Why i love necro.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Warning! This threat is actually serious

Preface

If you say nothing, no one will hear you, or worse they'll hear what they want to hear. So here i am making a real, non-sarcastic theme about why i <3 necro. So the devs can read it and understand what I (and other fellow necros who post below) value and appreciate in our profession. Hopefully to not take wrong turns with it in the future.

So why do I love necro?

1. The theme & feels. Tastes are a personal matter, but the necro community and the amount of vocal players it has say it clearly - the necro nailed it on the head for many when it comes to it's overall thematic (death/curse/condition mage) and it's execution. The color scheme is awesome (black + green + tints of red), the skills are oozing with vile, accursed and undead thematic, and everything he does feels necrotic to the bone (which will soon be revived to serve it's new master!)

2. Uniqueness. One of the last things you'd associate with a profession played by hordes of players is uniqueness...but that's exactly the word to describe the necro. On every step he differentiates himself from the rest of the pack. How many have aceess to boon corrupts? How many have half the condition manipulation capability that he has? How many sustain via life steal and swapping two healthbars? How many have fears that make your foes flee in terror and trait to capitalize on that?

While other classes have their strengths, they are still too similar to one another. Almost every one of them has a block. Almost every one of them has evade frames. Almost all can boon bomb their party or condi bomb their enemy. Every one of them can cleanse condies, But in general if feels the same. Buff up, pop "wonder defense", burst.Is there any single class that can manipulate boons like necro can condies? Maybe mesmer but even that is not close to depth of necro's capability with condies. What is their cc again? Dazes, stuns, knockbacks, pulls, launches...all have that. Nothing unique there. If feels like they all stand on one side, and necro on the other, getting nearly none of theirs, but them getting nearly none of his.

Now i will give revanants props - that is one class that does feel as unique as a necro in it's own field. It's also closest to overlapping with necro's condi manipulation depth, but necro was first. In that area Rev is a follower, not a precursor.

3. Builds. Necromancer has extremely wide array of possible viable builds and gear setups. He is not pigenholed to one gear type or one build type to be relevant. This is a result of 3 aspects of necro's gameplay coming together:

• very balanced and interesting traitlines - necro traitlines are amazing work of balance (save slightly weaker Death Magic). Almost every line fits into any scenario, promoting huge build variety. Curses? Can work great with power builds (extra crit, weakness on crit, condi cleansing and boon corrupt) Blood Magic? Huge sustain for both power and condi, can add some power dps (vampiric presence) Spite? Can be used a healing/sustain line with signets of suffering (huge sustain from signet of vampirism and locust). Hardly ever is a line "Meh, useless in my case" when you build.
• no godmode defenses. Necro's defenses are like swiss knife - he has tons of them, but each is situational and right for certain scenarios. This means variety in your utility bar and synergy between utilities and traits (so one covers the aspects other is not dealing with).
• Excellent synergy with gear. Due to above, and necro's profile as attrition fighter, stats from gear actually matter on the defensive end. Top that off with tons of free stats he can get from traits, and it's not another "equip berserker gear and rest is done with utility skills" profession. Necro can reliably use almost any gear set there is, and it'll work and provide him with actual benefits.

4. The missing RPG experience - almost every other profession feels like action game - planning and experimenting be damned. Just slab meta gear, this and that and press the panic button at the right time. With necro i feel the strongest that my stats actually matter, my gear choices are my own, and 50% of the victory is done away from fighthing where i pick and choose things for my build, rather then focusing just on piano play in actual combat.

My fears for the future

Obviously necro has issues. In spvp you focus necro first becuase he is the only one that can't pop a wonder defense and flush all your party's burst down the toilet. Core is underperforming, obviously, and scourge is either OP or nerfed to ground (10s nefarious favor, eeesh). That being said, my biggest fear for necro is trying to make him like the rest. He has proven to be a counter profession, someone who counters their kits that he himself does not have. And that's how i hope it'll be developed - giving him defenses and mobility unique to himself (just pls not that broken ass dark path that misses anything, anywhere anytime) that can counter the current cheap dogpile tactics when used correctly.

