon health correctly using the minion traits partly because minion AI is also broken making the problem seem even worse.

But when the AI gets fixed and the math for Siphon Life gets patched there will no longer be a problem.

I will point out though that in a team fight wells + life siphon isn’t horrible when you combine with staff 2 and condition to boons well. I have been successfully running life siphon wells since beta, they need to be stronger for sure, but they need to balance that with fixing minions and how the minion healing life siphon numbers will stack up when minions aren’t busy with logical loops and sight seeing adventures.

My party dress.

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.

Oblivion.8307:

condition necros aren’t hard to play, it’s mainly kiting and positioning.

power necros aren’t viable in tpvp they’re too squishy.

powerr’s build is also trash, it’s way too squishy.

^

Only Power Build that works against decent players is power/DS build with life force traits and max toughness. And it is not as good as the other condi/wells builds at maintaining pressure or synergy so you lose a lot in team fights to gain a moderate amount of damage. You also have to given up conditions for toughness and that is kinda brutal for necro.

Warrior needs buffs in PvP. They suck against conditions and competitive PvP is 50% condition/boon synergy.

Getting rolled by a Warrior means one of two things, 1) you had no cooldowns and didn’t see it coming with low health, 2) you are still Learning2Play

I can play a warrior well against noobs with no traits, no utility skills and void of pants. But competitively every weapon I have as a Warrior has a hard counter naturally built in to every other popular competitive role.

Is being able to jump people and spike them down really unique to warrior? No. What is unique to warrior is that is the only option you have. And even then if you jump a condition spammer like Necro yer gonna die with the Necro if you even get them at all.

That’s why Warrior isn’t going to get nerfed.

ndrangles.5183:

this thread reminds me how much fun i had leveling an epidemic necro to 44 in WvW. i felt really useful even at low levels. in sPvP i experimented with the minion tank build, and i turned into one of those bunkers who can neither kill nor be killed, which i found hilarious. i discovered the beauty of wells, but the one thing i never tried was a power build, and i regret under-utilizing the axe. i’m really tempted to ditch my mesmer now….

Axe/Focus power vit tough build with Life Force procs and dodge mark hurts butts in ways that there’s no over the counter cream for.

Being bad at playing Necro does not indicate the class is bad, but rather, you have some Play left 2 Learn.

Necro > PvE.

I can’t put this more blatantly Necro is greater than the sum of all PvE content combined. Any argument to the contrary is simply delusional.

In tPvP and WvW necro is only competitive if refined into support/AoE roles. Minion Master builds for example have nothing to offer tPvP but clumbsy traps that won’t even stay where you put them. The teleport/step dance using worm is pretty hilarious, but its not going to turn a point, survive a zerg push, knock out heavy siege, or bust a bunker.

But they will fix minions eventually and Necro will have viable bunker and burst builds that rely currently on minions that don’t work.

Current meta is support + synergy/burst = win. Also rez signet is absolutely required equipment. Necro AoE Chill, Vulnerability, and Boon to Conditions uttery decimates a team fight combined with the ability to ground target rez. Even healthy zergs can be kicked in the jimmy mid stream by a single well played Necro. But only in a support/AoE role.

Burst and bunker tools are all heavily minion, and minion trait reliant, and I think the developers, and most experienced players, are very well aware of this. So over time the fixes to minion AI will open up more diversity in necro playstyle.

I want the corpse wave minion master play-style from GW1 and from Vanguard, personally. Being able to make pets from corpses and have a single static construct is Necro done right in my opinion. And I have been playing a Necro in MMOs since March1999. So you could say I have a feel for it. Only thing GW2 Necro should have to make it a real Necro is the ability to gear your contruct or make it out of looted mob parts and customize it.

Because Arena Net, please pay attention to this next part whoever you are necro dev,

A Necro should always be judged not by the shine of their jewelry, or of skills left cooling from vigorous overuse, or even the motion within the ocean, of consciousness, he or she pours into the summoning pool to stoke their summoning fires, but instead let them be measured by the novel grandeur of their massive, throbbing
…constructs.

/thread

Reference:
Novel – New or unusual in an interesting way
Grandeur – The quality or condition of being grand; magnificence

Skill reduction is no joke kiddos. Chill is how you kill bunkers and roamers using the same build (at the same time if yer bauce).

