Notice how nobody complains about reaper in PvP anymore?

They were never really strong or overpowered at all. Nothing has changed. They actually just had a small buff to make some of their damage more consistent. The quickness was to condense their damage to capitalize on the half-second when those other classes (mesmer, thief, etc) are vulnerable and not evading, dodging, invisible, shadowstepped (kited), blocking, etc.

Now that is even played around (quite easily actually). Necro's are still the most susceptible to cc, the most susceptible to focus (are generally focused down in the first 10 seconds of a teamfight), and have nothing near anywhere the same range of survivability as other classes... and don't usually put out the same amount of damage as a thief, war, mesmer anyway.

Basically, you might as well still play a warrior over a reaper. Why? Because you don't need a FB to support you to be effective....

Like, why is that a thing? ANET isn't going to do 2v2 because they've already basically resorted guard and necro to be a fixed symbiotic class. They can't do 1v1's because they've already decided that Mesmers, thieves and warriors (sometimes revs, guards and rangers) should be the dueling classes. These are all preconceived. This is all because of the necromancer. Since the necromancer needs to be supported, we can't have non-5v5 game modes.

Let me elaborate.

Necromancers are all aoe. Thats it. There's no deciding to be aoe or a variant of build to make your necro more single target or anything... its all aoe.... unlike any other class. Warriors have a healthy mixture of AOE and single target, Mesmers, thieves even have a fair amount of aoe, guardians have both aoe and single target, EVERYTHING. Necromancers have been the ones to be thrown under the bus of the holy trinity.

ANET originally told us that there would be no holy trinity. That everyone would have the ability to perform in different ways (be it damage dealing, tanking, or support) any role they desired. Only they lied. Necromancers are the exception. You can't do things like other classes. You have ONE playstyle. That's it folks. If you play necromancer your job is to go in, throw as much aoe as possible on the field, and then die. PERIOD. That's it.

((This is basically because ANET was afraid of the bad reception it was getting from classic mmorpg players who were coming from games like WOW. They couldn't bear to think outside that frame of design and wanted GW2 to fail anyway because they didn't want to move to a new game. WoW players had already invested years of time and money achieving gear and status. Once ANET started to back down and conform to those complaints, those WoW players had won. No matter what GW2 did they weren't actually going to play, they just wanted other people to stop playing GW2 and return to WoW.... and they did. They did mostly because ANET started to shift gears within even the first year of release. That's called getting played.))

So, again, they throw necromancers in that pit of holy trinity to appease those players. "oh look, you have to support the necromancer for it to do good. aye! Good right?" No. Nobody cares. Nobody cared before. Also, I say it was only nercros because really no other class is as restricted.

You can successfully run off-meta fun builds like Burn guard or bunker rev or even bunker thief. This is never the case for necromancer. You can't even run bunker. There are WAY too many conditional factors on a necromancer and WAY too much linear design. They HAVE to hit a bunch of things (mostly for life force), and all they have is a bunch of skills that hit lots of things. That's the necromancer.There's almost little room for innovation when following those parameters. Every other class in the game is allowed to stray and follow unorthodox means of play.

Even then they need help. Did they restrict Guards to only be played as a support role! Hell no. They can support you, if they want. But they can play however they want to. Necromancers don't have those options. As I've said, they have no options.

Think of any class in the game and you can potentially use berserkers on them successfully.... except for the necromancer. You can also use any other amulet on them.People might say "well nobody will run paladins on thief bleh blah", yeah, because you don't need to. Thieves, wars, mesmers and just about every other class in the game have viable means of survivability without the need of base stats lol. They have blocks, invulns, evades, shadowsteps, invis, etc. Necros have none of that. Thats also why they're focused first.

Even their "defensive" skills are 100% more conditional than every other class in the game. They HAVE to hit things to defend themselves lol. They have to hit you to blind, they have to hit you for life force, they have to hit you to stun you, they have to hit you to transfer conditions (to remove their own). Its the most conditional class in the GAME.

They are ht most alien class in this game and it's mostly due to lazy design folks. Thats it. Its stubbornness and lack of interest in the class overall. They don't care to allow necromancers to widen their horizons and it's self-evident, not a conspiracy. They're trapped as a one-note aoe bot that needs support. Put down your ipads devs, thats all the concept development needed. It should have been the description.

"The Necromancer: A one-note aoe spam bot. Enjoy. P.S. We don't do well with balancing AOE"

For the necromancers, the dev teams position has always seemed to be "if it doesn't work... lets just keep trying to do it again and again."

