What is it with Necros and ToA

Heh, add storm chaser to your build then and just run to the end with the crystal. Let the rest of your party play meat shield while you sprint to victory

I have a N/Mo, only level 8 at the moment, haven't even done the first mission, but, having specialised in Blood and Healing, I find I can stay alive quite well, and kill things nicely too. Not to mention healing and resing my party members.
Before I'd played as a necro I didn't really know if they were useful or not, but I'm starting to think they can be pretty good.

Big Fat Duck, my level 8 N/Mo is quite tough, with Mending, Life Syphon and Vampiric Gaze/Touch I find I can take quite a beating and still be gaining life.

Honestly, necros, mesmers and rangers are more PvP characters. PvE revolves around doing direct damage and healing damage, and W/E/Mo are much better at these tasks.

I've played 3 lvl 20 characters, 1 of which was a mesmer primary and one of which was a necro secondary; in the first case, anything I could do was overshadowed by the shear damage output of eles and warriors, single target shutdown just doesn't cut it when you can kill everything in an area. In the second case, I ended up using at most one necro skill, since my ele skills were superior in almost every pve scenario.

Basically, these are support classes in pve. I'd take an E/Me or E/N over a Me or N primary any day, when it comes to pve, and I don't blame groups for doing so. The benefits of fast casting and soul reaping are overshadowed by the benefits of energy storage or divine favor. Those success stories people mention were largely due to the skill of the player involved, and not the spectacular performance of the necro class in pve.

One thing that I really fear about necros is the dreaded N/W combo..

Ever seen N/Ws trying to tank when doing the ascension missions? In UW you DEFINITELY don't want to see it happening.

Next thing you'd hear is "OMGWTF! n00b monks!" and that culprit promptly leaving the game.

Ah yes, the dreaded pve necro/war tank. It's right up there on my "do not invite" list.

I think the reason, why some classes have problems getting on a team is because people tend to think: "If it works, don't fix it"

So if you have a team with no rangers (e.g.) and you've done great so far. Why include a ranger?

Though many people base their gameplay on getting better and more powerful, this concern, in lots of cases, only addresses themselves.
Nobody asks: How can my team get better?

And of course there's ignorance in abundance. A lot of people don't know how important the support of a Mesmer/Necromancer/Ranger can be.

I guess few people ask themselves: "Why was it so easy to kill that boss".
They don't care that a ranger has been fireing distracting shots.
They don't care that a necro caused energy regen to support the healer.
They don't care that a mesmer caused energy drainage or whatever.
They just think "I, I, I, I".

Someone should tell those people that there's no "I" in "TEAM".

What? You must be playing with some pinheaded necros, I keep myself alive better than anyone else through means of healing myself and debuffing john Q enemy who gets in my face.

I like playing as a support necro, but it gets kind of tough with BiP and the ritual robbing you of health pretty quickly, I usually start by spamming the syphon and enfeeble on whoever it would work the most against, by that time I got the regen going and can afford to toss around my health to the monk/monks or even eles who need it at that point.

As for curses, I find that I can do a good job working groups with spiteful spirit and the mark of pain (provided the warrior calls) coupled with faintheartedness and enfeeble to use when defensively weaker classes have guys in their face. The rest of my skills go towards keeping myself alive.

Oh yeah, in areas with corpses I am all about the wells. You really can't beat em.

To go on topic, I have gotten into the underworld pretty easily by simply creating my own group OR advertising what I can do for a group. Spelling out the advantage of necros may be a chore but it sure gets you a group.

/sigh

This is the kind of stereotype that causes the problem in the first place. There are other things that a death necro can do than just raise minions, and anyways a good death necro can still make a scarcity of corpses go a long way. Pretty much anything with flesh can be used, whether foes, allies, npcs or pets, and there are a lot of Undead that leave behind a flesh corpse.

Blood Is Power, Heal Other and Heal Area are in my skillbar on just about every mission/quest, and so I am able to keep the spellcasters and monks full of energy and lighten their load, while keeping my bone horror(s) alive for a really, really long time to be used as seeds or bombs. I don't know how many teams I've been in where they commented how awesome the group was and patted themselves on the back, not recognizing or acknowledging that my participation had a significant impact on our success.

In the Fissure the other night, I participated in a really good group of excellent players who actually acknowledged the support I was giving them and said thank you for the bips, back up heals and high level horrors so they could cast Healing Seed and Shield of Judgement on them. Yes, I died and was targetted more than anyone else, but the team made the effort to heal, bond with and keep me alive because they recognized that I was a valuable member of the team.

Then last night during the infusion run mission, I was always the last to get healing attention and the first one to die, which usually led to the monks and spellcasters falling shortly afterwards. After about the third or fourth time this happened, one monk piped up and asked who was doing the energy regen and support healing. I said, "that would be me." The others were like, "oh that was you" and "didn't think you were doing anything back there" and crap like that. Fortunately one of the monks got wise and started healing me more often, and the group didn't die again.

Necros, Mesmers and Rangers... people who haven't played them at high levels firsthand just don't get it. My favorite two missions so far were ones where we were all spellcasters and rangers, with no monks or warriors - and in each case we succeeded at both the mission and bonus with no deaths.

It's extremely frustrating to be a good player and know that you'd be an asset to just about any team, and then have to spend 30 minutes to an hour begging to join a group for a mission, quest or the ToA. I'm lvl 20 with full draknor's armor, and have been told by a monk that I'd die too much if I joined their party for the Villany of Galrath quest... give me a break.

