Necro Underestimation

Every time I go necro in any arena people are turned off. What's so bad about them?

I get blamed for a loss if I am a necro (same if I am a smiting monk) but people don't seem to realize how great necros are sometimes.

I dunno about you, but when i see a secondary necro I start to re-think my attack, there are tons of unique necro combinations out there and most of them work quite nicely. Even a primary necro is great stuff, soul reaping may not be the best class specific skill out there, but to get 16 death magic so my putrid explosion does very lethal damage is a small price to pay.

What do you guys think? Are necros underestimated too much?

Discuss.

the fact that anyone is turned off by any class is just ignorance. they've never played the character so they assume the character is useless. All of the character classes in Guild Wars are completely balanced. No one class is better than any other class.

i think too many people picture necros as minion masters, which people dont like i guess.. they dont understand how good Necros can become...

Definitely underestimated. I'm setup as a spike healer for PvP. I focus on dealing with the ele spikers and rarely build up for protection/DOT healing. Last night I ran into a group with a very good necro... plague touch >>> Word of Healing.

I'd have to wait until the team got low enough in health for WoH to be useful and then half the team was 50% low. If I had healing breeze instead...

Exactly. Too many people are caught up on the whole tank/nuker/healer beats all combination. If they would only realize that bringing a balanced group leads to a much better conclusion.

underestimated like no other class.

Btw purtid explusion is best around 12 death magic only, because you dont get THAT much for each point more.
You only need death magic maxed for minons, soul feast, dark aura, dethly chill and virulence... here every point is worth it.

necros "spike" with minons, wither, descerate enchantments, malaise and barbs.
For everything else above 13 atribute is just not as usefull.

and than theres suffering + any hexes + feast of corruption, its like knockdown hammerers, just with hexes and not melee.
and if you dont get into soul reaping, youre ignorant!

Necros aren't underestimated in pvp. They are easily the crappiest primary profession in the game and only useful for special builds where SR or runes are useful, i,e OOV/BiP/OOP spam, Putrid in hoh, and condition spam setups. Necro secs are insanely useful for stuff like rend but primaries aren't worth it in most cases. Add in the fact that most necro primaries are newbs running around with life transfer/vampiric gaze and stuff and you can see why people detest them. General perception is wrong most of the time but they're dead on in this case with necros for pvp.

In pve they are amazing, but I don't think that was the point of the topic.

Personally never played a necro myself but I love having one on my team! They really help all around. They can heal, deal decent damage, and semi tank. Not to mention recharge everyones energy. They make hard areas a lot easier. Hug a Necro today!

I agree, i have a bloodline necro that eats most classes alive. No one really builds agains -10 degens or expects a necro to have a pretty constant +10 regen. along with good dmg skills that also heal you, and hexes that cause other classes to become more inferior, i would highly recommend necros. Also, soul reaping is very useful, i wouldn't max it, maybe 7-8 points. It's just nice to suddenly have some extra mana when you're enemy dies, or to even gain more mana when one of your team mates die.

I fail to see how life transfer is newb? by using that skill, you are doing dmg as well as saving a monk from healing one less person.

Necro primaries are quite bad in arenas. You get maybe 3 or 4 kills in the arena before you win, so that's not much use for soul reaping. Same with putrid, it's only good in the tombs where you get lots of bodies to blow up.

3 - 4 kills at 8-12 energy a pop = 32-48 mana = 6-9 more 5 energy spells, 3-5 10 energy spells, or 2-3 15 energy spells more than another character over the course of the battle. fairly significant if you ask me, especially for energy reliant classes.

Let's compare this to the other alternative - energy storage, around 36 energy to begin with. Also take into account that if you're on even terms with the enemy, people aren't gonna be dying, yet you will still have that 36 energy from storage.
Once you get 2 or 3 kills, the battle is arguably over. The extra energy on death isn't gonna tilt the battle in your favor, but rather help you mop up the enemy or prolong your death. Having 36 extra energy to begin with, lets you actually use it to get an upper hand over the enemy while the fight still isn't decided.

From my point of view, soul reaping is quite inferior compared to other primary attributes.

I've been on an HoH team that was half-killed (as in, half our members died) in an instant because a necro spammed Putrid exploison near the end of our battle with another team. The rest of the team proceeded to sweep us out like garbage.

Necros have a place in Tombs, it's just a very...odd one. It's hard to say what to do with a Necro, because they can be very circumstantial. The "decimate your team with putrid explosion" example above is iffy, but it worked. I've also seen minion armies in Tombs, but only in the 6 team battles (I haven't seen a suicide team yet).

I also like the Order of Pain & Vampire combo a lot, I wish more people ran that.

Yippy, we have warrior, ranger and necros worthless. Three more classes to go and we are all balanced!

But what happens if you don't want to be an ele, but want to have some mesmer in you also?

I play a Necro primary as my main character, but I will freely admit that (in my experience) in the Arenas, Soul Reaping is the most inferior primary attribute of any class - I MUCH prefer playing a Me/N as basically a Necro with fast casting, although there's a loss of runes that way.

PvE however - I love playing a Necro primary. Blood is Power, Well of Blood (with superior rune and awaken the blood, gets to +6 iirc, well 1 higher than a secondary can get anyway) along with Vampric Gaze, Barbed Signet, Shadow Strike - all dealing lifestealing armour-ignoring damage

Well then, you'd probably be spreading your attribute points among at least 3 attributes, and as such won't have too many points to spare for soul reaping or fast casting. In which case, I'd still pick fast casting over soul reaping, since it is always useful (especially with the frequent 2 second cast times of many necro hexes).
The only time I would really go necro primary is if I really want to beef a skill up to 16 attribute pts. and there aren't that many 16-worthy skills on the necro lineup. Putrid is one of the few.

First time I got in a non-idiot build in the hall of heros with my necro was a good one... I packed defile flesh, rigor mortis, feintheart, rend, syphon, gaze, and the spiteful spirit. People were explicitely thanking me because they realized how much easier it is to take down monks when healing is cut, block/evade enchantments and wards are negated and major enchantments saved for dire times are ripped off.

Yesterday, I was looking for a pickup ground for Thirsty River as Necromancer/Mesmer. In my opinion, my ability to take down a single given target in PVE is stronger as an N/Me than any sort of other class combination would be for me. No one would take me (that I was a level 16 probably had something to do with it too, but hey…).

I finally managed to get in a group with a Monk, a Warrior, a Ranger, an Elementalist and another Necromancer. We burned through the mission. We beat the first group with about 1:30 on the clock, the second group with 3:40 or so on the clock, and the final group with about 5:20 on the clock. The Elementalist spent most of his time dead while we Necromancers did the nuking. It was the fastest I’ve ever gone through that mission. It got funny when the enemy would be focusing on us Necromancers, because then the monk could take a break from healing and go revive the Elementalist – we were able to gain health fast enough that the monk was able to leave us for a while without worrying.

Since I started playing as a Necromancer, I’ve really come to appreciate just how good the class is. It’s almost as flexible as the Ranger, and it makes both a fantastic support character and a nuker.