Are Necros and Mesmers the scourge of Tyria?

I have a tank at Hell's Precipice, a monk at Droknars Forge, a ranger at Quarrell Falls and a necro at Piken's Square. Each one of these characters sees very few mesmers in a PUG, but I see a lot of necros though. Most necros I run into seem to be MM though. There's nothing more amusing yet annoying at the same time is teaming with 2 MM and watching them bicker over who's getting the most minions and then having one use Veratas Gaze (I think that's the spell) and breaking the others master bond. Basically, though I see fewer and fewer elementalists in the game and a buttload of necros.

"NEED tank," "NEED MONKSSS!!!", "NEED NUKERS", NEED MM"

Mesmers and rangers can single-handledly take down monk bosses. Seems to be a great deal of ignorance amongst some players. Maybe players like to stick within their comfort zones.

minor correction-its aura not gaze and yes it is very amusing to watch,myself i always check builds of necro who join my teams esspecialy when i am on my mm.also not much love going round anymore for the elems since the aoe nerf,i myself haven't used mine much since the nerf.also,again because of the aoe nerf,it is now speculated that a necro can potentialy do more dmg to a group than an elem can.

I don't feel the OP's claim is nessecarily the case (at least for necros), as the SS/SS/BR thing has virtually wiped out the use of nukers in SF, and just after monks they are the most useful class for farming, plus a good MM (like me ) can deal vast quantities of damage with an army of fiends under his wing.
Now about mesmers - I feel when used correctly they are one of the deadliest professions there are. A domination mes can play havoc with a caster, and Illusion is in my opinion better than curses at dispatching rangers and warriors. But in spite of all this, they are not geared for mass slaughter of enemies, or farming (couple of exceptions, cba listing them), which is why the noobs choose other, less subtle classes over them.

A Curse necro with AtB, Echo, and SS can dole out a lot more damage than an Ele AoE. For one thing SS doesn't cause the AoE scatter. if you can get it cast on all the enemies in an attack group and if they are bunched together you can hand out mass damage. Let's say you have a group of five all attacking. maybe two attack at the same time and the other three attack more or less at the same time. So for the first two they spread 82 damage around to the group from just one attack. The other three will hand out 123 damage to everyon when they attack. Now assuming that every member of the enemy group attacks once per second that's still 205 damage per second. Now I think with AtB active you get either a 19 or 20 second duration we'll say 19 for the sake of argument. That's 3, 985 damage over the duration of the spell handed out to every member of the group.

Now take Firestorm or Meteor Shower, the two most commonly used elementalist AoE spells. Firestorm triggers the nerf I don't think meteor shower does. Let's say though that firestorm doesn't trigger the nerf. I don't play ele's so I am probably wrong about this but I'm probably not too far off in my numbers. At 16 fire magic firestorm probably does maybe 26 damage every second for ten seconds. That's only 260 damage to all foes in the area even if it is echo'd and cast twice that's still only 520 over the duration of the spell. Now for meteor shower at 16 fire magic I'm guessing at about 93 damage per second? With a 9 second duration that comes to 837 damage over the duration of the spell. Again even echo'd and cast back to back that's only 1,674 damage over the course of both spells. That's still less than half the damage from SS spread throughout a group. Feel free to correct my numbers on this guys. I am pretty sure I'm off on the ele stats but I know I'm right for the necro stuff and even if I'm off I can't be far enough off for the difference no to be painfully obvious.

IMHO these characters (Mesmers, Necro's and Rangers) are advanced types and usually not played well by the more casual gamers. For this they can get a bad rap. Also, they lack of cook-book gimmicks (Tank, nuker, healer, bonder yada yada yada) that can make their perception ambiguous. Necro's are labeled as MM or SS, after that who cares?

As a Mesmer/Necromancer I've made many tanks look great casting SS and empathy on the target they were fighting. I also blocked lots of anti-monk spells with my interrupts and "Enfeebled" or slowed NPC's who were kicking the crap out of nukers and monks. I guess the visibility just isn't there for the mesmers.


BTW: The search function on this forum hasn't worked for me in a long time. I keep getting a message that the forum is too busy.