[Kuulpb.5412]

Imagine if GW2 and Square Enix did a team up for GW2 and made Necromancer a Summoner :P

[Tukaram.8256]

My necro has become my main. All I do is PVM and the minion master is great. I send in the troops and stand back casting spells. I can get through the critters much easier with my minion master than any other avatar I play. He is just so much fun to play, too. :)

[Kalavier.1097]

I love necromancer, have played it since Gw1 (though my GW1 main is a dervish). I've played necromancer as my gameplay main since before the launch date of GW2, and use that character for literally everything but SAB (My mesmer asura is my SAB char).

Honestly, I laugh at people sometimes whenever I see a balance patch come around, hear the cries and screams about how Necromancer is nerfed and destroyed, load up guild wars 2 and start playing and notice zero change to my build or gameplay.

[Yasai.3549]

Problem with Core : Elites are better.

Problem with Elites : other classes Elites are better.

Why? Because Necros are easy to play.

This ease of access cut out alot of mechanical potential when it comes to Necro, something many other classes have and require practice to pull off.

As such, a noob Necro and an experienced Necro are one and the same, difference only being their knowledge of the game.

[XECOR.2814]

I dont like gw2 necro, i just like necromancer concept. This is why i like necro.

[EremiteAngel.9765]

@XECOR.2814 said:I dont like gw2 necro, i just like necromancer concept. This is why i like necro.

Same here.I agree with most of OP’s points but feel that Necromancer skills, animation and effects could be darker and more pronounced.The summons minions especially needs changeable skins options.

Staff marks and wells animation needs a rehaul similar to the new thieves skills.

[Nimon.7840]

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

@XECOR.2814 said:I dont like gw2 necro, i just like necromancer concept. This is why i like necro.

Same here.I agree with most of OP’s points but feel that Necromancer skills, animation and effects could be darker and more pronounced.The summons minions especially needs changeable skins options.

Staff marks and wells animation needs a rehaul similar to the new thieves skills.

Mainly playing Eso right now. Necro there feels much more necro like than in gw.

In eso, necro can heal and uses corpses to strengthen his skills. Especially his support skills. But also can use it's minions or corpses to deal dmg... Sure, that also has some weaknesses.

In gw:Every class has to have weaknesses, but not:-Weak to cc-weak to range-no real sustain-no ability to prevent dmg-no mobility

While other classes only have one real weakness, that is stealth attack burst, or very high Condi pressure of an opponent, that is also able to heal or prevent dmg taken

[Kalavier.1097]

@Nimon.7840 said:

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

@"XECOR.2814" said:I dont like gw2 necro, i just like necromancer concept. This is why i like necro.

Same here.I agree with most of OP’s points but feel that Necromancer skills, animation and effects could be darker and more pronounced.The summons minions especially needs changeable skins options.

Staff marks and wells animation needs a rehaul similar to the new thieves skills.

Mainly playing Eso right now. Necro there feels much more necro like than in gw.

In eso, necro can heal and uses corpses to strengthen his skills. Especially his support skills. But also can use it's minions or corpses to deal dmg... Sure, that also has some weaknesses.

In gw:Every class has to have weaknesses, but not:-Weak to cc-weak to range-no real sustain-no ability to prevent dmg-no mobility

While other classes only have one real weakness, that is stealth attack burst, or very high Condi pressure of an opponent, that is also able to heal or prevent dmg taken

I'd honestly be surprised if ESO managed to make any class feel unique and actually matter. With no weapons or armors being limited to professions, my experience with that game was that what class you picked didn't mean a thing. The classes had no lore, no history, just a minor blurb and some skills.

There is also the fact to play necromancer in ESO you have to pay for the base game, and then pay for the expansion. ESO is a beautiful game, but the gameplay is meh and the world never caught me with the constantly changing tutorials. The fact there is zero class identity and "Everybody can do everything" meant classes, skills had zero story, meaning, or weight to them. Add in you can transmute any weapon to look like another, any armor class into a different one, you literally can't look at a person and figure out roughly what they could do for your team/in combat. That guy swinging two daggers in a robe could be wielding two maces in heavy plate armor. Two entirely different roles.

