Necro Underestimation

I think the main problem here is when people choose their primary necro character as their favorite and decide to play it. They try and make things work for it, while retaining the "sweetness" of a necro, although i dont see anything sweet about them. N/W's are a prime example of this, they want to be a badass necro but wield a sword... reminds me of character customizations from different RPGs. Sure you can get your dream char to "work" somehow, but its not going to be ending up as useful as creating a character based on different skills that you can see working together -- a character that doesnt need to fit any previous template based on looks/class. Think of the first day you played guild wars, you wanted to be a certain type of character.. but that usually doesnt work the way you expected them to. The first time i played guild wars i wanted to be a Ranger that casted fire spells.. i soon realized that they mana regen and storage isnt good enough

Sorry I don't play my toon as scrubs.

And in arena Necros just plain rules. I have tried W/Mo, W/N. Tell you what, no warrior primary can ever ever fight against 2 ppl or more and win. If I did, it was pure luck. But why, everytime I play my n/w. At LEAST once in a day I can win against 2 - 3 pp =D and I got all these weird ppl saying "nerf the necros" "OMG WTF" lolz

psshtt, I even got ss of the conversation.

As for tomb build. I can betcha, that unless there're like 3 monks packing hex remover, no 2 monks can remove my life transfer. None. There's a trick to this, I'm not about to share But 3 monks simply to simply counter my build... hehe... I must say I gotta be doing a decent job.

ps. there's no build that can't be countered, what there's is only a build that's hard to counter. Sure Nature's renewal etc. But eles are also affected with that. Even more protection monk. So has protection monk become useless all of the sudden coz of nature's renewal? Hell, no!

I'm a newbie, who ran a W/Mo but decided to switch to W/N, I have to tell you I abhored the curse line until I actually tried it, but anyways, that's not the point

To understand why starting out with more energy is better than gaining energy through the battle and the "3 deaths" argument, you only need a small example:
Pretend there are two business men, they both start out with the same capital, we'll say $100, now say they were given their choice of bonus, either a cash bonus, or a bonus every time they completed a project. The businessmen ended up taking one choice each, the businessman who took the starting bonus invested in a few companies as did the businessman who took the project driven bonus. The businessman who had more money to start off with was able to gain a lot of returns from his investment, in fact over 2 times as much as the other businessman, but the other businessman kept working, and, eventually he was able to catch up to the first businessman and surpass him. However, by that time several decades have passed, because the first businessman was able to grow his businesses exponentially due to a substantial headstart in capital at the beginning, while the second businessman was stuck with a fixed rate of income from his bonuses.

PieXags, you and blackace are different kinds of players, he's a competetive winner, and his arguments are based on the assumptions that you want to win at this game, not wear a costume because it looks pretty. There is nothing wrong with your reasoning, after all, a game is for fun. However, Blackace derives fun from winning, whereas you may not have jumped into the highest competetive rings of this game or you might just not care, that's fine too, I'm the same way. Personally I can't see how you can pick up every single skill in this game, to myself that feels way too much of a grind and way too tiring... I just make do with what I have. It seems like you are ending all of your arguments with "I just enjoy myself", well that's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that at Blackace's level necromancer primaries are not as useful as others

This is not true. Unlike what you said in that cute story of yours, the ele's investment in energy storage doesn't multiply. It stays fixed, with a diminishing return. A necro on the other hand will continue to gain energy. With a difference of only about 30 energy point more, about 3 deaths make up for that.

Now an ele though has a few really good elite tied to energy storage. You can pretty much cast continuously w/o ever worrying about energy. This is true. But it also has a drawback. While those elites can get you a lot of energy they

1) Takes up a space on your skill bar
2) Takes up your elite space

And a necro has a few elites, they'd be naked without it.

Also it all comes down to what you want to do with your necro. Death magic certainly has plenty of use. However perhaps the best reason for choosing a necro primary over an ele primary is so that you can choose your preferred 2ndary profession.

The ele class for example has a lot of weakness. A necro has fewer of these weakness. Choosing a necro primary means you can choose a 2ndary that will cover up that weakness.

Now if you compare side by side, sr vs. es, es wins hands down certainly. But if you understand that necro has so few weakness (yes next to the mesmer, necro has very few weakness) choosing the right secondary class easily makes up for that.

Another thing that is getting pretty tiring is the tendency to always claim that "you obviously haven't played this class" or "I can whoop you 1v1"

All bark and no bite huh?? If you want to convince someone then do what Pie and Ace did, they listed their arguments and examples, and didn't resort to elementary flames and smiley faces, which by the way only shows immaturity and a total lack of intelligence. "Ignorant" is also annoying, it gives off the impression that you think you are the king and the possessor of all knowledge guild wars related, obviously that's not the true, just by looking at the way people argue.