It's funny....

When I play MM, I always have to watch for other necros b/c you get wellers. Yes, when I finally reached The Wilds, people couldn't get me in the party quick enough. MM's are very useful when you want extra party members at no cost.

I also started a ranger and a memser. Honestly, I'm loving those three classes more than W, Mo, or E. IMHO, R, Me, and N are the power classes of GW. Without them being used tactfully, most missions later would fail.


Although, Me is more of a PvP class. I dont' find many field Me's at all, but when I play them, I do everything I can to disable enemies with the worst attacks. (which...BTW, why doesn't Power Block prevent a recast of spectral agony? Just odd, but it should disable that skill and all other "monster" skills...no?)


I'm thinking the Ritualist will be avoided next b/c they're quite a bith more complex than mesmers and necros. Still, they do some powerful things if you understand them.

With few exceptions, most of PvE doesn't require Mesmers or Necromancers because the entire point of PvE is to kill things - you really don't have to worry about sapping the enemy monk's energy or weakening warriors because every PvE opponent is extremely weak and extremely unintelligent. Why do you need to blackout a monk when you can simply kill him with no trouble?

i agree,i think there is going to be a flood of assassins in the early stages as it seems to be a jump in and lets kick ass type(a nice easy starter for the newbies and casual gamers)as opposed to the rit who seems to be more of a take your time to learn me properly type,much the same as the mesmer.

I have to disagree. In the early missions, you may not need them as much, but later on as the missions get harder and more complex, I'd rather have a good Necro than a Tank any day. No offense intended to the Tanks of the world.

Beyond the Mursaat Monk boss (who you can eventually widdle down to no life) it is sad to say that Mesmers and Necro are mostly unneeded for the normal game play. Not much that can't just be bashed to death.

Because the slow and painful death is more fun to watch.

Seriously, Evil aside, consider the bonuses.

• Blood Ritual
  Give an energy recovery bonus to a party member
• Orders (Oo Vamp & Oo Pain)
  Inflict higher damage
• Spiteful Spirit
  Punish enemies for hording and striking
• Mark of Pain
  Punish Hording enemies
• Animate _____
  2 words.... Minion Master
• Verata's Gaze/Aura
  Turn your opponent's friends against him

Sure it's just a skill listing, but consider the benefits of having a single necro on board. Yes, sacrifices make them a B---- to heal at times, but a smart necro knows when to sacrifice and when to hold. (Although, I used to have a friend that'd load his bar with all sacrifices and kill him self before the enemies got a chance to attack him. It was rather funny to watch.)

Power block disables skills of the same attribute. Specral Agony is an unlinked skill, so no other skills would get disabled. (Same thing as if you interrupted, say... Elemental Attunement. Or Holy Veil.)

Also, isn't SA a skill as opposed to a spell? Power Block only counters spells. Even then, SA is a pretty damn quick cast.

dont turn this in a Warrior hate thread.. warriors are just as good as necros or mesmers

Simple answer: Yes Mesmers are the scourge of Tyria, but Necros are not, they are a much more useful PvE class.

If the goal is to kill things, why do we need tanks or healers? Doing direct damage isn't everything.

I agree that using blackout on an monk is stupid in PvE (unless ANet makes enemy monks smarter or give them better skill sets). But there are important tasks that under used classes like Mesmers can do. For example, just about every place in the last half of the game is full of enemies that use hexes. A mesmer that specializes in hex removal alone is often worth it. That mesmer can do fairly high damage through shatter hex and remove other hexes with inspired hex. Also, interrupts work well against some of the stronger spells at the end of the game that enemies use (all the elementalists tend to do very high damage, ex: chain lightning does 300-400 damage). What I don't understand is why people insist on having a second monk to heal the damage rather than just preventing it outright. Most people don't even think about how much damage they take from hexes and spells over time. Preventing it is much more efficient that healing after it happens.

Players acknowledge that having a healer to heal damage is important to winning in PvE, but I do not understand why they do not acknowledge the importance of preventing the damage in the first place. Both are essentially the same thing, it keeps you from dying.