What's the deal with Necromancers?

I just started playing Guild Wars for the first time. Looking around on the forums, the wiki, and PvX, it seems like Necromancers are extremely effective. They show up in so many of the most popular group builds, and some of the ones the community labels most effective are entirely based around Necros.

Are Necromancers completely OP?

I came from Allods, which heavily favored the Necromancer class as well. I don't have a lot of MMORPG experience. Is it common that Necromancer type classes are among the most powerful classes in MMOs in general?

I wonder if game developers are just that geeked about undead heroes. Or is it that they are catering to the mainstream goth trend? Or perhaps that the same players who are into the cool undead meme happen to also be the kind who need to be very powerful, so developers lump the two together. Maybe it's just that difficult to balance a heavily pet/minion based class.

Just curious whether or not this is common or not, and as to the reason behind it.

I don't know what happens in other role playing games, but in Guild Wars PvE Necromancers are OP because of their primary attribute, Soul Reaping, that fuels them with a lot of energy, allowing them to use very powerful skills without even taking breath, and allows heroes (AI) to do something useful despite them being terrible at energy management.

I don't know if this was a designed result, Soul Reaping is so powerful because in PvE there are lots of deaths (mostly monsters and minions), and this is the actual reason why in PvP it's a total different story.

When it comes to fantasy settings, magic users tend to have 'really powerful spells' (as opposed to non-magic users and 'really powerful other stuff') which are balanced by some kind of casting limit (mana, recharge, spells/day, etc.)

It's common in games that the most powerful characters are magic users who have the 'really powerful spells' and manage to get around the casting limit.

For Guild Wars, it seems necromancer's primary is the best way to get around one of the spell casting limits (energy) so you have some pretty awesome necro builds that use pretty awesome necro spells.

Or maybe you're just reading too much into it.

1. For heroes, they have a couple of really great armor ignoring skills, which is one of the best things to bring for Hard Mode where mob armor is buffed way too high, as well as the Soul Reaping primary attribute which basically gives infinite energy. Their skills and abilities are just better suited for HM than most.

2. In groups, you'll almost always find a Necromancer for either direct damage or buffs. Direct damage options are things like Feast of Corruption in a DoA spike group or Mark of Pain in a physical/manly spike. Again because of Soul Reaping, Necros are also great at throwing around Orders skills and other buffs like Great Dwarf Weapon with little concern for energy.

They're not really OP, they just have some of the best options in the game in more situations.

Soul Reaping...

That's exactly why a sin's auto-attack scythe swing does more dmg than a 'really powerful spell' from a class with one energypool, two "dmg" and two support attributes. (really OT, but I had to say it)

Besides Soul Reaping, Necros have access to high, armor-ignoring (a plus in HM), conditional dmg. Basically it's ok that conditional dmg is higher than unconditional, but the conditions are easy (tbh, which foe isn't "attacking or using a skill")

And yes, there are many other games where "dark magic" is more powerful than "normal magic" (ever read through "Warlock is Blizzard's Favourite Class QQ" threads?)

ApolloIV: Yes, quite possibly. I saw the trend in two MMOs, and sensed that it might be true in others. Perhaps it just comes down to current trends in entertainment, where "white magic" or "faith" is often downplayed as week, and "heroes" find themselves required to fight fire with fire, in other words you gotta be evil to kick evil's butt. Then again, perhaps its just coincidence that Necromancers get the love from devs. =D

Yaksha: Interesting thoughts regarding magic users and balancing them. In addition to the power of Necromancers, I also noticed that Guild Wars and Allods have something in common in regard with the general mage type (elementalist). Both games seem to have had really powerful mages at the beginning, then somewhere along the line the class that was supposed to be a glass cannon, doing the highest spike damage in the game had damage output nerfed, and ended up finding themselves as more of a support/utility class. It's possible that mages are just one of the most difficult classes to balance, especially in PvP. Give the mage two much damage output, and it doesn't matter if they break easy, because the melee classes get nuked to death before they can even get close enough. Give them too little, and they don't feel like nukers anymore, and end up warrior-fodder.

Fengshuidove: I suppose having some of the best options in the game in more situations could be called a kind of OP, though I probably should have avoided the "OP" tag altogether, since it is the kind of thing that probably degrades conversations rather than helps. Necros is both game I've played seem to have the most versatility and hefty power. The same can be said of Warriors, however, as they tend to get the love with both high defense and high damage output.

Mashiyu: I kind of expected that WoW had something similar going on.

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts. Seems "soul reaping" is one of the big reasons for this particular game. In Allods, it was a combination of DoTs that could tick away for so long a Necro could kill their opponent after they were dead, and very strong self heals.