My hopes have always been for ANET to broaden their narrow ass horizons. You'd think this wouldn't have to be said about a game that showed so much potential to reinvent the genre.

I am sure you already noticed the posting but let me quote it anyway:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/734388/#Comment_734388

That's how ANet balances stuff. That explains why there is not a single balance patch that includes things no one expected and no one asked for.

Even though this post sounds like rant, i agree with every point. Necromancers had hp as defense mechanism. Yes it was op in early game. But after all this power creep with new espec, it is severely underpowered.

If it were me i would do the following.

Rework focus and staff.Staff is the most boring weapon in the game period. Now im not even going into its use or whatever. When you make a weapon in a game, you expect it to be fun to use right? Thats the first objective of the developers. Balance and functionalities comes after that. If some dev is reading this. I can assure you, no one enjoys passive aoes that enemy has to step on to activate and that too have almost no animation and flavourless effects. It encourages passive gameplay and is the sole reason for clutter during wvw zergs and pve farming. It has no good use except in pvp to get conditions transferred. Thats it.

Focus5 needs something more, since necromancer have no source of mobility(be honest with yourself) maybe attach some here. Probably tp on enemy after hit successful.

Focus4 is so bad i cant even. It tracks enemy from players position even after leaving players hand.So if you want to cast that crazy spinning sythe then you have to get los for its whole duration(mid air) or else you will get obstructed message. Which is completely disproportionate to what its animation shows. Not to mention how conditional the regen application is. How i suggest rework focus 4.

Launch a scythe of justice that removes your constraints, punishes enemies and aids allies.Remove all movement impairing conditions from yourself and grant aoe regen around you 360radius to upto 5 allies. Scythe bounces around among upto 5 enemies damaging them. Fix los issues.In this way, focus 4 and 5 will have great synergy and will become new tool for mobility(for self sustain) combined with its previous use(boon rip power based weapon)

There is too much to do on weapon sets and death magic traitline and i dont think it will ever happen but i heard on their stream to put suggesstions on forum if we want something to suggest, so i will. Just like 100s of other necromancers but without any expectations as usual.

@"TheDevice.2751" said:They were never really strong or overpowered at all. Nothing has changed. They actually just had a small buff to make some of their damage more consistent. The quickness was to condense their damage to capitalize on the half-second when those other classes (mesmer, thief, etc) are vulnerable and not evading, dodging, invisible, shadowstepped (kited), blocking, etc.

Now that is even played around (quite easily actually). Necro's are still the most susceptible to cc, the most susceptible to focus (are generally focused down in the first 10 seconds of a teamfight), and have nothing near anywhere the same range of survivability as other classes... and don't usually put out the same amount of damage as a thief, war, mesmer anyway.

Basically, you might as well still play a warrior over a reaper. Why? Because you don't need a FB to support you to be effective....

Like, why is that a thing? ANET isn't going to do 2v2 because they've already basically resorted guard and necro to be a fixed symbiotic class. They can't do 1v1's because they've already decided that Mesmers, thieves and warriors (sometimes revs, guards and rangers) should be the dueling classes. These are all preconceived. This is all because of the necromancer. Since the necromancer needs to be supported, we can't have non-5v5 game modes.

Let me elaborate.

Necromancers are all aoe. Thats it. There's no deciding to be aoe or a variant of build to make your necro more single target or anything... its all aoe.... unlike any other class. Warriors have a healthy mixture of AOE and single target, Mesmers, thieves even have a fair amount of aoe, guardians have both aoe and single target, EVERYTHING. Necromancers have been the ones to be thrown under the bus of the holy trinity.

ANET originally told us that there would be no holy trinity. That everyone would have the ability to perform in different ways (be it damage dealing, tanking, or support) any role they desired. Only they lied. Necromancers are the exception. You can't do things like other classes. You have ONE playstyle. That's it folks. If you play necromancer your job is to go in, throw as much aoe as possible on the field, and then die. PERIOD. That's it.

((This is basically because ANET was afraid of the bad reception it was getting from classic mmorpg players who were coming from games like WOW. They couldn't bear to think outside that frame of design and wanted GW2 to fail anyway because they didn't want to move to a new game. WoW players had already invested years of time and money achieving gear and status. Once ANET started to back down and conform to those complaints, those WoW players had won. No matter what GW2 did they weren't actually going to play, they just wanted other people to stop playing GW2 and return to WoW.... and they did. They did mostly because ANET started to shift gears within even the first year of release. That's called getting played.))

