It is becoming very frustrating...

i think the answer lies with the fact that most players dont notice the effects that a necromancer or even mesmer has on the enemy - anyone can see a monk healing, elementalist casting a spell, or warrior fighting - but no one will notice if the enemy cant attack, lost its energy, or can't use its healing spells - unfortunate but probably true.

I usually kick necromancers or mesmers in ToA because I have wasted probably around 1k with them trying to make 5 man smite run. Seems like none of them use their skills, they would either try to tank and shoot blades with their bows!

I have just started a Me/N character and I am simply amazed by now quickly I can suck the life out of enemies. A warrior would still be hacking away at the first guy when I've already killed the second, the third is dying, and I am stealing energy to use on the fourth. Killing bosses is especially satisfying. Sometimes they die so fast from backfire that they would collapse just as the warrior is getting there.

So you're saying that you actualy gauge people based on their *names*?

You're dumber than the people who wont take necros because of their class.

I've created the most non-damaging mesmer/necro... Funny thing is, all his damage is dealt through ultimate controlling of the battlefield! muahahaha...

mes/nec.

I say, I'm anti-mob mesmer! I make tanks live forEVAR!! And then the invites come in.

Some noobic morons say, "Mesmer can't heal!!" And I say, NOOB! lol... Dmg Reduction and stealing energy to shut down casters and do MORE damage reduction is a perfect blend to me.

Now to get to my massive nuke, Desecrate Enchantments. Then I'll be smiling...

... Dude, that's just sick. I HOPE you're talking about Blood is Power or Blood Ritual.

Anyone been in Ring of Fire outpost lately? It's ALL Warriors, Elementalists, and Monks with the first 2 being the most populous. I tried getting through it with my Ranger (again ~_~) this morning so I could cap my Abbadons and Hells skills (Greater Conflag). Miserable failure.

As usual first thing I notice is I have been LFG for about 15 minutes and haven't even gotten a blind invite because I am a Ranger. Then I look around and *&^% it's ALL Warriors and Elementalists.....correction W/Mo's and Elementalists with a few primary monks scattered about. There were less Rangers, Mesmers, and Necros in the zone then Monks now.

I finally get a pick up and.....*dun dun dun*......attack of the noobs. Some fool runs straight into the pack of Mursaat (that you dont have to kill) and starts attacking them. He manages to grab aggro from some away from brechnar and ends up getting killed and the rest of the party under attack. At this time "angry bastard 1" decides to "drop us noobs" and leave the instance.

The rest of us then die so we can restart in the outpost and we kick the guy losing a coupel other people as well to drop outs. We get another group together and retry.

We dodge the Mursaat and kill the first couple groups of Jade. *Dun Dun Dun* The new elementalist we picked up leaves the instance for no reason. We decide to continue. We make it to the Mursaat fortress and start systematically breaking the seals and working our way into it. This is where things inevitably start going south again. First one monk goes ninja afk and half the group dies taking out a Mursaat boss and company. We also learn that one of the Elementalists has no idea what firestorm was (wtf?) after the Warrior calls repeatedly to use it while he had the mobs clustered. As we are reviving this earns the elementalist an asschewing from another egomaniacal warrior who is basically "We died because you didn't do what I said". Then the mesmer has words with the warrior.

We are finished reviving and we are recharged. Everyone is back, or so we thoguht. We attack the next group of mobs and.......the OTHER monk is ninja afk. The active monk gets ganked, then the warrior because there is no one to heal him. Then the rest die while we try to out dps the mobs leaving me alone with the STILL afk monk. This is when peopel start really goign at each other and soon everyone has dropped back to outpost even though I had a res signet. I revive the monk who paid attention and we both quit out and log off.



I swear the state of this games RP-Storyline mode is HORRIFIC. The people are selfish discriminating fools who refuse to learn how to play the game. There are a billion Warriors and Elementalists everywhere and Rangers, Mesmers, and Necros have next to nil chance of getting into groups and then in the rare case we do, as above, 9/10 groups eat themselves from the inside.

Hmmmm, I guess I'll put my two sense in.

I just started playing a Me/N and I literally have no trouble at all getting parties. Why does everyone act like it's so hard to put a party together? I'm already lvl 11 with almost no problems partying because I always make the party. Really it's better for both of us.

Anyways, I beat the game with my monk, and as any monk will say, it's always good to have a blood necro around. Really, necros are cool looking and everything, but I really think that it attracts the more immature or younger players because they are in that sort of stage where they're like 'deth is kewl' and all that jazz. So I've had a diffuclt time finding GOOD necros to party up with. I mean I have just seen too many 'not smart' necros that have been the end of us.

One thing that bugs me is when Necros use melee weapons. When I'm monking, this is my absolute worst nightmare. For one, necros die....let's see....pretty much the fastest besides eles getting caught in the line of fire. A dead necro is a very very useless necro. lol.

