10/02/06 State of the Game article

http://www.guildwars.com/competitive...e/necrogvg.php

Overall a very nice summary of why Necromancers don't see GvG play as often as other classes, but this paragraph made me pause:

What is a paragraph on Rangers doing in an article on Necromancers, especially an article that focuses on primary Necromancers above all else?

My aren’t we a bit touchy today?

Gee think a bit ... Touch Rangers are another form of Necromancy all primary class names aside.

I think necros are fine as they are and the only reason they aren't popular in GvG is Soul Reaping. They are simply not a good fit in GvG, which is balanced IMO by how great necros are in other forms of PvP.

Of course, there are no statistics of this kind, but in HA necro, warrior and ranger are the three most popular classes. VIM runs 4 warriors and 4 rangers, which is the main argument for the popularity of the above, whereas necros are in a large number of builds, all because of soul reaping: Blood spike, OG spike, orders on IWAY and rspike (granted, there are approximately 3 rspike teams running around these days, but I still feel they deserve a mention :P), taint/warders and SR healers on NR/tranq builds (although these seem to have died out recently).

The article doesn't seem to hold much hope for necros in GvG and neither do I. Soul reaping may be the most powerful attribute in this game, but GvG isn't the place for it.

Pun intended?

But the whole point of the article is that Necromancers don't see enough play in high-end PvP. Shoehorning the Touch Ranger reference in sounds like advertisement for "Can't Touch This!" to me rather than a mention of a viable way Necromancers are used. The whole point of Touch Ranger builds is to (ab)use Expertise, an attribute Necromancers have no access to!

The article at least to me was more on the uses of the Necromancer skills used in PvP GvG and PvE. The class, apart from Soul Reaping, is the sum of the skills used with that class.

Thus even fast-casting Mesmers avoid most necromancer skills because the skills don’t add up in comparison to other class counterpart skills. At least that was what the article appeared to be for me.

The article brings up a good point; while I and many others almost constantly complain about bad Elementalist damage and how bad Energy Storage is, they're still in a better state for GvG than Necromancers since at least Elementalists have Ether Prodigy, whereas Necromancers don't have much of anything to make up for their bad (in GvG) primary attribute.

I agree that soul reaping is a big drawback of necros in gvg, but I'd also argue with this point.In my opinion, both classes are competent at providing warrior hate, though I feel necros are a little better. The difference being that the mesmer warrior hate relies on snares and direct damage for the most part (eg. imagined burden, clumsiness), while necros generally apply some debilitating effect that lasts for some duration (reckless, price of failure, spiteful, Shadow of Fear). With some nice cover hexes such as parasitic and suffering thrown in, these hexes can shut down melee and ranged physical attackers for a good while.

One, Corrupt Enchantment is not a Cover Hex. It's a WTFPWN hex. The Curses tree already has a cover Hex in the name of Parasitic Bond. (And Corrupt Enchantment is going to get nerfed hard, you all know it.)

Second, the article implies that Depravity affects the Hexed target, which is wrong.

I'm pretty annoyed he didn't mention Reaper's Mark. THAT is the ultimate cover-hex, and a reason to use Soul Reaping.

Yes even more for those that use enchments it seems Necros will be viable agian not as if they weren't in pvp.

It is 'State-of-the-game' or 'State-of-PvP'?
Because all I see is PvP and GvG talking.

I demand a 'State-of-PvE'!

It's called The Scribe.

Yeah, that describes the state of PvE...Random acts of kindness?

TOuch Rangers were mentioned towards the end, because its perfect in that context. It was a part of the article about Necromancer use in other forms of PvP, and Touch Rangers happen to be one of the biggest uses of necromancy in non-GvG/HA pvp.

It also describes any events going on, and major updates to the game.

What else is there? Theres not exactly The builds and ladder and all of that PvP stuff, would they say "Oh yea, this week some Whammo was using Watchful Spirit instead of Mending, NEW METAGAME!!@##@"

Let's be fair now. The Scribe has offered some... *ahem* ...insight on PvE, even if not in the gameplay part. Like the mentions of new greens before they were implemented (subsequently undermined by lack of follow-up information until everyone already knew how to obtain them). And the news of special weekend events (already announced on the main site). And the metagame in Alliance Battles (which technically qualifies as PvP). I guess I'm starting to see your point


EDIT:
But they are Touch Rangers, and "necromancy" does not equate to "Necromancers." Touch Rangers take Necromancer skills and use them in a _______ way (new/exciting/glitched/cheap) that explicitly alters the skills' original design (as many have argued, at least). No Necromancer will ever be able to spam touch skills with the same speed as a Touch Ranger unless things are dying in 1 hit and the Necromancer is recovering as much energy with Soul Reaping per use of touch skill as the Ranger is saving with Expertise. Granted, I've seen some try, mainly in Random Arenas, but I'm sure we can all imagine how well that goes.

My point is that the whole article makes a big fuss about the lack of Necromancer primaries in PvP. To insert a comment about a Necromancer secondary build is very jarring. For me, it immediately raises questions of an alterior motive for the mention - like the "Can't Touch This!" Paragon skill which is sure to make people buy Nightfall just to counter the annoying Touch Rangers.

What's there to say? The only time/places when/where running any random 8 skills won't get you killed is (for the most part) solofarming, and anet doesn't exactly condone that.

The article is missing the words "Oppressive Gaze" IMO.

Soul Reaping, as Bloodspiking showed (and was pedicted many months before bloodspiking showed it's ugly head by some), is a bit of a niche attribute. It requires some management, and it's not easy to manage. Looking at Nightfall skills, with Jagged Bones - Putrid Flesh and Signet of Lost Soul, there is an attempt to be able to manage it more.
How effective it is to manage with those skills remains to be seen.

The point of the "whole article" is to discuss the uses of Necromancers and their skills in PvP, only part of it is about their effective use as Primaries in GvG.

I said (and still stick to my statement) that the paragraph was perfectly in context where it appeared in the article, discussing necromancer skills and their use in non-GvG/HA forms of PvP.

I agree, they do not see a lot of play in gvg. That's mainly because they can't:
A) Harrass monks
B) Have high dps (don't come to me talking about shadow strike etc. I know they're damaging.)
C) Good E-Management
D) Dead bodies.

And in Nightfall, some of those are going to change. One build that has already been run (look at the NUKE vid) is a Jagged bones necro. Because they add pressure with bleeding, they're great, especially at VoD. Bad e-management will be solved by Signet of lost souls, which will either get a buff or a nerf when nightfall is released. Depravity also has the ability to screw monks over, so I think we'll see more necros after Nightfall.

let it go. If you don't like that he happened to mention a popular build that happens to use mostly necromancy skills, simply because the primary is a ranger, don't read any more state of the game articles.

he never implied that he would solely talk about primary necromancers.

What a ridiculous thread.

People farmed alot. Many mobs continue to die. Xp totals rise.

There's no metagame to talk about in PvE...