[Josiah.2967]

Only minions based build that is viable for some things. (needs a buff to really be viable)I always play/enjoy minion based builds.

[Lily.1935]

@Yasai.3549 said:Problem with Core : Elites are better.

Problem with Elites : other classes Elites are better.

Why? Because Necros are easy to play.

This ease of access cut out alot of mechanical potential when it comes to Necro, something many other classes have and require practice to pull off.

As such, a noob Necro and an experienced Necro are one and the same, difference only being their knowledge of the game.

That is not true. The difference between a noob necro and a vet is like night and day. The noob takes thousands of unnecessary damage over the course of a match or even in pve. They burn through their shroud without conservation, cant even touch scourge without drowning.

Scourge on it's own is one of the most difficult elite specs to master. The only one I found more difficult was weaver.

[Yasai.3549]

@Lily.1935 said:

That is not true. The difference between a noob necro and a vet is like night and day. The noob takes thousands of unnecessary damage over the course of a match or even in pve. They burn through their shroud without conservation, cant even touch scourge without drowning.

Scourge on it's own is one of the most difficult elite specs to master. The only one I found more difficult was weaver.

That's like every single noob vs vet.

[Lily.1935]

@Yasai.3549 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

That is not true. The difference between a noob necro and a vet is like night and day. The noob takes thousands of unnecessary damage over the course of a match or even in pve. They burn through their shroud without conservation, cant even touch scourge without drowning.

Scourge on it's own is one of the most difficult elite specs to master. The only one I found more difficult was weaver.

That's like every single noob vs vet.

Vet players who try necro fall into the same trap too though. Necro vets specifically don't.

Scourge is also one that took me a few months to master. Now, mind you this was at release of path of fire. However in the same duration I quickly picked up on Revenant to where I'm doing comparable damage to raid Renegades without knowing the proper rotation. Scourge is really easy to mess up. So much so that vet necros still don't fully understand how to use it. And the raiding community has been evolving with strats only used recently. The misconception around necro is that it's super easy to play. That's not the case. It has a hard reward cap on good plays. Necromancer is supposed to be a low risk low reward profession. But this entirely depends on the context. It always has that low reward but its risk varies. This gives it the illusion of being a low skill profession when in reality it's more medium skill than anything.

[Yasai.3549]

@Lily.1935 said:

@Yasai.3549 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

Vet players who try necro fall into the same trap too though. Necro vets specifically don't.

Scourge is also one that took me a few months to master. Now, mind you this was at release of path of fire. However in the same duration I quickly picked up on Revenant to where I'm doing comparable damage to raid Renegades without knowing the proper rotation. Scourge is really easy to mess up. So much so that vet necros still don't fully understand how to use it. And the raiding community has been evolving with strats only used recently. The misconception around necro is that it's super easy to play. That's not the case. It has a hard reward cap on good plays. Necromancer is supposed to be a low risk low reward profession. But this entirely depends on the context. It always has that low reward but its risk varies. This gives it the illusion of being a low skill profession when in reality it's more medium skill than anything.

That's what I meant by game knowledge.

Anyone including a 6 year veteran can be a total scrub when encountering a new class for the first time.

My stance is that Necro of all other classes are easier to pick up in all its aspects.

I should have mentioned that as such, having an easier entry also meant a smoother and easier mastery.

Meanwhile there are other builds for other professions which is harder to pickup and master, like Revenant, Engineer and Elementalist.

And this is due to mechanical simplicity across all specs for Necro : Shroud.

Remove Shroud and all yu get is a mage which throw stuff at people.

This is extremely different from removing Steal from Thief, because they still have Stealth attacks and Initiative.

Remove Legends from Revenant and they have Energy but their profession also falls apart.

Remove Toolbelt from Engi and they have Kits.