So, again, they throw necromancers in that pit of holy trinity to appease those players. "oh look, you have to support the necromancer for it to do good. aye! Good right?" No. Nobody cares. Nobody cared before. Also, I say it was only nercros because really no other class is as restricted.

You can successfully run off-meta fun builds like Burn guard or bunker rev or even bunker thief. This is never the case for necromancer. You can't even run bunker. There are WAY too many conditional factors on a necromancer and WAY too much linear design. They HAVE to hit a bunch of things (mostly for life force), and all they have is a bunch of skills that hit lots of things. That's the necromancer.There's almost little room for innovation when following those parameters. Every other class in the game is allowed to stray and follow unorthodox means of play.

Even then they need help. Did they restrict Guards to only be played as a support role! Hell no. They can support you, if they want. But they can play however they want to. Necromancers don't have those options. As I've said, they have no options.

Think of any class in the game and you can potentially use berserkers on them successfully.... except for the necromancer. You can also use any other amulet on them.People might say "well nobody will run paladins on thief bleh blah", yeah, because you don't need to. Thieves, wars, mesmers and just about every other class in the game have viable means of survivability without the need of base stats lol. They have blocks, invulns, evades, shadowsteps, invis, etc. Necros have none of that. Thats also why they're focused first.

Even their "defensive" skills are 100% more conditional than every other class in the game. They HAVE to hit things to defend themselves lol. They have to hit you to blind, they have to hit you for life force, they have to hit you to stun you, they have to hit you to transfer conditions (to remove their own). Its the most conditional class in the GAME.

They are ht most alien class in this game and it's mostly due to lazy design folks. Thats it. Its stubbornness and lack of interest in the class overall. They don't care to allow necromancers to widen their horizons and it's self-evident, not a conspiracy. They're trapped as a one-note aoe bot that needs support. Put down your ipads devs, thats all the concept development needed. It should have been the description.

"The Necromancer: A one-note aoe spam bot. Enjoy. P.S. We don't do well with balancing AOE"

For the necromancers, the dev teams position has always seemed to be "if it doesn't work... lets just keep trying to do it again and again."

My hopes have always been for ANET to broaden their narrow kitten horizons. You'd think this wouldn't have to be said about a game that showed so much potential to reinvent the genre.

You're living in a beatiful bubble...https://www.twitch.tv/videos/334055485

What more do you want?...haaa...stupid question really

i agree with OP. anet developed gw2 with the Intention of being free from the holy Trinity:

-Damage-Dealer-Tanks-Supporter/Healer

they wanted to break this System and create something new, to seperate from WoW which dominated the MMORPG market.

but since anet failed often in balancing Questions, they decided to put every class in a specific role:-Thief -> +1 Role-Warrior -> Melee Sustain/Tank-Necro -> DD-Role

and so on...

the Problem is, like OP mentioned they betrayed their playerbase with that role-thing. thiefs are unhappy to be the +1 role. necros are unhappy to be the Group fight DD role. before PoF release i think we had a very balanced game (some few exceptions). necros had a place in nearly every gamemode (smallscale,spvp,wvw zerg, also in pve with some tricks like epidemic bounce or lich minion stuff…), so Players could Play like they wanted, and were very flexible in buildoptions.

but now Players cant Play their favorised class in the favorised gamemode. now you Play:

ranger,thief,mesmer in small scaleguard,necro,rev in zergs....

the most confusing part here is, that anet create theoretical room for different playstyles by different e-specs. but atm every necro is forced to have a pocket FB while playing. so they only can Play in zergs or in Groups with FB.

this is causing that many People say atm the game become stale. because you have to Play specific classes in specific modes.just watch:

if you can Play every class in every gamemodes you have 9 classes x 4 gamemodes (PvE, Smalls Cale, zerg, spvp) = 36 different builds

atm you play in every gamemode one specific build per class. so its ever the same FB+necro comb im Group fights, ever the same thief,ranger,mesmer build in small scale. atm there are Maybe just 8 meta builds that are played by 99,9% of the playerbase. 75% less builds than before POF release and very POF dominated.1 for FB (Group)1 for Scourge (Group)1 for Soulbeast (Smallscale/solo)1 for Mirage (Smallscale/solo)1 for Holo (Smallscale/solo)1 for Spellbreaker (Group)1 for Herald (Group)1 for DE (Smallscale/solo)

and so on.

there are some non pof classes that have highlights but Reaper, core guard, core warri, druids and chronos are exceptions but still a lot less played than their POF variants. and herald is the only HoT class that is superior to their POF e-spec in pvp modes.

anet should Focusing on creating more Options in every gamemode next to the current meta builds.

for example in wvw zergfights you have only 1 supporter. its FB because no other supporter is capable to do what FB's does. nerfs to FB open the meta for different supporters (druids/chronos/scrapper). that would break the stale Feeling many People have atm.