Lastly, Arena, HoH, GvG are different, take into mind that if one person makes a statement, it's probably not from the example you are thinking of, if you do not have much experience in one of the fields (I myself only fool around with arena and gvg), then please don't flame just because you are inexperienced and *gasp* "ignorant"

I'm glad you are discussing this and actually taking points

"This is not true. Unlike what you said in that cute story of yours, the ele's investment in energy storage doesn't multiply. It stays fixed, with a diminishing return. A necro on the other hand will continue to gain energy. With a difference of only about 30 energy point more, about 3 deaths make up for that."

With extra 30 energy, circumstantially, you can kill one or two people, prevent them from escaping from death, that alone > SR because that's people not attacking - either dead or resing or healing

I have not played much necromancer straight up so I cannot comment on the necro not having any weaknesses, but I would say that if it was the case, then the necro primary class would be spamed throughout HoH and arena and GvG... like the spiker builds, and this game has already been out too long for people not to discover a gold gem

Sorry I'm not that eager to win here just so that I start losing in game coz ppl can counter my build.

Btw I have a GvG build, I have a tomb build, and I can make them all to work. The difference is only one skill. And that's all I need to make sure my hex can never be removed by 1 monk. Na ah. And probably not even by 2. You'll need like 3 ppl furiously trying to remove it, to actually win.

Once again, I'm not gonna devulge my secrets It's mine alone. Take it or leave it. Btw it's not just in this thread, there's another thread where I showed off my necro winning vs. 3 rangers. Even on those ss, I blotted out my skill bar Heh sorry.

And once again we are back to my opinion vs. yours, which isn't a big deal, everyone should be allowed to their opinions, I congratulate you on finding a way to remove the nasty rangers so easily, I look forward to seeing more screens of your domination in the future

Hehehe that was not a one time event. It happens everyday, everytime I play my n/w that I kill more than 2 ppl at once. So often that I don't even take ss anymore. I only got another ss.

And this happens even though I have been playing my warrior more often lately, coz the necro was just so good... it's lost the challenge.

Today 1 mesmer (illusionist) and a monk. And fought them all at once too.

The other day, w/e, and 2 rangers.

An air ele, 2 warriors. Ele died first, 2 warriors tanked and killed next to each other.

a w/e, and w/m I think, also tanked and killed together.

There're even more of these instances in the past when I used to play my necro. Lately though I've been trying to achieve the same result with a warrior, with no luck :|

But warrior looks kinda cool. The dragon armor dyed black is really nice. Actually it's my W/N that's the SCRUB, not my N/W =þ

How convenient. Three rangers at once eh? Well, I'd be expecting your guild to dominate the GW world anytime now. Roflmao, take it or leave it. Take your word for it? Unless you give us some incentive to, I think not.

That's asuming there're active members in my guild. Which currently there aren't. There're usually only about 3 ppl on. And uh... I didn't pick a guild coz it's the ubahh... as some ppl here certainly do. I pick it, because the ppl are my friends.

I don't care as much about winning that I wanna ditch my friends for the sake of an uber guild that can take on the ladder and holds hoh. Conversely it doesn't mean that I play scrubs either.

Get my drift?

Shrugs, I don't care.

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Well on 2nd thought I do =þ Here's your "little incentive" w/o compromising my trade secrets . And while it's no smoking gun, let's just say it's a little proof to show that all I claimed were true.

Basically these



Happens so often, just stopped taking pics.

And believe me when I say you need 3 monks to safely remove my hexes.

Well sweetie, of course you dont see good points made because you dont read them, and dont think about them. When others present FACTS that prove you wrong, you assume they are speculating to protect your fragile viewpoint.

FACT: A primary necro can take out half of the enemy team in 5 seconds at 0 energy cost and nearly 0 casting time total. I have done it, others have done it. It is exactly people like you who cuss on local chat afterwards and 'threaten' to report others for hacking because they refuse to believe they just got owned by a necro.

FACT: Playing a necro to the maximum of their capacity takes skill. This skill includes using the energy as quickly as they regain it from soul reaping. Doing this requires setting up the skill bar accordingly (a concept novel to you, I'm sure). A skilled necro with the right build (and the right team build) could burn through 100 energy in 20 seconds and turn all this energy into a desaster for the enemy team.

FACT: A primary necro can prevent 3 enemy casters from regaining any energy for 35-40 seconds and never remove those hexes unless they brought a certain skill. This skill is extremely under-used because brilliant experts like you think that 'necros suck'.

