I can't satisfy myself, so now I'm asking you.

Alright peoples, here we go.

As of right now I'm a N/Me, specializing in blood magic and domination magic, with a hint of inspiration for energy-stealing purposes.

Blood: 12 (11 +1)
Domination: 12
Inspiration: 8

Inspiration might be 7, I can't remember right now. Anyway, I works well in PvE, with life transfer and life siphon brining a -10 health degeneration (and regeneration on me), they go down quicker, and the domination magic skills to shut down casters/damage, it's not too bad. I enjoy it quite a bit. Now I head into PvP, and...not so. Even with a -10 health regen and several vampiric gazes cast on someone, I can't seem to bring them down. I have hope if I get a backfire in on a caster while he's got a -10 health degeneration, but I still don't seem to be doing a whole lot.

But here's the thing, I cast a -10 health degeneration on someone and they start to freak, and usually I get the whole opposing team knocking the crap out of me. And believe it or not, ether feast doesn't cover that damage, and with low armor (well not low, 70, but still), I still drop insanely fast. I can't effectively heal myself/dehex all the hexes I get screwed with, and I only manage to take down usually 70% of someone's health, my PvP team just...always seems to lose, and I seem to suck.

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Now here's perhaps a better question, is it so much that I suck, or is it maybe that my team isn't complimenting my work? I'm not supposed to be the one taking people down right? I'm just supposed to assist in doing it and screw with them as much as I can before I go down. Taking down 70% of someone's life doesn't seem like I'm doing bad by any means, I can just never finish 'em off usually, and then they get healed and I'm without the energy to do it again.

So I've got this question, do I suck? Or is it just that my team isn't helping as they should or something?

Either way, they're my guild and I love the guys so I won't just ditch 'em and get better peoples, because they're all pretty good in themselves, just new to PvP me thinks.

How can I be of more use in PvP 'eh? I've even gone so far as to consider changing my secondary.

I was thinking a N/W. How is a N/W in PvP? Perhaps pump up axe or sword mastery in place of domination, and then...tactics, in place of inspiration or something?

Also I like the idea of my necro with a badass lookin' axe.

Anyways, any build/suggestions and/or secondary changes? What necros seem to screw YOU up in PvP?

---Another note, or, question rather.

When changing a secondary profession, you lose all your original secondary skills 'eh? Well how do you then GAIN new secondary skills? Do you have to go out and buy all of them using skill points? And can you get as many as you could with your original secondary? ---Thanks for your respones people, I appreciate it.

arena or tombs/gvg? big differences there.

necro is pretty much anti-warrior but blood magic loses it's potential in tombs/gvg unless you're talking about mana boosting spells. 10 degen is really not that great of dps (20), just an add on effect and not worth it to base a character around of.

curses are a better line. you can get away with 7-9 points in it for good effect and stuff like enfeeble and shadow of fear is very potent in lowering warrior damage.

I would reccomend going to mesmer primary if that's an option because fast casting>>soul reaping except in a select few circumstances.

n/w really is an arena build. anti-warrior/monk in 1v1s but generally won't hold up in organized pvp as its dps is too low.

mes/nec is always hard because mesmer is heavy anti-caster (the anti-warrior skills like empathy are not that good generally) and necro is heavy anti-warrior. if you can switch to mes primary and go to something else for secondary you might have better luck as a pure anti-caster

A way to diagnosis your team's ability from result:

There are 2 types of failure in a team...

A. Your team's monk healing and defense department need improvments.
B. Your team's offense and debuff department need improvement.
C. Opponent team were completely prepared to take your team down.

This is where A applies...
The battle wasn't very long, your monk died quite early... however, you did score at least 1 kill.

This is where B applies...
The battle last for quite awhile, both side is almost at a stalemate... you can barely kill them at all.

This is where C applies...
The battle was a slaughter, but you were able to beat many teams with the same setup before.

Case A happen alot more often than case B... Case A is what is required for your team to win at all... If Case A is good, without Case B... You can probably at least last until the opponent make a mistake and lose. Often case A happen before you can even realize Case B... therefore, it take quite a few round for things to be getting straight. Case C is the most rare.

Thanks for the advice, sounds like a "case A" as our monk is a Mo/E, often died, and was switching between fire and earth magic. His healing prayers are 15, I suggested he use earth magic, but now I'm thinking he should almost forget about his elementist features and go with protection prayers, because he always gets gang raped near the beginning, which screws us over.

Maybe MY problem is that I like to be invincible, which isn't going to happen.

Title sounds like a Howard Stern movie.