A well-played necro is a tank's best friend... if I have any say, my mission groups NEVER leave without one, even if it's just Claude. They have saved my ass on more than one occasion. Hell, I deleted my first char (E/Me that I never got that into) and made a N/Me because I respect Necros so much and I personally think that a decent N/Me could be totally bitching later in the game...

Try playing a Mesmer/Ranger and see how long the wait is. Far longer than a Necro/Anything I assure you. The stuff we do? People don't even know we do it! They probably come on here and brag about how easy their warrior killed things instead.

should make sure they actually use those W skills before disregarding them. I'm an N/W but W skills are used almost exclusively for farming and occasionally for bonettis or defensive stance. Mind you i also advertise as a blood/curses necro and not N/W.

And like some of the other posts have said it's awesome when you're in a group who knows what necros can do and you get heals when you're having to chain BiP or Ritual. Though I do tend to take parasitic bond and vampiric gaze with me most times just in case.

That's what I'm saying: People don't know why they kill monsters good.
They take the support they get from supporting classes for granted, or don't know that their some of their success comes from that support.

I feel your pain but I think it has to do with all the unskilled players who cant play much of anything but something incredibly simple. I'm sure they tried Necro, Ranger, or Mesmer at one point couldn’t figure out any combos and said they suck. They probably make up half the population so they create half the teams and probably 80% of the PUG teams since the better players have guilds and unfortunately for you a Necro of there own .

Sadly a lot of people dont have a clue, I play N/W and actually switched to close combat for the last 3 missions, on the last mission since my friends where not on I went with a PUG. 2 people left when they saw me going hth against the fire opponents bitching and complaining that I didnt know what I was doing. Funny thing is we passed the lvl with just 5 people since another one had to go half way through do to personal reasons and with nobody dieing, ya I didnt know what I was doing sigh. What they didnt know I was using Plague touch and giving the fire condition back to the mobs while life transferring everyone and the monk wasn’t complaining since I could argo every mob and he wasn’t getting the crap kicked out of him. We actually found the entire lvl very unchallenging.

To bad people don’t/can’t think they can only bitch and whine.

Sshhhhhhhhh! Dont let anyone know how good Rangers and Mesmers are, you'll ruin my arena build

OMG, what a bunch of n00bs you are!

There are no necromancers in GW. There are warriors, monks and elementalists...where do you people get your information?

/sarcasm

Competant Necros are a godsend in the ToA. I went on a guild run the other day in the Fissure, and once the Well of Power goes up, I basicly don't need to heal for the rest of that battle. We didn't have any deaths and I was at full energy until we messed up in the area between the forest and the forgemaster and pulled two groups (we recovered though).

It certainly feels like that at times.

Its certainly upsetting the mind set thats permenating the game right now. If you don't do this this or that, you're not that good cause you don't know whats good blah blah blah. I'm sure ranger and mesmers have it just as bad too. Its sorta frustrating that all these kiddies just think in terms of DPS and don't realize that having people around that do a little bit more then just damage dealing is a good thing in the long run.

I've had too many monks ask me to marry them to think other wise.

I think people think Necros die too much because of the Henchies. Usually beside the monk and orion, the necro hench is targeted often. Maybe it is becuase the damage is dealing? Have they ever thought about that?

I remember my first Well of Blood / Power cast by a necro, "I was omg", then thinking to myself I have so much spare energy I wished I had some smithing skills, on me I play healing / protection monk.

Then on another pug, I ask the necro do you have Well of Blood or power? Unfortunetly he said he didn't use it because it was ----

I made my 2nd character a r/n, my only problem with him is there are so many good skills under each necro category that I don't know on wich one to specialize.

With this character I do find I get more invites with necros.

Here are 3 stories with my r/n (level 17)

We made a pug with no monk and I took Well of Blood. As soon as the first mob whent down I casted whell of Blood and and no one died the entire mission.

I was doing the mission to get to Lions Arch, and the monk ask "What's this Well of Blood You keep saying you cast?" Lets just say that the other ranger, the warrior, and myself where glad I had taken the spell.

I forgot the name of the mission, but is the one where you fight the Warrior boss that is from the white mantel. On the last part, only the monk had stayed alive, and the boss. After he was able to res the other members, minus myself, they must of be hitting that boss for ~5min w/o bringing his health down 1/4. After I was rez, and gotten some energy for some of my necro skills he whent down in under 1 min.

wow,

ok, i habve my main char as a N/Mo, and i am still learning what is good and what is useless sometimes about characters and skills ect...

i usually take Claude with me anyway, but not cause i noticed how good he was at stuff , lol, but cause he is called Claude and a deadboy (re: Jean-Claude, my all time faveorite Master Vampire and sexy deadboy heheh)

mind you, the last time i went out traveling, i left him behind, and we kept getting handed our assess. know i know why
Oh, Claude, honey, sorry....Yes, Mish still loves you, come on back in now *smooch* heheh

Weird. I think mesmers are killers in pvp, and should not be under-looked. Impossible to kill one with a spellcaster...

I just found a nice necro build with my N/Me. I used to use blood/insp. magic, but then I noticed curses... very nice. So now I'm blood/curses, finding the mesmer part pretty useless... but that's just me.

While reading these whinings about classes... I still wonder, how long is it gonna take for people to understand how balanced this game is. It's really starting to seem so.