FACT: Experienced necros are 'vague' about their most successful tactics on purpose... can you figure out why? Think really hard. Alright, I'll tell you. Because keeping people like you ignorant makes it easier to wipe the floor with you in Tombs.. and you'll never know why (because primary necros suck, it must have been aliens messing with you).

I could add more facts but frankly, I have other things to do at work.

^ Were you sick the day all the kids at school were taught the difference between fact and fiction?

Possibly one of the funniest things I've read on these boards in quite a while. What did you do, wand them to death?

I wouldn't say that it's a dais map that makes it useful, though you certainly get more deaths there. Instead it's *how* you use Soul Reaping that makes it useful.

My main knock on Soul Reaping for most builds is that it gives energy at the *least* opportune time - right after someone died. You're going to want that energy to get the kill in the first place, or keep that someone alive. So in general it's a really badly timed Energy Storage that doesn't have a lot of utility for a build. This is the opposite case for a corpse exploiter, as then you get the energy at exactly the right time - just before you want to cast a corpse exploitation spell. You mean I get 10 energy from Soul Reaping at the exact moment that I want to hit Putrid Explosion? Gravy.

Still 'good with corpse exploitation spells' isn't exactly a ringing endorsement for an attribute.


In general I agree that Necros don't benefit from runes as much as other classes, since a ton of their skills work great in the 8-10 range and don't really go nuts at high levels. Still, that doesn't mean you should begrudge the class, or the superior rune, when it makes sense to use it. As you mentioned, Orders are excellent and virtually demand a superior rune, and the other Blood damage spells, if you want them, follow the same rules as Elementalist nukes. A Superior Death rune to power up a Putrid guy is an excellent idea, and since you're Necro primary for the above mentioned reason it's pretty much a given.

I think you're spot on about Superior Soul Reaping and Superior Curses, though. I see next to no utility for Superior Soul Reaping (no linked skills, marginal attribute) and Curses doesn't benefit from high levels even if the whole line didn't get utterly destroyed by Nature's Renewal.


Personally I regard the 70 AL, take double damage from holy armor as utter trash. The bonus armor on what is often a non-critical target simply isn't worth getting destroyed by any smiter you run into. Might be less of a concern in GvG, but in Tombs you *are* going to see smiters, and Necrotic armor makes you cry. Balthazar's Aura rips people apart anyway, Necrotic armor just makes you drop in 5 seconds flat.

The +energy scars are money though, certainly better than anything the Elementalist has to offer.


It isn't like you get the 3 deaths and suddenly Soul Reaping equals energy storage. Energy up front is much more valuable than energy at a later date, particularly when it comes just a bit too late if there's any consistency at all. Auto-res really shouldn't be taken into account, since once a team gets pushed back into that a battle has likely been decided, and the Eles start going into 'refill the pool and work of exhaustion' mode instead of pushing like mad through an advantage. If you're autoressing, that's a full bar as well.

Basically once a battle is decided and people have a chance to start regening energy, time has to be called. That extra energy from Energy Storage is going to come back and get used again, just as a respawned character is going to die again and fuel Soul Reaping. This is the same as before.

I do agree about the revamped Res Sig prolonging battles and increasing the utility of Soul Reaping. The first couple of casualties are going to pop right back up so that energy is going to be useful. I don't think it has quite the impact described, as I've *never* seen a team come back from getting smashed and having to use their first couple ressigs. Once they're running around looking for a hero to kill to recharge ressigs they're just prolonging the inevitible. But they certainly do increase the utility, because their Monks are going to have to be killed twice.

It should be mentioned that the popularity of spirits increases the utility of Soul Reaping as well. I still find the attribute to be far too badly timed and generally underpowered all things considered, but if you have a good reason to be a Necro primary you should be spending at least a few points in the attribute.


Strange, for the first month of retail I would actively seek out Necromancer packs as good pharming targets, because they were generally weak with a bunch of skills that didn't do anything - from Bog Skales to Jade Scarabs to Flesh Golems, the necros were where the money is. They've made a couple changes since then, seriously cranking up enchantment removal and increasing damage in very un-necrolike ways. But for PvE pharming? They're a joke class if you're not relying upon buff stacking for victory. Followed, of course, by Warriors, given their ease to hate out.


I certainly wouldn't call it massive, but some of the DD skills are playable if you have a reason to pump that line anyway. Deathly Swarm looks ok if you're already pumping Death Magic for Putrid or Tainted, and Shadow Strike or Vampiric Gaze are respectable if you're spamming Orders and have the spec. But there's really nothing available to write home about.


