Necros are unequivocally better than eles.

[shadowhand]

Actually I have to disagree with your first post, Shawn.

Necros are as good as eles though and better at some tasks.

But my ele can certainly hold her own as well. The necro is more durable in most situations, but if I time my attunement switches right with the ele, I can last as long or longer even while being swarmed by foes in the Orr zones.

(I can only speak for pve and wvw though - I've not played either necro or ele in spvp or tpvp.)

[kokabel]

I'll be on the Ele team. My build isn't super nuke-y though, but I can kite people until they die of bleeding and burning so it's all cool.

Haven't played Necro enough, but I find Ele to be stronger overall. Entirely depends on weapon though - D/D can dish out massive damage(either condi or spike depending on spec). S/D, my favourite, has a nice mixture of crowd control, condition damage and some spiking ability. Staff is okay, but much much stronger when supporting a group rather than soloing. (And since Eles lack weapon swap, I've taken to manually swapping S/D and Staff around as needed during play - this makes my specs suboptimal, at least until I get a genius idea or two.)

Necro is nice enough, but to me so far, it feels a lot clumsier than the Ele. Not sure how else to explain it - I just don't have the capacity to run circles around the enemy with Necro as I can with Ele.

[The King of Dust]

You don't have to run around enemies as a necro though. You can just stand there, chipping away at their health until they're dead. Well, unless they're hard hitting champions, then you kite them around with the staff while laying some marks right under your feet for the champ to walk on.

Unless they're champs with lots of ranged attacks. Then you need some help.

[shawn]

Oh this thread got bumped. Well.

Actually I have to disagree with your first post, Shawn.

Confession: the whole post wasn't meant to be serious. Although I like the play style of necros slightly more, ele is much better in the hands of people that don't suck.

[shadowhand]

I got that, but yeah, on a serious note I feel that necros and eles are pretty much even.