It's interesting that ranger types, as jack-of-all-trades often end up feeling underpowered because they are the "master of none", but Necromancers seem to be just as versatile, but not suffer because of it.

Mark of Pain... Not Soul Reaping.

If i understand correctly a build like that is exploiting a synergy between two different classes.

Also does it really do more damage? I've never used a scythe before, but according to the wiki page, auto attack scythe swing is 41 (max damage) * 4 (3 adjacent targets) / 1.75 (attack speed) = 93 damage per sec, before buffs and modifiers

At attribute 15, necro spells like Feast of Corruption and Unholy feast do about 60-80 damage to multiple foes, and its life stealing. There's also plenty of elementalist skills that do heaps of damage (100+) to multiple foes (foe + adjacent or near) like metero shower or rodgort's invocation and cause some other effect.

'really powerful spell' doesn't have to be damage dealing either. A lot of necro builds are built around particular spells that are a powerful effect which isn't nuking enemies.

I dunno about you, but I've honestly never seen a fantasy setting involving magic where there aren't powerful magic/spells which aren't game breaking only because they're held in check by certain casting limits.

In Guild Wars, opposed to many other RPGs, the physicals are the damage dealers, while the casters are more for support. Casters can deal a great amount of damage when they buff physicals, i.e. Mark of Pain, Strength of Honor or removing blind, but have mostly weak direct damage capabilities.

Powerful AoE spells diminish with higher armour with elementalists, though necromancer damage is mostly armour ignoring, the cast time and recharge needs to be taken into consideration when talking about DPS. This is why a Mark of Pain Nuker with AP or an Orders bar with SoH are optimal for supporting physicals, taking backseat damage (though you'll be dealing the most damage, with a good ball).

Autoattacking with daggers or a scythe will yield more damage overtime than one cast of FoC, for example, because it's not spammable at all.

I've no problem with a supporting role, but if the fire line isn't ment to deal dmg, why deal nearly all spells direct damage? (3 exeptions come to mind: Mark of Rodgort, Glyph of Immolation and Conjure Fire - did I forget something?). A question comes to mind: Was GW designed to have melees as the main damage dealers or did they become that as a side effect of HM and PvE skills?

Btw: I'm not saying that the ele doesn't have any powerful spells. Ether Renewal is great for misusing the secondary class (it's some kind of ele's Soul Reaping) and Blinding Surge for spammable AoE blindness (how broken is that?). Either one of these two is always in my bar.

As far as I know, physicals were always supposed to deal damage, casters were supposed to support them as midline support, and monks would heal. Then rits came in, then dervish... Then ER.

k, this thread (and especially the date) totally convinced me, that it has been like that since ... ever.
/sigh
/resign

Well I can see that the melee classes are the primary damage dealers in most cases.

But personally I don't think that thread applies so well to PvE. In PvP you can assume the things you're trying to hit are *smart*. In PvE if you have melee enemies, and you pull well, they'll all be grouped around you / your melee hero. Makes AoE nuking more useful. If the enemies are ranged, when I play melee character I find I waste time just running from one enemy to another. I get there, whack a few times, then start running to the next one. The ranged guys just stand still and keep going with their casting. As for nukers needing 8.5pips of energy to keep up - that's not counting energy management skills (attunement), and in PvE often you get through a mob in less than a minute anyway.

I generally play with 4 frontliners, and they have strong AoE damage also, through either Splinter Weapon (although rare I use it), Death Blossom and Whirlwind Attack (also Hundred Blades). You don't need caster damage like Searing Flames to reap the benefits of balling.

Mark of Pain is the only offensive spell you need in your physical team.

Just curious, for people who use mark of pain on hero builds/teams, how well does the hero AI use it?

I know that all melee heroes tend to attack the same thing (whatever you're attacking or whatever you're calling). So it's easy enough to focus fire like that.

But do you use Mark of Pain with a player necromancer? Or can a hero necromancer use it effectively enough?

Also, how do you get around the 20sec cooldown? I'd imagine with a setup like what you described HigherMinion, things are going to die pretty quickly. But you can only cast Mark of Pain once every 20seconds. Do you use recharge reduction? Echo? (although I don't think heroes use that very well at all)

That's where players have the upper hand over the AI; they can take Assassin's Promise to recharge it after every kill. A hero will cast it on a random target once every 20 seconds and it's practically useless with such a recharge. A 10 second reduction from Glyph of Renewal would work too, or Echo, but nothing is as effective for a human as AP.

Heroes can't really proritise any of those skills *and* know they have to cast Mark of Pain afterwards.