Elementalist / Mesmer. Go.


People view Blood Magic as the best Necro attribute for the same reason everyone uses swords and fire - because they're roleplayers who want to play a particular type of character. Or, because they're total nubs, depending on how you want to look at it.

I'd tend to agree that Blood is the best Necro attribute for PvP, but not on its strengths - if you aren't playing Tombs then Putrid Explosion is marginal and the whole Death line with it, Curses is utter trash as long as Nature's Renewal exists, so Blood has to be the best by process of elimination. Not a sterling recommendation, but it's there.


Oh nose, I have to focus swap!


Play a Monk in the endgame PvE maps for a day with a melee Necro/Warrior who thinks he's awesome and steals a ton of life and can tank, then come back and say that again. Life Siphons were fun back in ascalon, but in the fire islands Necros get utterly rocked if they try and tank.


I'm unclear on this concept of 'tanking in PvP'. Necros that attack Warriors make me happy. Hell, anything that attacks the Warriors makes me happy. Necros that run out of healing range to attack my Monks make me even happier.

This assumes arranged PvP, of course. In random PvP Necros are good because it's full of nub Warriors that you can viciously hate out.


I think it's really funny that there are all these 'Necros rule, or Warriors rule, no Warriors suck, and Rangers suck' threads flying around. Every class has its uses, just some have more or less utility than others.

Necros just happen to be on the short end of that. They have a bunch of skills that just don't do anything important in a PvP setting. Raising Minions? Stealing life? These are wonderful tools in PvE or when soloing or, in the latter case, in arena, but in an organized PvP build it's really hard to make the strengths of the class actually matter. You're left with some enchantment removal that's pretty much obsolete in the face of Nature's Renewal and a hodgepodge of effects that you might want but really don't mesh well, making them better to just slap on a secondary much of the time.

For what it's worth I've been the iQ Necro for the last couple months, and whenever we decide we need a Necro, filling out the character is pretty rough. With most characters there are a bunch of skills that we want to run but there simply isn't room. With a Necro there are usually a couple skills that we want but we're struggling for ideas on the last slots because there's nothing we want. Hence the typical 'stick it on a secondary' reaction. Hell, even when it's a primary we usually lean heavily on the secondary to fill out the bar.


I didn't used to like Tainted Flesh at all but I've come around on it almost 100%, at least for tombs. Tombs tends to be played tightly packed enough for disease to spread readily, and if you can get disease to spread consistently it's a pretty good ability. It's going to swing either way, Dotting their entire team in many cases or keeping dot off your entire team. It's not OMG amazing like some elites, but it's definitely solid.


Degen also gets nice when it's on *everyone*. It's fundamentally efficient on your energy, taxes their Monks, and enhances a spike by reducing the amount you need to hit someone for to take 'em out. Of course what efficient sources of degen does the Necro have? A lot of the hexes are just expensive and slow to throw around and that just kills 'em. Disease would be the big exception - when you can spread that consistently it's excellent. See why I like Tainted Flesh.


Why would I run this over an Air Elementalist?


They aren't...which makes the previous comment a bit more strange.


I'm still trying to make sense of this statement and I just figure that I look at the game differently than you do. You're coming at it from the angle of 'I'm a Necro, how can I make myself worthwhile on a team'. Which, to an extent, I can understand.

My angle is 'when is a Necromancer the right character to fill a role in a given build?' I don't play favorites, I just look at what a build needs to accomplish, what its holes are, and how to best fill them. Simply put, Necros just don't fit very often. They have some good skills we want at times, some good tricks, but usually they just aren't important enough to justify the space he takes in a build. When a Necro is the right answer, sure, it's a fine class that does his job. But we usually don't have a job for him.

Peace,
-CxE

Amen Ensign. Amen.

No one has disputed the usefulness of soul reaping in dais maps (Soul Reaping+Putrid Explosion-if your team isn't running it, prepare to get rocked by it) or PVE. Stop creating an issue out of a non-issue.
Stop pretending necromancers are disregarded out of some inherent dislike for them. Good teams don't ignore them- they analyze them, find the strong points, and take advantage of those. If you'd like to work yourself in to the realm of the thoughtful, ask yourself why double casting time on hexes would hurt a curses necro. Then prepare yourself for fighting Nature's Renewal every 10-30 seconds.
Then ask yourself if that priority hex (Mark of Pain) is going to last for any appreciable amount of time against a good team. If it does, you're probably not up against a good team, so abuse the hell out of it and move onto the next match. That doesn't make Mark of Pain an amazing skill- it punishes people too dumb to spread out. Guess what other part of the game is like that? If you said PVE, congratulations, because monsters are too dumb to spread out. Against a good squad you're down a skill slot and waiting on a long recharge.