@"Arheundel.6451" said:

You're living in a beatiful bubble...https://www.twitch.tv/videos/334055485

What more do you want?...haaa...stupid question really

You proved my point with the first video and show wvw on the second.

Like I said, anet won't release an official 2v2 mode because they've specifically designed nercro's to be supported by guards. Since they've made them that way, they have an edge and so they can't make 2v2 official because other classes would be outmatched. This would cause complaints and put even more pressure on ANET's balance team.

This is why there will be no official 2v2 or 1v1.

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@"TheDevice.2751" said:They were never really strong or overpowered at all. Nothing has changed. They actually just had a small buff to make some of their damage more consistent. The quickness was to condense their damage to capitalize on the half-second when those other classes (mesmer, thief, etc) are vulnerable and not evading, dodging, invisible, shadowstepped (kited), blocking, etc.

Now

that

is even played around (quite easily actually). Necro's are still the most susceptible to cc, the most susceptible to focus (are generally focused down in the first 10 seconds of a teamfight), and have nothing near anywhere the same range of survivability as other classes... and don't usually put out the same amount of damage as a thief, war, mesmer anyway.

Basically, you might as well still play a warrior over a reaper. Why? Because you don't need a FB to support you to be effective....

Like, why is that a thing? ANET isn't going to do 2v2 because they've already basically resorted guard and necro to be a fixed symbiotic class. They can't do 1v1's because they've already decided that Mesmers, thieves and warriors (sometimes revs, guards and rangers) should be the dueling classes. These are all preconceived. This is all because of the necromancer. Since the necromancer

needs

to be supported, we can't have non-5v5 game modes.

Let me elaborate.

Necromancers are all aoe. Thats it. There's no deciding to be aoe or a variant of build to make your necro more single target or anything... its all aoe.... unlike any other class. Warriors have a healthy mixture of AOE and single target, Mesmers, thieves even have a fair amount of aoe, guardians have both aoe and single target, EVERYTHING. Necromancers have been the ones to be thrown under the bus of the holy trinity.

ANET originally told us that there would be no holy trinity. That everyone would have the ability to perform in different ways (be it damage dealing, tanking, or support) any role they desired. Only they lied. Necromancers are the exception. You can't do things like other classes. You have ONE playstyle. That's it folks. If you play necromancer your job is to go in, throw as much aoe as possible on the field, and then die. PERIOD. That's it.

((This is basically because ANET was afraid of the bad reception it was getting from classic mmorpg players who were coming from games like WOW. They couldn't bear to think outside that frame of design and wanted GW2 to fail anyway because they didn't want to move to a new game. WoW players had already invested years of time and money achieving gear and status. Once ANET started to back down and conform to those complaints, those WoW players had won. No matter what GW2 did they weren't actually going to play, they just wanted other people to stop playing GW2 and return to WoW.... and they did. They did mostly because ANET started to shift gears within even the first year of release. That's called getting played.))

So, again, they throw necromancers in that pit of holy trinity to appease those players. "oh look, you have to support the necromancer for it to do good. aye! Good right?" No. Nobody cares. Nobody cared before. Also, I say it was only nercros because really no other class is as restricted.

You can successfully run off-meta fun builds like Burn guard or bunker rev or even bunker thief. This is never the case for necromancer. You can't even run bunker. There are WAY too many conditional factors on a necromancer and WAY too much linear design. They HAVE to hit a bunch of things (mostly for life force), and all they have is a bunch of skills that hit lots of things. That's the necromancer.There's almost little room for innovation when following those parameters. Every other class in the game is allowed to stray and follow unorthodox means of play.

Even then they need help. Did they restrict Guards to only be played as a support role! Hell no. They

can

support you, if they want. But they can play however they want to. Necromancers don't have those options. As I've said, they have no options.

Think of

any

class in the game and you can potentially use berserkers on them successfully.... except for the necromancer. You can also use any other amulet on them.People might say "well nobody will run paladins on thief bleh blah", yeah, because you don't need to. Thieves, wars, mesmers and just about every other class

in the game

have viable means of survivability without the need of base stats lol. They have blocks, invulns, evades, shadowsteps, invis, etc. Necros have none of that. Thats also why they're focused first.

