Necro hate.

Why is there so much hate for necro in the community for both pve and pvp and yet anet always hits us with the nerf bat.

I mean groups im in say they dont want necro for dps condi or reaper because the dmg is low and they only want HS which is really just a condi scourge in vipers or PD gear for the res potential.

I usually main necros and i hace actually switched to mostly playing druid or alacrigade because of all the bias. Granted im not a great dps player in general but its sad i have to switch away from a class i main in many games just because of the bias in this one.

Honestly, Necros do have sufficient damage to clear content with, but people who usually throw up LFG seem to love meta to death and anything not meta is considered "low damage" to them.

But even if yu are playing Necro for raiding, yu put in way more effort to do decent damage than other builds anyway, and that's kinda a symptom stemming from their Shroud mechanic and the fact they don't actually have super good single target dps, rather having really good cleave instead.

Necros also kinda good in PvP/WvW, so it's kinda obvious they keep getting slapped every now and then to stop them from being too dominant.

The typical meta-head DPS people tend to dislike anything that doesn't do as much DPS as they can.

Necro can do decent DPS but it can't do "good enough" DPS for some people, so they tend to look down on the class.

I don't agree with it either, Necro is a great class imo and nobody who cares that much about DPS is going to convince me otherwise.

Another point is that a lot of necro players are just not good at playing the class. I play necro since day one. We are the new Bearbows. Necros surviveability in ow teaches a lot of bad habits. If i run an fractal or strikes in 9 from 10 times a necro show up the player just dosen's know what hes doing and you can be happy if hes running a group oriented build. This leaves bad impression and solidify the prejudice that necro is a bad class. Ironicly on the other hand if you get a good necro in a T4 or cm fractal on a pug group imo the chance to get it done smooth is pretty good. Necro may have not the top notch damage or best utility but in unorganized groups it really shines and can carry hard.

@"SunTzu.4513" said:Necro may have not the top notch damage or best utility but in unorganized groups it really shines and can carry hard.

Can speak from experience on this part.Necro's extremely high levels or survivability and sustain can quite easily give it a "safety net" role in random pug groups.I've lost track of how many times i've pull revived my entire group after they got wiped in Fractals because I was the only one able to tank a big hit.Even more so i'm usually the only member of the group that can sit in AoE damage and revive a downed ally that would have otherwise been killed by that AoE.

I'm your dedicated reviver/safety net.. and tbh I enjoy playing this role in fractals.

It's also fun in the open world as well, allows me to help other people fight strong creatures with very small numbers.Need a legendary bounty but can't get enough people to help? Np i'll keep you guys alive and we can win with the numbers we have.It's actually a lot of fun doing that sort of thing, certainly more fun than being in a mass zerg and wailing on everything in your path.

Necro's excel at this kind of thing imo, probably better than any other class in the game.

@"xEtherx.6127" said:Why is there so much hate for necro in the community for both pve and pvp and yet anet always hits us with the nerf bat.

The nerf bat part is just not true.

If you were to compare the necromancer in PvE at release to the necromancer nowaday, you'd see that he deal close to twice as much damage, more than doubled it's survivability and have a lot more group support. While PvE design changed to reduce the obvious flaws that made the necromancer even less attractive.

As for the reason of the hate, it's because:

• General: The common prejudice is that the necromancer is "easy" to play thanks to a forgiving gameplay. (Truth being that it's not any easier than 6 out of 8 other professions, but anyway, it's the image it carry)
• sPvP/WvW: The necromancer have an "unique" niche in these gamemodes that make him always an interesting pick, however it used to be a free kill while now that the TTK have been increased, he is a lot harder to take down. Scourge also used to be so busted in WvW environment that it became the dominant profession for quite a bit of time and he is far from being forgiven for it. What does not help is that the necromancer naturally have a lot of HP giving him the illusion that he is tanky and he naturally lean toward applying conditions while the PvP playerbase is especially loud against tanky builds and condition damage builds.
• PvE: The environment in GW2 is especially inadapted to the necromancer. To put it simply, the environment hard nerf him. ANet took 8 years to sooth thing for him with both change to the encounters and change to the profession. However, while he is now either a reliable support or a reliable power dps, the necromancer still isn't able to contend for the top spots. This make him a sub-meta profession while the end game tend to be dominated by the pro meta players.

So you got your answer, in most case the hate come from hard to kill prejudices and the nerfs are there to reduce discontent within the sPvP/WvW community (mostly sPvP, that got to be the only subforum the balance team look at anyway).