I think the Soul Reaping argument has been explained pretty clearly, but if anyone is still reading this and is puzzled, please come out and ask for an explanation. You should be able to get reliable information when you ask nicely- instead of making outrageous claims to support your theories.

While I'm here, cut out the misinformation and the trolling/flaming. If you aren't prepared to back up what you say with examples, don't post.
If you just want to post your arena build, go to the Campfire.

I'm glad I amused you, and thanks for returning the favor!

No, what happened was that one of those 'OMFG necros suck' teams did not have a corpse cleaner on their team, and some of them didnt spread out.

The team was already built for AoE, so most of them were hurt some already. Our damage dealers had just gone down.

One putrid explosion = 106 AoE damage for 10 energy, instant cast. One death = 10 energy from soul reaping = free skill at no energy cost.

2nd putrid explosion = 106 AoE damage for 10 energy, instant cast. One more death = 10 energy from soul reaping = free skill at no energy cost.

3rd putrid explosion = 106 AoE damage for 10 energy, instant cast. 2 more deaths = 20 energy from soul reaping = free skill at no energy cost, with 10 energy net gain for killing 4 people.

All of that took about 5 seconds.

Once again, Ensign saves the thread

I may not be an authority, but i can try to clarify what Blackace was saying:

If you play to win, primary necros are worthless most of the time.
If you play to "have fun by being a necro" you could make yourself usefull, if

1. you play in PvE
2. you play against scrubs
2.1 2 is a often given if you play in random arena
3. You play special maps (dias etc) with special "trick builds" (putrid etc)

If your one of those players who would wear a rubber duck suit of doom for the boni it gives, only listen to ensign and blackace and ignore the "only idiots cant handle a necro" types.
Actually im feeling kind of silly for actually having to tell people to listen to Ensign and Blackace



On a sidenote:
I once destroyed 2 warriors with with my wa / mo who was bleeding and at 1/3 health at this point, no rezz left and my team lying around in the dust... and yep, i used mending

Does this make mending rock?

It makes the other skills you used rock, or the other warriors very bad, or it makes the fact that they had no enchant stripper left bad for them.

So all of the top 50 ranked guilds who successfully use primary necros in 8v8 are only doing 'fun' builds?

I dont think so.

Not trying to be mean here, but would you mind not associating me with posts that I never made and then flaming the hell out of me? Gee thanks.

I don't agree at all really, I find that curses is a really good line with nature's renewal or not. I mean, curses usually have very little cast time and nature's renewal is RARELY used as an anti curse measure mid battle. Even if it is tossed down while fighting, curses have very short recharge times and don't cost much energy at all. They are pretty easy to toss back on a guy.



The max regen for any caster is 4. With wither and malaise that is gone, making your regen a whopping 0. Even if you swap your focus you are gaining no energy whatsoever, at least until you hit rock bottom. Plus, this hits you even slightly into the battle and you are feeling a heavy energy hurt thanks to max energy dropping quite a bit, and your spells are disabled for a bit if you swap to make your energy 0 to end the spell. Don't dismiss this as something countered by simply swapping focus items. That is just not true.




Not true at all. Lets look at individual skill effects that your team does not want. Removing the efffect of blocking enchantments, that is just useless when taking down a monk with guardian and aegis on them. Cutting their healing in 2 thirds or in half is really useless and isn't worth enough to consider them in a build. Increasing damage per warrior swing/ranger's arrow on a called target is just not worth thinking twice about. Slowing the rate in which they cast their spells isn't really effective enough to cry from the mountaintops about necros. Causing damage each time a spell is casted just isn't great, especially with when monks heal themselves, especially when their healing is cut. Wells suck and energy regen doesn't matter. Oh wait, toss those together and you have made a warrior happy and a monk into a corpse. As I have said before, natures renewal aint a big deal to the necro, I mean, a spell taking a whopping 2 seconds to cast is just too much, and putting it back on for 5 or 10 energy right after it is removed is just a mind wracker. Curses are a powerful build just so long as you have someone capitalizing on them.
I created an entire line up there, a damn good one that has won me a couple of games in my day in the ole 8vs8 tombs :P. I would have more wins by now but it sucks waiting for the smartest players to come on so I can find a group who will accept a necro.