Remove Attunement from Ele and they have Conjures but they also kinda fall apart like Revenant.

Only others which also fall into this same trap as Necro is Warrior, Guardian and Ranger. ( though it is not exactly similar since Warrior has a core trait which encourages frequent weapon swapping, Guardians kinda support Aegis play with their traits as well without their Virtues, and Rangers are kinda also slightly affected by the need of Pets, Pet diversity and having an entire skill type called Commands)

[Lily.1935]

@Yasai.3549 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Yasai.3549 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

Vet players who try necro fall into the same trap too though. Necro vets specifically don't.

Scourge is also one that took me a few months to master. Now, mind you this was at release of path of fire. However in the same duration I quickly picked up on Revenant to where I'm doing comparable damage to raid Renegades without knowing the proper rotation. Scourge is really easy to mess up. So much so that vet necros still don't fully understand how to use it. And the raiding community has been evolving with strats only used recently. The misconception around necro is that it's super easy to play. That's not the case. It has a hard reward cap on good plays. Necromancer is supposed to be a low risk low reward profession. But this entirely depends on the context. It always has that low reward but its risk varies. This gives it the illusion of being a low skill profession when in reality it's more medium skill than anything.

That's what I meant by game knowledge.

Anyone including a 6 year veteran can be a total scrub when encountering a new class for the first time.

My stance is that Necro of all other classes are easier to pick up in all its aspects.

I should have mentioned that as such, having an easier entry also meant a smoother and easier mastery.

Meanwhile there are other builds for other professions which is harder to pickup and master, like Revenant, Engineer and Elementalist.

And this is due to mechanical simplicity across all specs for Necro : Shroud.

Remove Shroud and all yu get is a mage which throw stuff at people.

This is extremely different from removing Steal from Thief, because they still have Stealth attacks and Initiative.

Remove Legends from Revenant and they have Energy but their profession also falls apart.

Remove Toolbelt from Engi and they have Kits.

Remove Attunement from Ele and they have Conjures but they also kinda fall apart like Revenant.

Only others which also fall into this same trap as Necro is Warrior, Guardian and Ranger. ( though it is not exactly similar since Warrior has a core trait which encourages frequent weapon swapping, Guardians kinda support Aegis play with their traits as well without their Virtues, and Rangers are kinda also slightly affected by the need of Pets, Pet diversity and having an entire skill type called Commands)

I don't agree that it's easy to master. It isn't. I had an easier time mastering kit engineer than necromancer. Kit engineer makes a lot of sense. It's just a lot of key presses. Necro doesn't. It's not very intuitive on how things are supposed to work. At a cursory glance it looks easy but when diving into the mechanics the class has major conflicts and unusual combinations you don't see with other professions.

[Konrad Curze.5130]

I used to play necro but I got disgusted with how dumb-proof easy and powerful it is, playing it makes me feel dirty.Im playing weaver now and enjoying the game 10000x more, because when I beat stuff I feel like Im beating it, not that the class is beating it on its own with built-in cruise control

dropping the training wheels feels good man

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Konrad Curze.5130 said:I used to play necro but I got disgusted with how dumb-proof easy and powerful it is, playing it makes me feel dirty.Im playing weaver now and enjoying the game 10000x more, because when I beat stuff I feel like Im beating it, not that the class is beating it on its own with built-in cruise control

dropping the training wheels feels good man

In PvP it’s quiete the opposite...where ele Weaver is pretty much brain dead spam while necro (ignoring scourge) is one of the hardest specs to perform with.

Funny how that is.

[Kaladel.1670]

@Lily.1935 said:Scourge on it's own is one of the most difficult elite specs to master. The only one I found more difficult was weaver.I'd like to hear more details on your experience, point of view, etc. about scourge mastery. That sounds interesting. Maybe in a topic on the necro sub-forum if you have the time/will ?

[Lily.1935]

@Kaladel.1670 said:

@Lily.1935 said:Scourge on it's own is one of the most difficult elite specs to master. The only one I found more difficult was weaver.I'd like to hear more details on your experience, point of view, etc. about scourge mastery. That sounds interesting. Maybe in a topic on the necro sub-forum if you have the time/will ?