In every MMORPG there must be the worst class. Every game have it. In some games those classes changes with every path. It is just happens to be so that in GW2 every path necromancer is the worst class. If you don't like it, then play a different class.

@SunTzu.4513 said:Another point is that a lot of necro players are just not good at playing the class. I play necro since day one. We are the new Bearbows. Necros surviveability in ow teaches a lot of bad habits. If i run an fractal or strikes in 9 from 10 times a necro show up the player just dosen's know what hes doing and you can be happy if hes running a group oriented build. This leaves bad impression and solidify the prejudice that necro is a bad class. Ironicly on the other hand if you get a good necro in a T4 or cm fractal on a pug group imo the chance to get it done smooth is pretty good. Necro may have not the top notch damage or best utility but in unorganized groups it really shines and can carry hard.

Necromancer was the worst class during the Bearbow meme. Necromancer was just so incredibly underwhelming and weak that even an optimal necromancer was doing very little.

People make the assumption that ranger was the worst class but this was never the case. Ranger was just the most egregiously annoying.

@Teratus.2859 said:

@"SunTzu.4513" said:Necro may have not the top notch damage or best utility but in unorganized groups it really shines and can carry hard.

You're in a certain twilight period right now, where you're an important factor to your team (especially if it's a static team). But I'm afraid your team will grow out of that state eventually if you do fractals/raids regularly. Because almost everything that hits big in GW2 (endgame) is well telegraphed and/or behind certain "easy" to execute mechanics. It really is an L2P issue here, which your team will get at some stage. And that's when your team actually doesn't need a safety net anymore which is indeed the Necro most of the time! And are actually better off and a lot faster without that safety net (definitely if you're geared as tank).And the biggest problem is, it's a double edged knife, if you even practice a LOT, you'll figure out especially in Fractals, that pure and utterly high damage cures everything and makes it really easy mode!!! You can skip a lot of annoying mechanics, have short fights and leaves far less chance for human error (don't forget in PvE: enemies don't make mistakes, they are programmed!).So in PvE, the Necro is literally in it's (full) potential the worst class ingame, with the lowest possible DPS output and the best support it can offer only really helping struggling ("stuck in twilight") teams.(Disclaimer: except for some very small niches, where Epi is always a thing :) )

Edit: and let me add to this in order to respond to the question of the OP. When it comes to the PvE endgame there is a grounded bias towards Necros for they literally are the most useless class in an optimal setting!!! And to make it worse: they are the only class that has that infamous crown on its head. And to make it even worse, they have had this title pretty much since 2012!!! And I really can't blame a community for listening, reading, educating themselves on the most optimal settings out there, even if they'll probably never really get to that state anyway. It's still that distant star in the sky that you would want to get to eventually, so why not train for it in the process! In other words: drop your training wheels (read: Necro) as fast as you can!

To end with the conclusion: that there's really only one solution imo, which is fully with ANet!!!!!!

@Lily.1935 said:People make the assumption that ranger was the worst class but this was never the case. Ranger was just the most egregiously annoying.

That's so true...

The funniest point is that at that time rangers believed that their lack of popularity was a lack of support alongside mediocre dps. The dps sure was mediocre (not worse than the necromancer thought) but the support was already there (it's just that PvE encounters weren't designed to let this support be felt, most boss fight being ended in a few seconds).

The true reason why the rangers were unpopular in PvE pre-HoT is that rangers had the bad habit to use the longbow at range and Point blank shot on CD, messing heavily with the party teamwork which asked for a tight melee group and a boss that don't run around (Rangers probably have to thank ANet for the defiance mechanism that corrected their PBS issue).

@xEtherx.6127 said:Why is there so much hate for necro in the community for both pve and pvp and yet anet always hits us with the nerf bat.

Why do people like to pretend their class is somehow especially targetted with the nerfs?

@Sobx.1758 said:Why do people like to pretend their class is somehow especially targetted with the nerfs?

In 2 words: Tunnel vision.

Necro was notoriously hard to balance between PvE and competitive game modes because Defiant is a hard counter to Necro's core strengths.

Now that balance is being maintained partially separate between game modes (same mechanics for skills and traits but different scalers), balance is better and should improve further when the next expac comes out and is inevitably patched.

@Sobx.1758 said:

@xEtherx.6127 said:Why is there so much hate for necro in the community for both pve and pvp and yet anet always hits us with the nerf bat.

People never want to acknowledge what their class does well compared to others. Just what it does worse.

@SunTzu.4513 said:Another point is that a lot of necro players are just not good at playing the class.

