Why do you play necro?

I'm a returning player who hasn't played since HoT and was pretty excited to make a new character instead of going on my old thief. I rolled up a necro and am in the 60s rn, and thought I'd pop into the forums to start looking for builds. Instead, I see a lot of...well, pretty sad things. So, here's something that I hope is more positive-why do you play necro? What is your favorite part of the necromancer, and what do you like about it that other professions don't have?

How do you want to play it? PvP, WvW or PvE?

@killfil.3472 said:How do you want to play it? PvP, WvW or PvE?

I like a bit of everything, honestly!

Ooooh... well for dueling I got a build that uses the Core shroud.Spite, mid/top/top.Soul Reaping Mid/Top/mid.Blood magic mid/top/mid.Use Signet of Vampirism, signet of spite, spectral armor, signet of undeath and flesh golem.Use the destroyer amulet, Rune of vamprism.Dagger/dagger with sigils of escape and cleasing, Staff with the same sigils.Use the high shroud generation to your advantage! Don't be afraid to pop your signets (Except undeath) for they'll recharge faster as you stay in the shroud!

The flavour, and presentation of the class is what drew me to necromancer -- I've always enjoyed the concept of using dark magic for good, and necro filled that niche perfectly. In addition to my love of unorthodox classes of magic, I was also fond of damage over time effects, and that love found a home in the form of conditions. From day one I have been a conditionmancer, and I have remained true to my class identity even into the end game of Fashion Wars 2, where I ensure that I use drab, or dark colours, and thematically appropriate gear skins, as to not dilute the style of my character. Despite the edgy, grimdark sense of fashion, I try my best to help people whenever I can, but the class isn't exactly tailored to a supportive role -- when I heard Scourge was both support and condi I was excited, but it seems like there still might be some room for improvement on that specialization.

I like tanky classes in MMOs. Always have. Necros are probably one of the most tanky classes out there for open world PVE. I was messing around a lot with Guardian and Warrior before this, but they never quite fully clicked with me the way Necro has, and still does. I'm back to playing Reaper, but I still have everything to jam Scourge, and I honestly like how both play.

@Atzros.8715 said:The flavour, and presentation of the class is what drew me to necromancer -- I've always enjoyed the concept of using dark magic for good, and necro filled that niche perfectly. In addition to my love of unorthodox classes of magic, I was also fond of damage over time effects, and that love found a home in the form of conditions. From day one I have been a conditionmancer, and I have remained true to my class identity even into the end game of Fashion Wars 2, where I ensure that I use drab, or dark colours, and thematically appropriate gear skins, as to not dilute the style of my character. Despite the edgy, grimdark sense of fashion, I try my best to help people whenever I can, but the class isn't exactly tailored to a supportive role -- when I heard Scourge was both support and condi I was excited, but it seems like there still might be some room for improvement on that specialization.

I feel pretty much the same way as you. Except that I wish the presentation was darker and grimmer.

Especially the effects of our weapon and utility skills. They are not dark and grim and pronounced enough. I dislike the minion graphics as well and wish they were more grim looking. Something similar to the Diablo necro.

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

@Atzros.8715 said:The flavour, and presentation of the class is what drew me to necromancer -- I've always enjoyed the concept of using dark magic for good, and necro filled that niche perfectly. In addition to my love of unorthodox classes of magic, I was also fond of damage over time effects, and that love found a home in the form of conditions. From day one I have been a conditionmancer, and I have remained true to my class identity even into the end game of Fashion Wars 2, where I ensure that I use drab, or dark colours, and thematically appropriate gear skins, as to not dilute the style of my character. Despite the edgy, grimdark sense of fashion, I try my best to help people whenever I can, but the class isn't exactly tailored to a supportive role -- when I heard Scourge was both support

and

condi I was excited, but it seems like there still might be some room for improvement on that specialization.

I've just been playing Diablo 3, Necromancer is top of the list for DPS and Greater Rifts this season.

death mage aesthetic

Well, I am not into death, emo, or goth.

I chose Necromancer as a main profession back in 2012 because I could build for power, condi, and minions (pets), while staff helped in PvE mob tagging. Necro had build variety. (It had lots of builds but all were substandard.) It was horrible back then so Necro was kind of a hard-mode profession. Those reasons are moot, today, but I grew used to playing it.

I always go for the death themed profession in games or the undead army in tabletop.