Gee, heavy source of degen. I can't find any good efficient degen sources. Oh wait, life transfer is pretty big on the degen scale, weighing in with a whopping 7 and healing you for that very much. A necro/mesmer can create an insane level of degen with life transfer as a base. I mean, two spells and you have 12 degen. Efficient if you ask me.
I don't know, I really don't think you are looking to get the right kind of mileage out of your warriors. They truely need support for them to be fully effective, and they are devestating when they are. Like, a warrior missing a key knockdown is truely a big deal, let alone missing half of them along with half of his hits. A necro and 2 warriors are going to throttle someone before 3 warriors do, unless you truely find that warriors aren't really a key part of your team you can't deny the use of a necro.



Plus, it is all too true that a good one can really wail in arenas. Who doesn't love a weak warrior swinging himself to death as you enjoy some quick easy faction points.

Why are your putrids only doing 106 damage =(. You should have death pumped to 16 so that they do 126 you silly goose. Not to mention this would require a corpse in the first place on an altar map, and for 1 or more of the opposing team to have 106 hp (in your case)... so that basically throws your whole fact thing out the window in just about every other situation.

They were only doing 106 damage because I was focusing on curses (wither+malaise) that time. Blessed be the freedom of attribute choice to test different setups!

Btw, I like gooses. They are actually fairly smart. And dangerous. You dont want to be bitten by a goose, trust me.

Sorry to disappoint you, but it was not an altar map. So yes 'every other situation' applies. No, the enemy team was not extremely smart, but how many smart teams do you meet in Tombs?

And as I pointed out in my thread, my guild had a knockdown/AoE/mass snare build with monk shutdown that constantly kept a large part of the enemy team at less than maximum health. So yes, one enemy team member had under 106 health, and several others were at around 50%. Nowhere did I say that I took them from full to 0 in 5 seconds.

I also didnt say that necros are as good in average random teams as they are in teams that allow them to work at maximum efficiency.

Ha! Like I said, necros seldom need to fit the role of a tank, but can they? Yes, they can. Should they? Probably not, unless your team build calls for one.

In random PvP, you can pretty much play anything and get away with it, so that's not saying much. My point was, and always has been, primary necros are good at countering very specific tactics because they have some spells that chains up really really nicely with other classes.

For example, when you're going up against a spirit team, soul reaping totally shines when that ranger behind you pops up edge of extinction and your ele starts taking down their spirits while you spam hexes like malaise and mark of subversion on their support casters with no regard for mana, or spamming high cost ele spells with no regard for mana, all the while that mes on your team is shattering everything left and right and punishing their spirit spamming rangers.

Is that tactic going to work if you're going up against a smite team? Nope.

Or, when you're going up against a team who uses heavy energy denial tactics on your support, you can play a nec that siphon's life from the enemy and feeds it to your casters for an amazingly effective counter, not to mention wither + malaise gives them a taste of their own tactic.

And then there are the more exotic necro team builds, involving unyielding aura and vengeance, where you can do an instant 186 aoe damage (swap in a sup death rune and you can pump that damage up even higher) plus poison vs. a clumped enemy team by sacrificing one of your warriors. He dies, you get all your energy back, UA or Veng brings him back up, and you can try that again, assuming your ele didn't finish the job.

Are necros ALWAYS going to be as effective? Should you ALWAYS take a necro over an ele or a mes? Nope, but when you know exactly what tactic your enemy will be using, then taking a necro is always a good idea. But then, when you know exactly what tactic your enemy will be using, you probably won already.

Then maybe you should have put a little disclaimer under the fact saying something like: Note: This is only a fact if you happen to be running a knockdown/AoE/mass snare build with monk shutdown that constantly keeps the enemy at less than maximun health, and if they happen to all be clustered up for no apprent reason, and if they also happen to not be running putrid, and also if they don't seem to have any brains.

Hmmmm.... I wonder how the devs play Necros.

The disclaimer was COMMON SENSE.

Primary necros can be deadly in many different team builds, not just the one I mentioned. GW is a team based PvP game, you cant take one necro, put them into a group of random people with random skills and expect them to kill half of the enemy team. The same is true for the awesome ele nuker of doom with 15 energy storage. I said it is possible. And not only in fun builds.

Even if they run putrid (but why should they run putrid... necros suck, right? And if their death magic is not 16, they are silly gooses.) You only need to have your necro faster than theirs.

They can be lured into clustering (not the entire group, but 3-4 is enough) unless they are VERY good. It works on many different maps. And frankly, there are not a whole lot of VERY good guilds in Tombs that you will encounter on a single run. And by the time you do, it might very well be an altar map.

With the stone-paper-scissor concept of GW you can beat teams even if they have brains, simply because they have no counter to your build. 'No brains' does not necessarily apply. I have a lot of respect for iQ and I know you have brains, but even you can lose to a guild ranked 700th in Tombs. If brains / the right setup counters my build, it can counter yours as well.