I notice this as well. Speaking from a PvP/WvW perspective, I encounter far less Necros that actually know how to play the class in comparison to literally every other class.

Necro, along with Warrior and Ranger, have the lowest skill floors. They're easy to pick up and do well with without learning much about the actual class, and against average players, to succeed with minimal effort.They can be played at a high skill level as can any other class, but these 3 in particular are very forgiving and/or simplistic for beginners. For that reason I think many people won't bother learning how to play the class at a higher skill level because the basics will often get them by.

I'm not educated enough in general PvE, Raids, or high level Fractals to say how difficult Necro is in those areas, but because Necro has been unwanted and/or suboptimal for most of the games' life, I believe that's another reason many that play Necro in PvE won't bother to improve with it.

With that said, a good Necro is usually pretty scary. Having as much Boonhate as it does, combined with high health and potential for heavy AOE pressure, experienced Necros make a huge difference in groups and can be very difficult to fight in 1 on 1's.

Personally I feel that Necro is on the higher end of the skill ceiling (albeit not the highest, I'd say that honor goes to Thief and Engineer) because it's so easy to tell a good Necro from a bad one. There are so many quirks and details that can make all the difference if you know how to take advantage of them, and so many ways to counter skills both pre-emptive and reactive.

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:You're in a certain twilight period right now, where you're an important factor to your team (especially if it's a static team). But I'm afraid your team will grow out of that state eventually if you do fractals/raids regularly. Because almost everything that hits big in GW2 (endgame) is well telegraphed and/or behind certain "easy" to execute mechanics. It really is an L2P issue here, which your team will get at some stage. And that's when your team actually doesn't need a safety net anymore which is indeed the Necro most of the time! And are actually better off and a lot faster without that safety net (definitely if you're geared as tank).And the biggest problem is, it's a double edged knife, if you even practice a LOT, you'll figure out especially in Fractals, that pure and utterly high damage cures everything and makes it really easy mode!!! You can skip a lot of annoying mechanics, have short fights and leaves far less chance for human error (don't forget in PvE: enemies don't make mistakes, they are programmed!).So in PvE, the Necro is literally in it's (full) potential the worst class ingame, with the lowest possible DPS output and the best support it can offer only really helping struggling ("stuck in twilight") teams.(Disclaimer: except for some very small niches, where Epi is always a thing :) )

For specified team comps, specially in content like raids there's nothing to argue there at all and I agree with you which is why I never join these kinds of groups or take my tanky builds into raid content where it has significantly less use thanks to one shot mechanics that negate the entire point of a tank in that content.

But for general pug groups I don't think this so called "twilight period" as you put it will ever end really.It's been around for almost the entire lifespan of this game.. it's just that it was never very common in the early days when the DPS focused meta was king so it kinda went unnoticed for a long time.

The tanky Necro that I am using today I have technically been using since late 2014, although back then it lacked some of the utility and traits it has now, most of which came into the game in 2015 along with HoT.I've been playing this kind of safety net role for a very long time in Gw2 and I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon unless these "all welcome pug groups" tend to go away all together and I don't see that happening.I only play with those kinds of groups anyway out of preference, I prefer teaming up with newer or less experienced players and helping them rather than teaming up with experienced players who don't need my help and are more likely to criticise my choice of build or class.

I don't believe in the learn from death method that other use in this game.. you know if you die figure out what you did wrong while your waiting around on the floor.Getting people back into the fight is a better lesson, like a second, third, fourth chance for them to learn by doing instead and I can speak from personal experience that some people learn a hell of a lot faster through this method and some never learn anything by sitting around on the floor defeated.This is one of the big reason's I openly support a reward less easy mode raids as well.Learn through doing not watching.

Just to note to, I do have and can play DPS focused builds.. I just don't like to 99% of the time.Mindlessly wailing on everything and trying to make the numbers as big as possible is not fun to me, it's incredibly tedious and boring.There's a lot of traits and combinations in this game that can produce some fun and interesting builds, I get far more enjoyment out of playing around with that and seeing the results :)I think a lot of other people feel the same way in general.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Lily.1935 said:People make the assumption that ranger was the worst class but this was never the case. Ranger was just the most egregiously annoying.

Yep the PBS thing was a real pain back in the day (pre defiance bars) and Rangers got blasted for that a lot!Half the time from my experience it wasn't even them doing the knockback but it was so common for PBS to get blamed anyway for it.