Honestly i play necro because i played it in GW1 and my GW2 character is supposed to be a desendant of my main in GW1 (leena Baneworth). That and i actually love how versitile the necro is. I have and carry on my character 5 sets of gear at all times. Vipers, Zerker, Harriers, Soldiers, and greivers. This lets me mix and match stats per game type and encounter. For anything with condi damage being in curses with parrasitic contagin makes open world pve wicked easy. Raids on power reaper or even power scourge are a thing depending on th e encounter and need of the group. An i've been experimenting with healing necro since vanilla. Staff wells stacking healer in dungeons used to be a thing, and now transfusion barrier might gen harriers necro is what i'll run in some fights where we need it.

I love playing my necro and seeing what more it can do with changing some traits here and there and runes and sigils meens min/maxing ability or playstyle is a lot of fun.

hope you enjoy your necro :)

In pve I "was" playing power Reaper because I loved to fight in shroud form, among my 14 characters she was my favorite because of the gameplay...since last patch she dropped in 13th position, just before my core mesmer.In pvp/wvw was ok but I've always liked more guard or eng, I'm not motivated to even play it now.The good old times with her are now over...

Great class, just don't play necromancer in PVE, not worth it.

@hash.8462 said:In pve I "was" playing power Reaper because I loved to fight in shroud form, among my 14 characters she was my favorite because of the gameplay...since last patch she dropped in 13th position, just before my core mesmer.In pvp/wvw was ok but I've always liked more guard or eng, I'm not motivated to even play it now.The good old times with her are now over...

You've betrayed her.

i stuck with necro because i thought we're bad enough to only be able to get stronger from balance patches. Seems i was very wrong when it comes to especs though.

I mainly play necro in PvE (map completion, bosses and stuff) because you don't really need to think at all. Kill everything solo and there isn't never too much mobs.

I like necro because i belief, in it's core, it's a pretty well designet and flavorful class, with a lot of synergy between skills and traits but unfortunately that doesn't hold a candle against most other classes that have two, three ore more very overpowered traits or skills with little to now flavor. Maybe the synergy is the reason the Devs seam to struggle with balancing necro right, because it has the potential to snowball out of control very quickly.

death aesthetic

I ike the role of the underdog.

Whisps from to other players "I have never seen anyone performing that good on power reaper" or "You are incredible durable for a marauder / scholar rune build" are my motivation.

Everyone can play Bunker Druid, Shatter Mesmer or Spellbreaker ... there is no need to become actually good to achieve something, which bores me after a short amount of time.

Going to be completely honest.1st time trying GW2 I was looking for the pistol class and didn't see one. Didn't know Engineer did and didn't like the summary of it. Didn't know Thief could either.Saw a dead related class and I have a huge fascination with the dead... so I went with that.

Like the whole idea of using minions, demons, dark magic, skeletons, shades, spirits. Kept going and was my 1st character made.To this day, yes my Necro quickly got overshadowed by my Thief, but I still enjoy playing it from time to time (not WvW or PvP as I don't have a death sentence).

I even discovered a few hours ago of retrying Scourge.... I'm really truly liking it now. I used to be Core and a little Reaper, then I didn't like what they did to Reaper so I went back to Core, then I heard of buffs and I tried Reaper... then right back to Core.Decided "Let me just try out Scourge". I miss my reaper/core shroud, but unless they fix back Reaper, I'm kind of okay with this Shroud-less abomination for now.

was playing spiritmaster in aion before i started playing gw2.

necro was the closest profession to anything i loved playing in aion. aka: "dots - conditions"; caster; "elemental pets - flesh golem"; "bodyguard on pet (pet takes damage instead of yourself) - deathshroud"; "dispel - boon corrupt"; "fear - fear"

fun fact: both, the spiritmaster and necro, had the same issues like lack of mobility, lack of active defensive skills, lack of condition clears, not wanted in pve(spiritmaster was good in pve if: some bosses had mechanics that HAD to be dispelled by a spiritmaster - OR the spiritmaster was a good player and used skills respectivelly (cooldown-management was the most important thing about a good pve spiritmaster and being 1st dps depending on the skilllevel of sorcerer and assassins in your group respectively(there werent many awesome ones))).

it turned out i didnt like "dots" on gw2. but playing power necro was always pretty unique and a kitten ton of fun (and never meta, even if played on tryhard level)

Its been my main from day 1 and he suffers from abandonment issues. Shows soo much promise and i have patience so im thinking itll be almost right by gw3 trailer time. Also I'm anti sheep so never like the preferred professions in any game.

I came back for more punishment, I'm working on my third Necromancer, a Charr named Nine Bound Souls.