I am absolutely certain they are 100% aware of the Necro Minion problems, including the terrain collision issues that flesh golem seems to suffer from.

I know this because I spoke directly to a QA Lead that was playing free tournaments about it. I also mentioned how siphon heals don’t scale correctly.

/tinfoil

Staff is a team support weapon. Use it for team support.

tPvP is a team support playtype. Use Staff in tPvP.

2+2 will always equal 4.

Axe works pretty well, the problem is, some bugs allow other classes to avoid retaliation which pretty much defeats the core functionality of using an axe build.

Once the retaliation bugs get worked out Axe will not seem underpowered at all.

Also @people hating on focus 5 should stand closer to their targets while using focus 4 and rethink your arguments.

Zintair.1987:

Sprawl.3891:

XiL.4318:

0 20 20 30 0
VI IX
II V
II VIII XII
Staff – Axe or Dagger/whatever

wells boon2con, and vulnerability + physical damage wells
Flesh Golem (for the knockdown, object rampage damage, and the Swagger)
Fear Set runes
Vit/Tough/whatever you want weapons, gear, and acc

This is how to hurt many many butts at the same time with Necro in WvW. You play this as a mobile siege platform with a knockdown pet that can be used to spread conditions with unblockable marks. Swap your speed Sigil and spectral walk for travel and swap your mist form for offensive pressure on large groups.

Single target focus of any kind in WvW does not compare to the epic fire power of this kitten kitten fully operational battle station/noob lawnmower.

Yer welcome.

not sure how this is any good at killing people, your wells and staff marks wont hit hard and your bleeds wont tick for much.. it’s more of a bunker build

That was my understanding from the Trait Points and Utilities selected. I can see it killing people by sheer outlasting them, but I doubt it “hurts many butts” with Vit Tough stating.

It makes more sense when you play WvW at a more competitive level. Rambo in WvW is not going to be capturing towers and keeps, killing siege on the top of walls, supporting the rams with heals and condition/boon swapping, etc… etc…

It is a wonderfully purposed support build in tPvP as well, but tPvP is more fun with control/rez/roamer necro builds.

However, this wells build is a 1vMany build. Which is the only viable meta in WvW. You support siege and push away flanks. And you should note that using the correct wells and reaper’s puts 20 stack of vulnerability down as AoE on top of doing 5 ticks of semi-heavy AoE damage.

And while those wells that heal and do damage and turn boons into conditions…AND stack massive amounts of vulnerability… are down you can use yer mistform to blind storm a HUGE group while your arrow carts cripple and slaughter all of them.

Sorry I started drooling and dozed off.

Talked to a QA Lead about Necro Minions in game. He/She is passing along the minion AI issues as well as the Life Siphon heal bugs.

So now you can all stop speculating about whether or not someone is aware of the issue. They are now, for sure, aware of the minion AI and Life Siphon issues and will do what they are paid to do.

Just a silly sidenote: The QA Lead was playing a Ranger in Free Tournaments. That statement says a lot of things if you are a regular tournament player.

Schwahrheit.4203:

I like how people deny how easy this class is to play. It takes no skill to press blind well or stun break if you’re getting mauled by melee AND THEN punish them back.

DS stomp weakness, might, retaliate is pretty hard IMO.

But the real builds that are actually useful for more than noob stomping in hot matches… they are piss easy fo sho.

Vitality/Toughness/Anything = win

Third stat and secondary modifiers all depend on the traits.

Dieing most definitely stops people from dodging my silly friend.

And daggers are for ladies to make sammiches.

Druitt.7629:

XiL.4318:

According a a recent dev response, Anet does not even consider necro minions as an issue.

Haven’t seen that one. I know they’ve made flippant responses which can be interpreted as they don’t care, but I’ve not seen a posting that says, “Minions are working fine and you’re imagining they’re not.”

XiL.4318:

But if you really do know AI development you also know that the AI they use is not creature specific. So your entire premiss seems a bit silly.

Yes, I really know and do AI. I don’t know how they have coded their minion/pet/summonable AI, and unless you DO know your statement that AI is not creature-specific is pure speculation. Of course, it would be good practice to have a common AI code base and then specialize that, but things don’t always work that way and sometimes in the heat of deadlines you find out that your AI code doesn’t generalize as well as you thought and you take expedient measures.

You also know that Rangers, for example, have a single pet out at a time. Elementalists might have as many as two summonables out. But only Necros might have eight or more minions out. They are obviously different even before you begin to dig into particulars.