So with no problems, you will have enough energy to put up enough hexes to make it impossible to remove untill Nature's Renewal is back up? How do you plan on covering the important hex when it'll take you more than 2 seconds to get the cover hex up?


So, usually when you throw up your awesome wither + malaise your target will probably already be a bit low on energy. To give you a good case, let's say 20 energy. He sees your awesome wither + malaise combo hit him, and sees all his energy regen pips dissappear. So, he's carrying a +10 energy staff. He casts 2 spam skills (energy each) and then changes to carrying no weapons. His energy hits 0, wither and malaise ends, he changes back to the staff, and boom, he's back to 10 energy with all his 4 pips of energy regen. The swap will probably take him somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds. 'Oh noes'. (Not to mention all the energy you just wasted yourself).


Look up, and you'll see why curses are useless. The only skill usable in the current metagame you described is rend enchantments (which is less usable than before since NR means a lot less enchantments are being run). So you might aswell just slap it on a secondary, you don't really need more than max 3-4 enchantment removals on it anyway.


Wow, a smashing 20 dps and you only wasted two skill slots, one of them even being an elite? Sure you don't want to put flare in there as well?
And it heals you too? And it heals you too? You mean it heals you when you're taking no damage? Or does it heal you when all your monks are dead, as obviously, 14 health per seconds is so awesome, who will ever be able to kill you?

So, when are you planning on fighting a team of 3 warriors? Besides, all the skills you'd need for supporting knocklocks are skills you might as well slap on a secondary. None of them requires speccing over 12 (most of them not even 12), neither will SR help you with the energy to cast them.

I'll agree with you here, necros are great for fighting retards. But then again, which class can't work well against retards?

So, which team builds will require a tank? Team Build Against Retards version 1.0? Again, fighting retards can be done by almost any build.


Oh yeah, Mark of Subversion and Malaise are really going to own when you're damage dealers are busy attacking the spirit.


Oh, it's not even working against one of the most popular things to run these days? Wow, awesome.

Oh, so necros aren't one of the support classes? And you're gonna feed them what, an awesome 10 health per second? Even a ranger using no skills could counter that. And as for why Wither and Malaise sucks, read up.


Oh, is this an addition to Team Build Against Retards v2.0? Any team that has any idea what they're doing will quickly spread out and get away from the corpses, any team that doesn't know what they're doing, can be beat with a lot of easier combos.

You're right here, if you know what tactics your enemy is using, finding a counter isn't too hard.

The Necro primary is inferior to the El/Ne. That is why no one wants to pick up a Necro in Tombs or arenas. The exception is the team minion build. The soul reaping of dead minions seem to make up for the lesser energy storage.

Busy attacking the spirit? EoE + ff'ing the fertile season can take a spirit team down pretty fast.

That was just an example of delivering my point that there's no general purpose builds for necros. What works vs. one tactic won't work vs. the next one.

Never said necs weren't a support class. I siphon life and use it to feed BiP for the rest of my support class.

Meh, we've played against a team that used the tactic. Sure, we won, but they definitely gave us a pretty nasty surprise in the beginning.

Too bad we dont have any empiric evidence with a medium result of different matches on different maps using different builds to prove either side of the argumentation.

And I actually see many groups asking for necros.

I think with linkies post we finally established that primary necros own newbs / n00bs (mobs are n00bs, since they are around since alpha, and just dont want to learn )

But i want to say that it is unfair to call people in the arena retards. Some (or even most) could be players who bough GW thinking GW is "pick up and play pvp". They dont know that you have to grind out lots of stuff in pve to be even close to "not retarded" and before you can even start to learn the game. So they may be so poor because they just started ... thinking that since skill > time (good old joke ) , everything aviable to them (premades) is as good as (or slightly less good) then the other stuff... of course they dont know tactics, thats why they are "playing the game" ...


Back on topic:

Necros RULE n00bs. So does my wa / mo... Yes he gets owned by the necro, but who cares, good ones are rare ... .
Same with PvE, a good minion master will outclass my wa / mo during regular play so bad it wont even be funny. However, my wa / mo will rule in the "real" farming pve again, so all things are equal

The question is: are necros viable in competitive play? Are necros "fun" in pve - esp if your not playing them?

Oh and another thing: maybe those necro-haters are <gasp> roleplaying? I dont want to adventure with 40 rotting corpses who block my path - do you?

(Disclaimer: necro = primary necro.)

Prim. necro instead of mesmer because?

Prim. necro instead of Ele because?