I don't have a lot of time lately unfortunately. You can message me and I can give you some details about it but It might take a while. I don't usually have the time to make essays on the forums like I used to.

[Ryou.2398]

@"ZeftheWicked.3076" said:Warning! This threat is actually serious

Preface

If you say nothing, no one will hear you, or worse they'll hear what they want to hear. So here i am making a real, non-sarcastic theme about why i <3 necro. So the devs can read it and understand what I (and other fellow necros who post below) value and appreciate in our profession. Hopefully to not take wrong turns with it in the future.

So why do I love necro?

1. The theme & feels. Tastes are a personal matter, but the necro community and the amount of vocal players it has say it clearly - the necro nailed it on the head for many when it comes to it's overall thematic (death/curse/condition mage) and it's execution. The color scheme is awesome (black + green + tints of red), the skills are oozing with vile, accursed and undead thematic, and everything he does feels necrotic to the bone (which will soon be revived to serve it's new master!)

2. Uniqueness. One of the last things you'd associate with a profession played by hordes of players is uniqueness...but that's exactly the word to describe the necro. On every step he differentiates himself from the rest of the pack. How many have aceess to boon corrupts? How many have half the condition manipulation capability that he has? How many sustain via life steal and swapping two healthbars? How many have fears that make your foes flee in terror and trait to capitalize on that?

While other classes have their strengths, they are still too similar to one another. Almost every one of them has a block. Almost every one of them has evade frames. Almost all can boon bomb their party or condi bomb their enemy. Every one of them can cleanse condies, But in general if feels the same. Buff up, pop "wonder defense", burst.Is there any single class that can manipulate boons like necro can condies? Maybe mesmer but even that is not close to depth of necro's capability with condies. What is their cc again? Dazes, stuns, knockbacks, pulls, launches...all have that. Nothing unique there. If feels like they all stand on one side, and necro on the other, getting nearly none of theirs, but them getting nearly none of his.

Now i will give revanants props - that is one class that does feel as unique as a necro in it's own field. It's also closest to overlapping with necro's condi manipulation depth, but necro was first. In that area Rev is a follower, not a precursor.

3. Builds. Necromancer has extremely wide array of possible viable builds and gear setups. He is not pigenholed to one gear type or one build type to be relevant. This is a result of 3 aspects of necro's gameplay coming together:

• very balanced and interesting traitlines - necro traitlines are amazing work of balance (save slightly weaker Death Magic). Almost every line fits into any scenario, promoting huge build variety. Curses? Can work great with power builds (extra crit, weakness on crit, condi cleansing and boon corrupt) Blood Magic? Huge sustain for both power and condi, can add some power dps (vampiric presence) Spite? Can be used a healing/sustain line with signets of suffering (huge sustain from signet of vampirism and locust). Hardly ever is a line "Meh, useless in my case" when you build.
• no godmode defenses. Necro's defenses are like swiss knife - he has tons of them, but each is situational and right for certain scenarios. This means variety in your utility bar and synergy between utilities and traits (so one covers the aspects other is not dealing with).
• Excellent synergy with gear. Due to above, and necro's profile as attrition fighter, stats from gear actually matter on the defensive end. Top that off with tons of free stats he can get from traits, and it's not another "equip berserker gear and rest is done with utility skills" profession. Necro can reliably use almost any gear set there is, and it'll work and provide him with actual benefits.

4. The missing RPG experience - almost every other profession feels like action game - planning and experimenting be damned. Just slab meta gear, this and that and press the panic button at the right time. With necro i feel the strongest that my stats actually matter, my gear choices are my own, and 50% of the victory is done away from fighthing where i pick and choose things for my build, rather then focusing just on piano play in actual combat.

