12 replies to this topic

[Silinsar]

Greetings,

I (once again) started playing a Necromancer this week and got level 30 yesterday, so I did AC with my guild. It was fun, but I kind of missed a "I'm playing a Necro"-feeling.
I'm just starting to get used to Necro and in particular Death Shroud, but I spent quite some time thinking of endgame builds and fail to spot "special" abilities. I hope you get what I mean, I don't seem to find THE necro skill/trait combinations that allows him able to influence group play in a unique way.

What makes Necro a desirable group member? What is outstanding about his skillset? When do you think "wow, this only a necro can do"?

I have no doubt that necros have a bunch of options to contribute in group play but I'm just missing something special. Maybe Necro just doesn't suit my playstyle or it's a learn to play issue so I'm not sure if you can help me. However, I'd be grateful if you tried

[Beta Sprite]

Condition spreading with Scepter 2, Dagger 5, and Epidemic.

Wrecking the enemy's boons with Corrupt Boon and Well of Corruption.

Maintaining 14+ high damage bleeds, poison, and cripple on mobs of enemies.


That's what my necro does, anyways.  I like S/D and Staff, and use Corruption and Well utilities, mostly.

[Lopez]

Epidemic and wells.

Edited by Lopez, 03 January 2013 - 01:56 AM.

[Trei]

I am intrigued by the way Necros turn conditions into buffs, and even deliberately inflict them on self if there happen to be none.

[Falfyrel]

Powermancers can also provide quite a bit of support.

Using Well of Suffering combined with Reaper's Touch at point-blank can easily stack 25 vulnerability like it was nothing, and the axe auto-attack stacks even more. Even the glassiest necros are fairly durable and if they're tank-specced they can provide very easy revives. Even untraited, Mark of Blood can provide excellent AoE regen. And since we rely so little on burst our sustained damage (and AoE!) is also very respectable. We have multiple sources of chill and it can be incredibly useful for kiting certain mobs.

We also used to be the gods of interrupting, but ArenaNet made Fear stop ignoring Defiant in PvE recently. Before, I was able to interrupt the boss in the ice fractal every time he started breathing frost with Doom.

That being said, we're still somewhat subpar in comparison to classes like the Mesmer, Warrior, and Guardian for dungeons.

[Majic]

I like the Conditionmancer style best, and though it isn't an instant-gratification kind of combat style, it can really do a number on large numbers of mobs.

But really what I like most about Necromancer is the aesthetic, especially those cool green-and-black spectral clouds.

[Thaddeuz]

My guild leader was the first of my guild to get a Necro to level 80 and we frequently ask him to bring his Necro in certain dungeon.

Why? Because of his Elite : ''Plague''

The Necromancer transform into a plague form with more power, vitality and Toughness. You also gain stability and give poison to each foe touching you and that for 20 second. Its a good elite but nothing more. But you can also give Blind to every foe touching you. This is mainly 20 second of constant AOE blind, and since you have a enormous defense and stability you can't really be interrupted or die during this time.  This is just incredibly powerful against group of enemies with high dps/knockback/knockdown.

In WvW its also a really nice ability. You can use it and simply go straight foward into the middle of the ennemie zerg (maybe not a 30 person zerg) spawn blind so there DPS fall enormously and use the trait that give chill when you apply blind. This way, you AOE chill in the same time so the zerg can't fall back, allowing your team to catch a lot of ennemie trying to escape.

There is other really usefull skill, by using properly that skill your Necromancer will make a lot of friend ; )

[kendro1200]

Plague doesn't have an AoE chill, it does have an AoE cripple though.  I wish it had an AoE chill, chill is 50 times better than cripple.

Conditionmancers with epidemic are lots of fun to play when you get used to the playstyle.  That being said, the "fun" has a pre-req of there being lots of trash to spread bleeds all over with.
Plague form can be useful in explorables, but honestly I've always found Lich Form more useful in a pinch, as plague form will merely drop group dps output and lower some of the damage coming into the group (sometimes you can get lucky and get a good chunk of mobs into the plague form radius, but not always).  When it comes to using aoe blinds to lower damage coming into a group, thieves do it so much better it's not even funny.  Lich form on the other hand gives your group a couple of meat shields, a dps boost via vulnerability, minions, and an auto attack roughly equivalent to a fully powered life blast that also pierces.  You also grant a little bit of control via chilling blast and can still provide condition and boon manipulation by the #5 skill (it's like reaper's touch or something like that).

As to the original topic of feeling like a "necromancer" that really depends on what you think defines a "necromancer".  
If geared properly minion master builds can work (geared properly defined as stacking healing power and spamming mark of blood from the staff skill to force feed minions regeneration, and also super powered wells of blood) as pseudo tank builds via disposable minions.
Conditionmancers fill the aesthetic of "killing it slowly and painfully"
Power/crit necros can be built to be half half functional glass cannons.