XiL.4318:

It really seems most likely that necro minions have an artificial parameter that all other minions do not have or that client/server communication errors cause a logical loop to occur preventing the AI from proceeding with its behavior.

You’re saying that AN has a BROKEN flag that they set to TRUE for Necros and FALSE for all other professions? And you think my idea was “a bit silly”?

If I had to speculate, I’d say that it’s due to either: 1) pathing/LOS issues that due to subtle differences between minions and pets cause minions to not be able to find a path/LOS and thus not acting, or 2) problems with sending multiple targeting information to multiple minions/pets that don’t show up with pets and summonables because you can’t have multiple pets out and don’t tend to have multiple summonables out. (It’s obvious that there are LOS issues in the game, which have shown up as Elementalist Ride the Lightning not working, as minor inconveniences for some professions, and as major issues for some classes like post-patch Mesmers. My feeling is this is strongly affecting minions for subtle reasons.)

XiL.4318:

All other minions, even those controlled by Necro NPCs, work well according to my observations and a lack of any feedback on the forums to the contrary.

I only equip and use a single minion for specific situations, and I’ve never had a minion fail to work as I expected. That doesn’t prove anything, and neither does your “all other minions” anectodal evidence. It does provide clues as to what might be going on, but not having access to their code and design goals, it’s all speculation.

For all we know, NPC minions are not actually minions but rather additional NPCs with minion names and skins. It would be logical to reuse minion code for NPCs as well, but in the real world what’s logical, what’s feasible, what’s kludged under time pressure, etc, are all different issues.

Evidently GW1 had very reasonable pet/minion AI, so it’s not like AN is incompetent at it. Something else is happening that is causing legitimate issues for heavy users.

There is a great deal of information on how they developed GW2 readily available. Do some research. Much can be inferred without having to whip out and lay my junk on a table in their office building.

Also the artificial parameter I was eluding to would have to do with limiting minion pathing, range, and collisions to make them hold their priority formation…remain with the player…avoid teleporting behaviors…etc; and likely keep them from performing quite so well, or as quickly as NPCs.

Could you imagine if each necro minion behaved fully like an NPC of their class type? Farmers wouldn’t need bots anymore. Just 1 afk Minion Master Necro. Which I just assumed was obvious.

So yes. I think you are silly.

edit: NPC Necro minions refer to temporary minions only.

Flesh Golem, chill, and cripple prevent people from getting off wells before they do the majority of their damage. Wells also forcibly penetrate any thief running thieves guild or trying to pull off a backstab rotation.

People who say “people don’t stand in wells” should roll something else. People do what I tell them to do in PvP. And I tell them to die.

Kravick.4906:

Swadow.6213:

For a Necro Staff is a necessity. A build without a Staff is really bad, there is no reason to go without one.

This is wrong. I run a dagger/warhorn axe/focus well build and it works extremely well in both PVE and PVP. I only use staves during tower/keep sieges in WvW, but this is no different than a warrior needing to swap out his off weapon for a longbow/rifle during tower/keep sieges. In PVE there hasn’t been a single instance of me needing to use a staff.

When I see a Longbow Warrior I start chanting:

LONGBOW

WARRIOR

in public channels. I can’t stop until Arena Net forces me to stop. I don’t know why this happens to me. The same thing happens when I see Legolas the Roleplaying Bowtard ( LET’S GO BOWTARD) or Minion Master Necro (MINION — MASTER) in tournaments.

Something just overwhelms me.

I don’t kite warriors.

I /dance while the wells and marks take a big smelly one on any melee that comes near me while at the same time keeping my health full and my kitten extended.

Ezeriel.9574:

Necros may have a nitch in spvp as daggers or axe and wells, I dunno. Most people I fight don’t stand in wells.

..but I only do WvWvW, and there, necros are the worst class in the game.

It’s playable. If you spec for conditions, and spam Mark of Blood, it’s actually quite fun, but you are really only mildly annoying people and kill stealing.

You can’t bleed objects or some immobile mobs.. so yeah.. not very useful at all.

Being bad at playing necro does not indicate the class is bad but rather your grasp of it is limited. Wells and Marks are extremely powerful in WvW just like all other AoE.