My fears for the future

Obviously necro has issues. In spvp you focus necro first becuase he is the only one that can't pop a wonder defense and flush all your party's burst down the toilet. Core is underperforming, obviously, and scourge is either OP or nerfed to ground (10s nefarious favor, eeesh). That being said, my biggest fear for necro is trying to make him like the rest. He has proven to be a counter profession, someone who counters their kits that he himself does not have. And that's how i hope it'll be developed - giving him defenses and mobility unique to himself (just pls not that broken kitten dark path that misses anything, anywhere anytime) that can counter the current cheap dogpile tactics when used correctly.

I honestly would love playing a necro if there was a cosmetic choice for pets, the first ones you get are just hideous, and before someone tries to get smart and say well thats the point necros are evil. I mean they do not even look slightly bad ass, they just look really weird, now some people like that but many others do not. I will gladly pay for a cosmetic option

I know I can skip pet builds but I rather try other classes first.

[Zawn.9647]

i feel like necro is in a decent spot rn where all other specs should be too - scourge (the dominant spec) was nerfed and now you see everything in pvp, from core necro to reaper and still some scourges. it has its defenses but nothing OP, core/reaper can dish a lot of damage, but are easily avoidable - differente from so many classes like condi thief, holo, warrior, etc

[Mini Crinny.6190]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Konrad Curze.5130 said:I used to play necro but I got disgusted with how dumb-proof easy and powerful it is, playing it makes me feel dirty.Im playing weaver now and enjoying the game 10000x more, because when I beat stuff I feel like

Im

beating it, not that the class is beating it on its own with built-in cruise control

dropping the training wheels feels good man

In PvP it’s quiete the opposite...where ele Weaver is pretty much brain dead spam while necro (ignoring scourge) is one of the hardest specs to perform with.

Funny how that is.

Clearly you haven't played Weaver.

[Danko.1946]

Necro I awesome, I love the theme and the feel, it was good when I only played core game and great as Reaper... Scourge is good, but I prefer the Reaper shroud soooo much more... One thing I agree with many is that those minions suck ... I don't know What the devs were thinking when they designed those minions, specially that flying black speck, is that supposed to be what? .... So many people has said the same, Necro minions suck real bad in this game... Come on Anet make some changes, you can even sell skin packs and make money out and fix your terrible design...

[LucianDK.8615]

@Danko.1946 said:Necro I awesome, I love the theme and the feel, it was good when I only played core game and great as Reaper... Scourge is good, but I prefer the Reaper shroud soooo much more... One thing I agree with many is that those minions suck ... I don't know What the devs were thinking when they designed those minions, specially that flying black speck, is that supposed to be what? .... So many people has said the same, Necro minions suck real bad in this game... Come on Anet make some changes, you can even sell skin packs and make money out and fix your terrible design...

Minions is fine for solo pve. Thats where they shine and lets you solo many champions. But they are worthless in any group content. I think Anet didnt want a repeat of gw1 where a single minionmaster could make any of the group instances completely faceroll.

[Dadnir.5038]

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@"Danko.1946" said:Necro I awesome, I love the theme and the feel, it was good when I only played core game and great as Reaper... Scourge is good, but I prefer the Reaper shroud soooo much more... One thing I agree with many is that those minions suck ... I don't know What the devs were thinking when they designed those minions, specially that flying black speck, is that supposed to be what? .... So many people has said the same, Necro minions suck real bad in this game... Come on Anet make some changes, you can even sell skin packs and make money out and fix your terrible design...

Minions is fine for solo pve. Thats where they shine and lets you solo many champions. But they are worthless in any group content. I think Anet didnt want a repeat of gw1 where a single minionmaster could make any of the group instances completely faceroll.

You could faceroll instance with the ritualist's minion but not with the necromancer's. Apart from anecdotics boss farm that don't even use minions, the necromancer always needed companions in GW1. In term of soloing ability, in GW1, I'd place necro very far from the first place and it wouldn't even be due to their minions.

Even in group, the necromancer's minion in GW1 weren't making things "faceroll". There was value to have one in your team due to the fact that body blocking was a thing in this game, but a player would have been hard pressed to play a minionmaster as efficiently as a mercenary did.