+1
I also played Necromancer through all the betas and am now seriously considering a new class. I have been really pleased with a lot of the changes that have been made so far, but other “balancing” changes have sort of nerfed the class back down to unusable.
I have not been running a strict condition mancer. I play mostly PvE, and have been running with a sort of hybrid Minion Master/Well and Mark build. For PVE, the aoe damage output is decent, but the single target damage is pretty laughable.
I played a bit of PvP and was pretty disappointed with all the builds I came up with. I’m a pretty good player, and am a fan of kiting and juggling and using multiple skills at the right time, but man, it really is a chore to kill anything.
Everyone has already outlined all the faults, so let me just add this.
I am a long time WoW Warlock player for all of Vanilla on through BC. What I loved about that class was the complexity of playing it well, which the Necro is supposed to share. Condition and control based classes are supposed to be tough, but the fine balance struck with the Warlock was that when it was played well (even when everyone whined about how underpowered it was) it was really pretty unstoppable.
In raids, I almost always took #1 in damage. Keep in mind, this was back when people didn’t even bother taking more than one Warlock (soulstone/summon bot.) In PvP, I rocked control and juggled enemies and sewed mayhem, DoTing everything in sight and keeping enemies off my other squishies.
In short, playing well yielded a little something something. It felt like I was playing music, almost. You could squeeze some extra juice out of the Warlock, but it took finesse, and yes, it was hard to even play it to the level that other players could achieve easily.
But when you did it, you felt it. You had an edge.
The Necro is not that class. Oh it takes finesse to play, which is why when I solo, it’s a fun and challenging class. As soon as I see another player, be it in PvE or (especially) PvP, it’s just sad. Rocking the Necro to the limit and I can’t even touch them in damage (AoE, maybe,) and if they are after me, all I can really do is hold them off most of the time. Condition damage is especially disappointing. It’s damage that almost every class in the game can just remove and it doesn’t get a bump? Our bleeds should just be absolutely TERRIFYING. People see us coming and they aught to just switch to the weapon that lets them remove debuffs automatically. It should be a concern.
When I see a Guardian, I think “OH CRAP, HE’S GOING TO KNOCK ME OVER AND TAKE MY LUNCH MONEY.” Their knockdowns with that godkittenhammer are terrifying. They see us and they think “crap… I hope I knock him down before he DS’s and makes this take longer than it has to.”