A properly played necro is a mobile siege fortress with a rampaging kittenminion knocking crowds people down so they can’t evade from wells, marks, and subsequent secondary effects like chill and their HP reaching zero.

Problem is people don’t use targeted wells and are bad with placing marks. You literally have to play necro as if it is a ground target siege machine. Then you suck much less.

0 20 20 30 0
VI IX
II V
II VIII XII
Staff – Axe or Dagger/whatever

wells boon2con, and vulnerability + physical damage wells
Flesh Golem (for the knockdown, object rampage damage, and the Swagger)
Fear Set runes
Vit/Tough/whatever you want weapons, gear, and acc

This is how to hurt many many butts at the same time with Necro in WvW. You play this as a mobile siege platform with a knockdown pet that can be used to spread conditions with unblockable marks. Swap your speed Sigil and spectral walk for travel and swap your mist form for offensive pressure on large groups.

Single target focus of any kind in WvW does not compare to the epic fire power of this kitten kitten fully operational battle station/noob lawnmower.

Yer welcome.

Druitt.7629:

Fenirian.3485:

I’m sure you read A LOT of complaints about it and I apologize in advance if bringing it up gets under your skin

Personally, it does not get under my skin, because you’re speaking in qualified, informed, and reasonable terms. The only thing that gets under my skin is, “NECROS IZ BROKE CAUSE MINIONS SUXORS!!!” posts, of which there are quite a few.

My graduate degree is in Artificial Intelligence, and it’s not an easy problem. But evidently GW1’s minion AI was quite reasonable, and even WoW’s minion AI was reasonable, so there’s something going on with GW2 minion AI. Not sure if they tried to be too clever and so it works in non-intuitive ways, or if their seemingly deep issues with LOS and pathing in general is killing pets, or if it’s just buggy and there aren’t many Necros so minion AI is at the end of their queue.

According a a recent dev response, Anet does not even consider necro minions as an issue.

But if you really do know AI development you also know that the AI they use is not creature specific. So your entire premiss seems a bit silly.

It really seems most likely that necro minions have an artificial parameter that all other minions do not have or that client/server communication errors cause a logical loop to occur preventing the AI from proceeding with its behavior.

All other minions, even those controlled by Necro NPCs, work well according to my observations and a lack of any feedback on the forums to the contrary.

A worm spawning from a new corpse does make more sense than a jagged horror. And Jagged horror is pathetically useless. Even if you summon a bagillion of them in lich form they still just die to any single low damage AoE before ever doing any noticeable damage.

But I would rather get a jagged horror buff to HP and damage or a static amount of time they last with a buff to damage. It would also be a lot easier to just open the jagged horror drop down menu (cause their development suite is just a big ole excel workbook with drop downs and collapsibles) and give Jagged Horror 50% more health and 50% more damage.

Very easy problem to solve I could fix the issue in the time it took me to search for Jagged Horror in the development window.

Necro needs minions that function properly. All necro Minions, especially Flesh Golem (which people notice most often) will stop attacking their priority target and seek a proximity target that may have made it on the list of combatants (or whatever they use internally). And that is if they seek a new target at all. In many cases the pets will not attack until an aggressive target comes within melee range of them.

However, internally it may be that they cannot reproduce the minion issues. I know for a fact that sometimes in both PvE and PvP my minions will behave correctly and attack my targets when I attack. I also know for a fact that often (especially in PvP) my minions will attack one time and then never work again until respawned only to either attack one more time or no longer function until the secondary skills are used or they are attacked directly.

The AI is most likely based on NPC AI and as most of you have seen that works just fine. So it could just be a client/server communication issue. It could also just be a problem with the targeting class itself which may not even be part of the AI.

Instead of using bots to test the necro pets and seeing on the internal servers that all minions seem to be working fine….

Test with a human being from a remote connection. Not a VPN to a remote host. Not a simulated instance running in memory. An actual human being with the 30 minutes it will take to guarantee a replication of this extremely frustrating bug. Bots and Metrics only get you so far. Human hands are what is needed to confirm this kind of issue.

If that happens, I will play this game again. If not, I am done with Guild Wars 2. The only reason I picked up this game was to play a minion master necro that can rez people. I cannot do that when my Flesh Golem is attacking a bucket and the rest of my minions are useful as nothing but secondary utility skills.

Here’s hoping someone at Arena Net stops sucking on the metric kitten and takes a copy of the retail game home to do some actual testing.