As for partying up, when I'm not playing my Mesmer I always add them ingame, I hardly have ever seen one randomly leave the party. I know we're not talking about them, but my biggest hugest pet peeve is when our party needs a healer or a tank (because let's face it, you usually need healers and tanks and i get 15 rangers requesting an invite. That just really really annoys me. No, you can't heal (unless you're a monk as well, but I don't even have that much luck) , and no you can't tank. So please stop trying to randomly add yourself to parties. Because if we wanted a ranger, and mostly like because of the surplus and the dropout rate, we don't, we would have a sea of them to pick out who we think would best fit in. It's almost entirely not your fault, but there are just too many. No offense though, I am going to work on a ranger build for PVP because I have seen them work wonders. But for PVE, I really dont' find them that useful besides in the UW.

Don't think I missed anything. Kthanks

Ahh yes, but you see... you're doing the same thing to Rangers that the original poster is say happens to Mesmers and Necros...

Please, everyone... don't discount Rangers anymore than any other class. I've been playing a Ranger since January Beta and I will always have him in my roster. Rangers are targeters, adding conditions to our prey and directing fire to the enemy. The Ranger has to know which targets are the most dangerous or at least be able to quickly assess that. A bad call could divide the party's attack and cause the group to meet a quick end.

I've seen groups with no monk or warrior primaries breeze through missions... the trick is, finding a group where everyone knows thier role. If everyone does their part and cooperates, you should be able to make it through almost every mission with only minor attrition.

Give it a try some time... just for laughs, cobble a group together from just anyone around and watch how the mission plays out...

Rangers have trouble getting into groups, too. To most people, the group roles are, in order of importance:

Healer - Monk. The shortage of Monks and desparate need for a healer make it easy for healing Monks to find groups.
Tank - Warrior. They can't get into groups as easily as Monks, though, because there's so many of them.
Damage-dealer - Elementalist. They have moderate difficulty finding groups as they can be replaced by other classes.
Anti-caster - Mesmer. Outside of PvP, this isn't as necessary, so they have a hard time finding groups.
Caller/Puller - Ranger. They have trouble finding groups because other classes can fill this role. Though they have other uses, most non-Rangers don't really have a good idea of what those uses are. Of course, in FoW/UW they can always group with each other in a trapping party.
??? - Necro. Though they have uses, most non-Necros don't really have a good idea of what those uses are, resulting in them having trouble getting invited to parties.

I've found that Rangers, Necros, and Mesmers have about a equally bad chance of getting into groups these days. Usually when you are lucky enough to find a group that isn't strictly "trinity" it's "trinity plus 1" or 1-3 W/Mo's, 1-3 Elementalists, 1-3 Monks till you have 1 slot in the party left then that last slot gets dedicated to the "tag along" Ranger/Mesmer/Necro as I've seen it put by some groups recently. Maybe Necros have a slightly, but hardly noticable, easier time because they have those well spells that more groups have started to learn to enjoy.

But usually if you're not taking damage, dealing damage (with lots of flashy lights and effects, or healing damage then no one wants you.

if anybody says "[classname] sucks", you and me know, that person does just that himself.
Sucking, that is.

oh btw i think warriors suck.
but really, i dont know any class that is easier to make... useless.. non threatening....
but hell, if i know how to play all classes, maybe i will see, that ANYBODY is easy to shut down, if done properly.

The way I see it, if you play a nec or a mes well, when a group does invite you you know they will won't be noobs at least. But if your not that patient, invite those people too lazy to form their own groups.

Necromancers are pretty versatile. They're really good in just about any group build.

With that said, there are 2 main reasons why Necromancers are not particularly sought after in PvP.

1) Necromancers are THE anti-melee. Sure, they are good at taking othe professions down, in much the same way Mesmers aren't exclusively anti-caster, but it is, however, what they specialize in. The problem lies in the fact that just about EVERYONE can go anti-melee and be damn good at it, resulting in a diminishing Warrior population in PvP. Ranger is anti-melee. Monk (smiting) is anti-melee. Mesmer is anti-melee. Elementalists are anti-melee. Necromancers are anit-melee. Hell, even warriors are anti-melee. Every single one of them is damn good at taking down Warriors.

Ranger does it by inflicting multiple-conditions and using stances (Though this can be countered easily, the conditions can be put back on quite easily, too. If the Warrior is busy healing the conditions, he isn't doing damage). Bleeding+Poison ignore armor.

Smiting Monk's spells ignore armor. Nuff' Said.

Mesmers can give the Warrior a hard time attack and punish him for it when he does. Example: Ineptitude or Spirit Shackles + Mind Wrack. Becuase the warriors energy is killed off so easily, Sword warriors are hit the hardest. Every single spell of theirs is armor ignoring.