I think the problem here is that although your team is taking on complementary roles, you are still acting as individuals. Your primary healer is expected to stop healing to use defensive spells on himself, and you as a N/Me (two support classes combined) are trying to be a damage dealer and self healer.

Without knowing the rest of your team, what I would suggest is dropping blood and switching to curses. Use curses to render warriors attacking your monks impotent (Enfeeble, Faintheartedness etc.), use Mesmer spells to achieve a similar fate for casters (Backfire, Diversion, Power Leak), and a couple of spells to round off like Shatter Enchantment/ Shatter hex, and maybe Wastrel's Worry, to keep you busy when there are no obvious targets and to cover up more important hexes.

You keep your Monk from danger, he heals you from the aggro you attract, and the rest of the group concentrates on killing those you've weakened.

This won't immediately turn you into a PvP master, but it might help you move in the right direction.

Not *always* but usually, and especially in 4 on 4 and 8 on 8, defense wins games, everyone defends the monks while warriors try to find weaknesses somewhere in the enemy team, once they find one, thats when everyone needs to focus on that point and try to take it out to cripple the entire team.

What I would suggest, set yourself up to disrupt the enemy team.

A possible suggestion
Switch around to go with curses and domination magic both high, if you go with 11 and 11 on them then you can squeeze in 9 or so lvls of soul reaping and get a lot of mana back in 8 on 8s.

With your curses try to get some spells to make warriors deal less damage, their warriors will be looking for targets whose life goes down pretty fast and stays down for pretty long periods of time, then they will call in the wizards to DD you. If your HP isnt going down then they will notice and probably change targets, if nothing else its less damage their team does overall and less strain on your teams ability to heal.

With domination I would suggest *do NOT* use backfire, backfire is very weak for its casting cost in bang for your buck, it doesnt last long and while it does significant damage people usually notice and just dont cast for a few seconds and its wasted.

Instead use Diversion, with lvl 11 of that their skills will be recharging 41 seconds slower, their best spells they need to use first and most often to be specific, if you can disable 3 or 4 skills on a player often times they are totally worthless until the stuff wears off, a monk whose 3 heals are all blocked for 30+ sec is a good example, or a wizard whose 3 damage spells are blocked.

Another good one is Blackout, all their spells are blocked for 6 seconds so they cant use anything at all, with a few diversions on one person, and then chain blackouts on someone else you can effectively stop 2 people, and if you have curses on warriors maybe 3 or 4.

Blackout gives mana problems though, which matter a lot less with 10 or so levels of soul reaping.

Also, you should probably bring rend enchantments, its a really good PVP spell, and learn how to use it, sacrifice where you have to, a lot of people take Nec on PVP chars just to use this one spell.

Tsunamii Starshine

Quote:

In 8 on 8 we usually have 2-3 monks, in the team arena we only had one. I do think I'll remove backfire for diversion, I bring blackout once in a while. Something though, with blackout, whenever I seem to use it my character runs up and "touches" the character in order to use it? Is this supposed to happen? I don't think it's a touch skill and may very well be a bug, it gets hassling to have to run in through everyone to disable someone's skills.

I think my problem is just that well---it's very difficult to see the results of many of these skills. You don't know which skills they've lengthened the recharge of, you don't see the damage on backfire, or empathy for that matter, and you can't tell how any health degenertion/status affects really work, you only cast and trust that they're being affective. This is what seems to make it hard, I can't tell what seems to be working and what isn't.

I need to ask everyone on the opposite team how pissed off they were getting, then I'll know.

I'm not a big fan of DoT, especially in PvP and/or focusing on a "DoT" build since it is already capped at 10. Honestly I only see DoT as more of a "cover-up" hex for your more important hexes.

And how to be more useful? I agree you should focus on filling a needed role than being all over the place. Some say to drop blood but IMO I think you should keep it as this will be your self-healing line. And when I say self-healing I don't mean you'll be completely self-sufficient and won't need heals from a monk, but rather I think most if not all builds should have some way to heal themselves outside of depending on another character.

Now to solve the problem of you being focused the simple answer is the curses line. It has many damage reducing hexes, some even AoE, and of particular note as some have already said is Shadow of Fear. A high Blood/Curses spec'ed necro is great at surviving if played correctly. This does leave your a bit spread out in your attributes though so I'd suggest you drop domination for curses, especially considering you're a necro primary (so you can use a curses rune) and a curses + domination build really is redundant IMO. Inspiration you'll have to keep as you need the mana leeching from that line to support your pool, and soul reaping is IMO not worth devoting many points into unless you're a death necro build.