[Thaddeuz]

kendro1200, on 11 January 2013 - 06:50 PM, said:

Plague doesn't have an AoE chill, it does have an AoE cripple though.  I wish it had an AoE chill, chill is 50 times better than cripple.

You didn't get my explanation so i'm gonna be more precise. If you put 10 pts into the trait line ''Curses'' you have access to the trait skill : III Chilling Darkness. The description is : ''When you blind a target, you also apply chill for 1 second.'' So ya now you got AOE blind AND chill with Plague.

kendro1200, on 11 January 2013 - 06:50 PM, said:

Plague form can be useful in explorables, but honestly I've always found Lich Form more useful in a pinch, as plague form will merely drop group dps output and lower some of the damage coming into the group (sometimes you can get lucky and get a good chunk of mobs into the plague form radius, but not always).

I agree that Plague is less usefull for dmg that Lich Form, and its normal. Its a support skill, and a awesome one. Don't use it for exploration or questing, use it in dungeons/fractals.

kendro1200, on 11 January 2013 - 06:50 PM, said:

When it comes to using aoe blinds to lower damage coming into a group, thieves do it so much better it's not even funny.

I don't play Thief myself so maybe i'm wrong. My friend play it and he found that Necro is better in a short tought encounter because he got a concentrate 20 second of blind while Thief can often apply a little of bit of blind diminishing more dmg income over a longer period of time.

The thief got a lot of skill ''Blind for x amount of time''. Even if the blind have a duration of 30second it only make you foe miss 1 attack. The thief only got two blind over time like Necro's Plague. Black Powder for 4 second and Smoke Screen for 7 second. So you got 1 weapons skill and 1 utility skill for 11 second of constant blind vs 1 Elite skill for 20 second of constant blind with the Necromancer.  Now, since i don't play the thief i don't know if i miss something like maybe a trait that change the numbers.

[kendro1200]

I was wrong on the Chilling Darkness, I forgot about that change from October or w/e.  So, cool.

There's a thief build that lets you spam an aoe blind (150-300 range'ish) every 4 to 5 seconds (had a guild thief that I did explorables with essentially tank explorables with the build, made everything but Arah a joke), which isn't as strong as plague form's blind roughly every second, but it can be sustained indefinitely.  Since very few things hit hard and do so more than every 5 seconds, it basically halved weak trash damage (which will attack every second to two seconds) and negated damage from heavy hitting mobs.

edit:  Granted Plague Form's blind spam is powerful, but in many cases it's overkill, and I would prefer less spam, and a longer duration on the plague form, so that way the number of blind applications stays the same, but the number of actually used blinds increases.

Edited by kendro1200, 11 January 2013 - 10:06 PM.

[Atamaz]

But thief area of blind is really small and is centered on the character, I use http://gw2skills.net...0koJbTumkNNqYuA , the chill effect make mob stay in the blind area more time, my well have reduced cd, are ground target and apply 3 sec of protection on ally in the area, skill change a lot depending on fight, if I need cond removal I use well of power instead of well of suffering, blood is power if no aoe, sometimes i change a trait in blood magic from I or IX to IV if I have to ress often.
I think the only class that's really ahead of us in support is guardian because of projectile reflection, boon via shout, cleanse, heal on dodge roll, easy aoe might, aoe pull and nice damage; in my experience necro are a little better than engi; elementalist: everyone applaud their aoe burst but I think is a little overvalued because their aoe are static and if you cant make enemy stand still their damage will fall greatly while our dots keep rolling wherever they go, their heal have small area and low duration(gayser) or longer cd for a water field with regen(healing rain) but ele have reliable blast finisher so they can easily heal from it, the heal on water attunement is ok but necro can do that with death shroud with blood magic IX ,  necro can also spam regen better with mark of blood (staff#2).

[matsif]

today I played my necro for the first time in a few months running wells spec in AC.  was a nice change, but I agree the necro doesn't really feel "necro-y" to me.  I can't have the full minion army that I could in GW1 and without hexes the class feels like its missing a whole play style that made the necro part of what it was.  Also minion AI is so horrible that most of the time a full on minion master spec isn't worthwhile, especially in dungeons.

I haven't truly tried the condition spec yet, but I'm planning on doing that soon to try to rekindle my former favorite class in GW1.

[Raagar Deathclaw]

My first and currently only toon is a condition necro and I love it. Nothing feels more necro-y than suddenly blasting mobs with 10-15 stacks of bleed,some poison, cripple, vulnerability and just watching them die as they struggle to get into melee range. also if you set traits you can gain fury from ds coupled with earth sigils you'll apply more bleeds on critical hits. I run with a flesh golem since i can keep it alive fairly well without dealing with traiting for minions.