Missing the boons due to not stacking was a thing as well, an unfortunate problem that Anet could have easily fixed by allowing the Ranger to benefit from boons cast on the pet but unfortunately this wasn't a thing.Best you could do with LB was a Barrage, RF combo and then swap into a melee set.

@Lily.1935 said:

@SunTzu.4513 said:Another point is that a lot of necro players are just not good at playing the class. I play necro since day one. We are the new Bearbows. Necros surviveability in ow teaches a lot of bad habits. If i run an fractal or strikes in 9 from 10 times a necro show up the player just dosen's know what hes doing and you can be happy if hes running a group oriented build. This leaves bad impression and solidify the prejudice that necro is a bad class. Ironicly on the other hand if you get a good necro in a T4 or cm fractal on a pug group imo the chance to get it done smooth is pretty good. Necro may have not the top notch damage or best utility but in unorganized groups it really shines and can carry hard.

Yes thats excatly what i mean but the right words to express what i want to say didn't come to my mind yesterday. I'm relearning english atm haven't use it for a longer period.Imo their easy accessibility (what draws people to the class together with the pet companion) and gameplay combined with the longbow especially the knock back gave them a back reputation back then. Imo necro is in the same spot these days. Incredible surviveabilty matched with super easy gameplay (In the OW you don't even need to bother with useing you dodge most of the time) bring a lot of players to the class. The skill gap is already extreme in this game between the differnt players. Other classes need to use their defensiv toolkit and dodge if you hit HoT. A necro still facreoll trough the content. And if you dying/struggle just go full MM Blood/Deatmagic. This kind of gameplay translate badly into group content. And a lot of necro players brings this mindset into group content. So they get recognize as bad. This combined with the meta gave us a really bad reputation.I'm hoping for the new elite spec to get into a better palce on the pve side. But i was hoping this for Scourge too. I really like to play it but the spec has it's problems too in pve not even talking about pvp/wvw balance wise.

@"Teratus.2859" said:Yep the PBS thing was a real pain back in the day (pre defiance bars) and Rangers got blasted for that a lot!Half the time from my experience it wasn't even them doing the knockback but it was so common for PBS to get blamed anyway for it.

Missing the boons due to not stacking was a thing as well, an unfortunate problem that Anet could have easily fixed by allowing the Ranger to benefit from boons cast on the pet but unfortunately this wasn't a thing.Best you could do with LB was a Barrage, RF combo and then swap into a melee set.

I've had a case where we accepted a ranger in our group that sweared he wouldn't use PBS and none of the other professions present had a knockback. He was using PBS unconsciously, it was a nightmare to play with him since as soon as we were close to deal our burst the boss was kicked away.

On another hand, at the worst of the ranger's hate, I had a friend that was stuck with it's group at the end of the submarine path of CoE and asked for help. I just proved to this group that a ranger wasn't "bad" if played properly. It's something that I wouldn't even have start to think to do with a necromancer at that time, it would have simply been impossible to achieve.

@SunTzu.4513 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@SunTzu.4513 said:Another point is that a lot of necro players are just not good at playing the class. I play necro since day one. We are the new Bearbows. Necros surviveability in ow teaches a lot of bad habits. If i run an fractal or strikes in 9 from 10 times a necro show up the player just dosen's know what hes doing and you can be happy if hes running a group oriented build. This leaves bad impression and solidify the prejudice that necro is a bad class. Ironicly on the other hand if you get a good necro in a T4 or cm fractal on a pug group imo the chance to get it done smooth is pretty good. Necro may have not the top notch damage or best utility but in unorganized groups it really shines and can carry hard.

Necromancer has a lot of problems in PvE, but I'm really far far less hard on it than I used to be because Arena net have made strides to improve it in the format. For PvP and WvW, I have some issues with it there as well, but its less so. I've talked at length about Scourge and reaper changes I'd like to see to better diversify their kit and aid them. Scourge is low DPS at the moment and considering how difficult their DPS build is actually to pull off you often see terrible scourge's in Raids who don't know how to do their rotation properly(Soft rotation, but it is a rotation). And will often burn their life force way too quickly, fail to summon their shades on time, fail to combo their skills properly and its just a mess to have them. I personally wont refuse them in our raids since we have good players and their extra CC and DPS still helps even if their not optimal, but this poor play doesn't reflect well on groups.

Reaper has the same problems only being viable in a few raid encounters much like scourge, and for the most part they swap off pretty well on which is good where, the issue is they're just on the cusp of having competitive DPS and considering their only a DPS spec it makes them less desirable in spite of their superior DPS to scourge. I think Reaper needs some minor tweaks in comparison to scourge. Nothing major, but I would like to see them reworked just a bit to better embody their 3 trait lines of being Sustain, Chill and DPS pursuit, that was the original intention. Scourge needs a bit more work to be brought up to speed but they're not that far off either.