Even their "defensive" skills are 100% more conditional than every other class in the game. They HAVE to hit things to defend themselves lol. They have to hit you to blind, they have to hit you for life force, they have to hit you to stun you, they have to hit you to transfer conditions (to remove their own). Its the most conditional class in the GAME.

They are ht most alien class in this game and it's mostly due to lazy design folks. Thats it. Its stubbornness and lack of interest in the class overall. They don't care to allow necromancers to widen their horizons and it's self-evident, not a conspiracy. They're trapped as a one-note aoe bot that needs support. Put down your ipads devs, thats all the concept development needed. It should have been the description.

"The Necromancer: A one-note aoe spam bot. Enjoy. P.S. We don't do well with balancing AOE"

For the necromancers, the dev teams position has always seemed to be "if it doesn't work... lets just keep trying to do it again and again."

My hopes have always been for ANET to broaden their narrow kitten horizons. You'd think this wouldn't have to be said about a game that showed so much potential to reinvent the genre.

I dont think you understand what op is saying and your video links do not make sense and only solidify op's claim that necro can only be played with support.

@TheDevice.2751 said:

@"Arheundel.6451" said:

You're living in a beatiful bubble...

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/334055485

What more do you want?...haaa...stupid question really

Designed to be OP when supported you say....if you want to be OP unsupported then you can't be remain OP if supported that would basically kill off the whole game, if you want duellist abilities then necro must lose loads of teamfight potential...very simple, you don't see an army of rangers or holosmiths in wvw and neither they dominate 2v2 even when supported by FB

@"Arheundel.6451" said:Designed to be OP when supported you say....

I've read the thread and nowhere does the OP said that it was designed to be OP when supported. It was more "designed to be viable only with support from other".

if you want to be OP unsupported then you can't be remain OP if supported that would basically kill off the whole game, if you want duellist abilities then necro must lose loads of teamfight potential...

It's very hard to say that the necromancer have more teamfight potential than any other profession: worst combo field, worst finishers, worst boon provider... etc. The only point is that the necromancer have the edge on the niche which boon corruption is and even that monopole is taken away slowly from him as time pass.

And if you think that barriers/temporary HP are OP, don't forget that every single boon in the game are as OP as barrier/temporary HP is, with the only exception being that boon are taking as granted now while barrier/temporary HP isn't. In the vanilla game boons were harder to get and really game changing, now you just get them without even a thought. Players got used to be OP with boons to the point that they don't think boons are OP but as soon as something new and not widespread appear, they think this thing is OP.

very simple, you don't see an army of rangers or holosmiths in wvw and neither they dominate 2v2 even when supported by FB.

When you don't feel the necessity, you often don't force yourself into something. Rangers and holo certainly don't feel the need to have another player taking care of them. This is a matter of "freedom" and "pride" here and most players like to be "free" in their gameplay and dominate against the odds on their own (1vX).

Look, we even have on this subforum a player that play reaper as he would a ranger or an holosmith and complain about his poor result.

It's all a matter of perspective. You can't look only at the strength of something without taking into account the associated weaknesses. Just like an elementalist need a nanny in PvE to reach it's top effectiveness, a necromancer need a nanny in PvP to be effective as well.

Anyone who thinks a necro/firebrand duo outclasses every other duo has no clue about the game.

I play scourge solo que and love seeing a necro fb duo. They just sitting targets nicely stacked up for me I can blow them up to quickly

So what we're really talking about is pocket healers?

@TheDevice.2751Your points are valid from my perspective.

1. Poor performance of boon duration builds eliminates a large field of equipment stat's. I have complained about that in Death Magic threads. DM used to be the boon duration line.
2. Both elite specializations are heavy on AoE capability and feel under-tuned in versus-1 or versus-2 because they are designed to scale up in a crowd. I expect the next elite to be a potent dueling specialization or I will complain, a lot.
3. There is no reason Necro cannot be a support profession. The same is true for every other profession. However, building for offensive support should be intentional and carry a penalty in personal dps and sustain. That is not true for other professions. Arenanet really should harmonize the performance of professions for the role players build for. There are plenty of over-performing builds out there.
4. Because Necro has sustain and AoE as core design attributes, that places a limit on top-end offense. Core design principles continue to hinder the range of play styles where other professions were obviously easier to transition from their core designs.

@Anchoku.8142 said:@"TheDevice.2751"

2. Both elite specializations are heavy on AoE capability and feel under-tuned in versus-1 or versus-2 because they are designed to scale up in a crowd. I expect the next elite to be a potent dueling specialization or I will complain, a lot.

Yes please. I'll do the same. :D