Prim. necro instead of mesmer because?

Health degen caps at 10.
LT gives 7 at 12 BM so prim. necro because?
Like stupid pve monsters casting through backfire?
Warrior hate sounds like curse build - prim. necro becasue?

Having read through all the posts I'd have to say Ensign summed up my thoughts pretty well as a whole. Necromancers in themselves are just as effective as is any other class when you get right down to it, this is why they exist in the game and why we still find a balanced system.

I'd have to say though, that while necromancers can be great as a whole in themselves, the problem arises that there aren't many TEAM builds that require necromancer participation, spike groups, spirit spammers, smiters, etc. Where is there a place for a necromancer? There isn't one that fits in with that build, really. I think the main problem is that necromancers, while very good on their own, they're so different from other classes that they don't OFTEN fit in with a large team build. They do with some, but not as many as others. Memsers are in kind of the same boat, it's rare that I see a team build that requires some mesmers. (Though mesmers are typically more sought in groups because their purpose is usually set.) That's why I run a N/Me, the mesmer secondary greatly compliments my necro half. But the character in itself doesn't often fit with what a team wants as a build, so that kinda sucks. But more builds are being thought of all the time and we'll see more involvement of all classes later on as the game gets older I'm sure. So I'm not too concerned about it.

I politely ask all Necromancer supporters to stop posting.

I enjoy my myriad of all-Necromancer spell builds, and I do not want them posted on this forum so that some amateur can pick up a spell build that I have worked out--and there are many builds to work out, as Necromancers are a subtle profession as is another class that I appreciate just as well.

The forums are a great tool for not only communication, but also for speculating the economy and getting a feel for some opinions on your enemy before encountering them on the battlefield.

Back into the shadows, Necromancers. May the light never shine on out ways so that we can work best: in the dark.

K i'll stop posting, but it's really funny to hear newbs say SR sucks ^^

Well, so far I agree with Ensign as well.

However, one could argue that the same goes for primary warriors. Or primary rangers. You dont absolutely need either of them in a whole lot of possible builds.

Food for thought: If the enemy group has corpse cleanup and you dont, you might, depending on their skill, give them a big advantage over you.

I run a primary necro, and built her before I really planned much, since Im really just trying to play around with different combos.

Id have to agree with the people saying that primary necro is worthless. Whoever designed the Necro and created Soul Reaping seriously should have planned a little better.

Heres my biggest beef with Soul Reaping. When you get to the higher levels, fighting stuff that takes several spells, you often are out of mana or near out of mana, before you even manage to kill 1 single monster, so even when you do drop that one creature, that + spike of energy really doesnt do anything. I find myself bringing along additional mana add skills from my mesmer subclass, or even offering of blood, simply to top off my mana during battle.

I think that faster cast Id get from switching to mes/nec, or the huge boost of energy Id get from Energy Storage by switching to an e/nec would be much better then Soul Reaping.

That is the one class specific tree that has absolutely zero bearing on any skills, and thats also the biggest reason why necros are the most useless primary. As was stated before, there is nothing a necro primary has that cant be done better by a necro secondary.

Hehe, sorry mate but I have to say it.

I just don't think you kill things fast enough. Hell, even with henchmen things are dropping before I need more energy, even in the southern shiverpeaks and the ring of fire. For example when I went and got the feast of corruption elite, every monster out there is 20+ and I don't think I ever found myself begging for energy. ...And I don't even use soul reaping (well, I have 1 point in it because that's how many attribute points I had left )

But uh...yeah, PvE is the one place where soul reaping helps loads. If your not killing mobs quick enough, nothing I can do there but tell you to kill 'em faster.

In my opinion, Expertise is the "best" attribute in the game, no contenders. If you want to do ranger stuff, you NEED to have expertise of 13-16. One can argue that bow rangers are useless, but one cant argue that expertise is useless for most ranger builds...

I would rather be a nX then a Xr - unless the ranger part is just adding a support skill or 2. And dont forget the second best armor (protectionwise) in the game. [casual advice warning - may be useless if you play against good players: If your not playing pros, rangers can get winter + greater conflag, and have the best armor in the game ]

Warriors are a different case, but at least most warrior attributes are best at 16. Strength also has synergies with lots of different warrior stuff (attack people with skills ). People target wars last for a couple reasons, and one is the armor. You also cant get stonefist gauntlets on an e/wa ... still, never heard about wars owning everyone (after the wa/mo nerf cries died down, of course)

Oh and yes, now that Ensign posted, everyone agrees with him no matter what he actually said

Edit: i just reread the original post ... maybe a couple other people should do it too...