As for core, Core necromancer is so incredibly bad that there really isn't much that can be done with minor tweaks. They're not just behind the Elite specs but leagues behind. And they're not very fun to play. There is multiple directions arena net could do to improve core and I've suggested a few. One such idea was to add unique effects to traits that interact with Death shroud in a more unique and transformative way as to not overpower or even change anything about the elite specs.

One thing that the Necromancer does well in PvE that no other class comes close to is their Damage mitigation and Res ability. Their ability to apply barrier and res allies is second to none. Which I don't personally feel giving barrier needs to be unique, but their ability to res is great. This has lead to them being fantastic healers for low skilled groups which I think is valuable for sure. I would like to see far more support though, especially built into the core class. I can forgive low damage if the support is there but its so narrow in use and so limited where I have an issue.

Sorry that was a bit ranty. I do agree on the minions. I feel they need to be improved. Bone minions using the charge system and upping their numbers to 3 as well as increasing bone fiend's number to 2 also with the charge system with a stronger activation could be a great start in the right direction. Giving Bone minions real utility since they are blast finishers and having that steady stream of damage without disruption as they respawn passively would be exceptionally helpful and better help players transition into Fractals and raids.

Weapons are another story. There are improvements that should be made to every single weapon for core necromancer's kit. Daggers don't have a lot of kick to them and don't synergize well with each other and is clunky to use even trying to combo their own skills. Axe Auto Attack has had a broken animation for females for years now, Scepter is great while traited but underwhelming when not, focus is disappointing, I could go on.

As for Elite specs. I think what we need is a true Glass cannon spec. Or Glass cannon support. Not a reaper who is a bruiser or a defensive support DPS like scourge. Hard hitting, glassy, offensive support.

This is only a side-note on some jargon:

Necromancer has a high low-skill floor for both dps and sustain. What I mean by that is if a new player does a little research on builds advertised as meta newbie builds in whatever game mode, that new player will enjoy fair damage output and sustain despite the low skill level. This is the high skill floor with the word "low" already implied by "floor" and, therefore, redundant. It is not a low-skill floor because the floor can always go lower like, for example, deciding to solo roam WvW in greens and yellows as a core condi Necro. The high skill floor represents the best a new player with little experience can hope for and is one reason why players with less skill like it.

Compare that with success and survival using random button-mashing on Ele with all ascended equipment. The skill floor would be lower, in that case; meaning the new Ele may jump into the game with a meta noob build but still be easily trounced.

@Sobx.1758 said:

@xEtherx.6127 said:Why is there so much hate for necro in the community for both pve and pvp and yet anet always hits us with the nerf bat.

It's not as sinister as you'd think. This is a product of Anet's whack-a-mole balancing method.. It always feels like they nerf you as soon as you carve out a niche or get good. The long-term side effect of hitting everything that stands out is that it demoralizes players who have profession allegiances.

Sorry, Necro doesn’t deserve nerfs, but don’t claim that it’s rotation is harder than the engineer. Necro is a face roll class compared to engineer. But it still is a great class to play with.

@"scorekeeper.6524" said:Sorry, Necro doesn’t deserve nerfs, but don’t claim that it’s rotation is harder than the engineer. Necro is a face roll class compared to engineer. But it still is a great class to play with.

It depend a lot of the build you use. I trust that playing the average holosmith joe isn't any harder than playing a necromancer. Reaching optimal performance is challenging for every professions and build but no profession in this game is forced to rely on challenging rotation to reach a playable amount of result (not even elementalist). People in this game are blinded by "meta build" that seek optimal results when less challenging build options, while not optimal, offer results that are good enough to complete the content.

@Teratus.2859 said:

@"SunTzu.4513" said:Necro may have not the top notch damage or best utility but in unorganized groups it really shines and can carry hard.

Man I've been helping people left and right from t1 to t4 who's struggling in any sort of fractals runs and there's the meta heads who thinks only a certain class can work and certain class can not be nothing but a player who wants to lay and pray to be carried.My necro can go cdps pdps and hsc all at full capacity and I found myself carrying the party I'm in even though I mostly join parties who asked specifically a certain class not a necro.I feel like the community needs to be little bit educated about what the necro can offerThey all think the necro is only good for pulling and surviving and aoe with epidemic