Elementalists. Air elementalists can blind and apply weakness to the warrior, knock him down, and has spells that pierce the armor. Earth elementalists can put on buttloads of armor, have ward against melee on at ALL times (giving the warrior a perpetual -50% chance to hit... overpowered...), has spells that ignore defence, can slow them down or completely stop them in their tracks, and can knock them down. Water elementalist can slow them down and attack from a distance. Fire elementalists can light them on fire (more armor ignoring).

Then their is Necromancers... hehe. They can do just about everything you can imagine to a warrior. Half their attack speed? Check. Punish them for attacking? Check. DoT that ignore armor? Check. Spells that weaken armor? Check. Killing off the Warrior's accuracy? Check. They can actually heal themselves everytime the warrior attacks. They can hurt the warriors whole team when the warrior is attacking. Necromancers are a Warrior's worst nightmare.

As you can see, everyone preys on Warriors, and it only takes a few spells to kill off their efficiency. There really isn't much need for someone to particularly specialize in killing them. The numbers of warriors in serious PvP is plummeting. In the wise words of a redneck hick from South Park "Dey turk mah jerb!"

2) Almost all necromancer builds rely on enchantments/hexes. The can be removed, but the removal method you should fear most is not that of a monk, but the spirit "Nature's Renewal". This completely removes ALL hexes and enchantments.

However, I do not suggest nerfing Nature's Renewal or the spirit spam build. It took creativity to make the spirit spam build, it will take even more creativity to create a counter (remember when people were screaming there wan no counter for all W/Mo builds or Spike Teams?). The most effective counters so far is Edge of Extiction and having another ranger focus on interrupting whoever is dropping the spirits, in much the same way you must have a mesmer dedicated to shutting the monk down.




What I suggest for increasing Necromancer invites is buffing Warriors up. Giving people reason to play Warriors again in PvP. For now, I do not forsee warrior's numbers increasing anytime soon. 'Coarse this could change in a moment's notice - New and devastating builds are constantly being created and falling, the next "fad" build could be with Warriors. People once said Rangers were completely useless, then the spirit spam build came out. Mabey Warriors will have the next fad build? That would surely put Necroes back in their job.

In reply to earlier comments about Mesmers, I figured I'll reflect my thoughts on them. My main is a Mesmer/Elementalist (straight Mesmer though). I love him to death, and I have a pretty decent build that allows me to interrupt and annoy any type of character I come in contact with. While this may be good for PvP, I'll wholeheartedly agree that in PvE, Mesmers have more of a rough time proving their worth. Sure, I know I'm doing something. But a good example is bringing my level 20 Mesmer back to earlier missions to help out guildies. Sure, I'm level 20, have all of my high-level skills, good items, runed armor, etc. etc. But each fight still takes time to finish. A mesmer is just not an overpowering character in PvE. End of story. The only problem is that people often times confuse that with being worthless. My hat's off to the Mesmers out there.

The general dislike or fear of necros is on how they are played. I got into a group with several awsome necromancers with cool names to boot and we had a successful time. However I have been in groups with not so goot necros but I've also seen bad play from other classes as well. My fear (which does not stop me from grouping with them) is when the necro dies and has a huge minion army which then turns on the rest of us. Had that happen twice on one trip, kinda sucked. But with a good necro with a ton of minions... WOW... now that battle was AWSOME. Those minions kept everything in one spot while I stoned the heck out of that location with Meteor shower and firestorm.

A good necro will bring Verat's Aura ;-)

I think the main problem is those who don't make their characters as good as they could be. It could be lack of experience in PvP, attribute points not well focused, and/or simply not using a good varity of skills to cover most counter attacks. I've run into many Mesmers that hadn't even heard of Shatter Hex!

I used to be one that thought Necros suked as well, and mainly because one never saw them in Tombs groups very much (at least for the American teams, Koreans had them often though usually death magic for the spam of pets). But, for the heck of it I finally decided to just play a Pre-made Warrior killer Necro/Me. Woah, I kicked so much arse out there is was soooo funny. Warriors, ranger (especially rangers) I just dominated and this with a pre-made with only a few skills I had aquired with my R/N (my first character cause I didn't know what I was doing lol).

I found a build that can spam 25pts dmg almost unlimited, plus drain life and give me life at the same time and watch rangers hehe love killing rangers and warriors just go down faster than my W/Mo could ever bring them down.

My biggest fear though are air elementals and that darn chain lightning spike teams. I just can't counter it and end up dead within seconds.

I can drain a monk of energy pretty well, and spam him also with 25pt damage over and over. And I'm not giving out my build because to me it's the necro form of SPIKE and only my guildmates will know about it.

A 3 necro 1 monk team made it all the way to Team Arenas from the random pickup group arena, we kicked every team soooooo badly it was just hilarious. A new SPIKE TEAM necro group is born. haha

I ran a Necro/Ele to 20 and made a point of refusing to take monks. I did several missions with another Monk - I always initiated they corpse use discussion before we started so we had an understanding - I got to ascension at 14.