Guild Wars 2

Hi all! First off, before any mod moves this to the necro subforum, I’d respectfully request this remain in the dungeon section. I highly respect the capabilities and knowledge of the dungeon forum, and I mean no disrespect to necro subforum, I just simply don’t know the frequenters there to have an idea of how to value their opinions.

Given the Crown Pavilion, I’ve managed to get my Necromancer up to 74, and will soon have her up to 80. Now I already use war, guard, mes, ele, and thief in dungeons and fractals, and I value each professions’ abilities in that setting. If in the case that the bug hits me to use my necro in dungeons, I’d like some suggestions on what builds you’ve used or seen used that you felt we’re the best or most synergistic for dungeon/fractal settings.

Thanks all, and while I’m sure many may say “don’t use your necro” I’d just like to keep those comments to a minimum.

Nemesis has created three different videos, for the Zerkernecro, the hybrid necro, and the conditionmancer. These three builds are basically perfect, and I’ve been using his Glasscannon build, to which I’ll supply a link. Check the three of them out Best of luck!

Exactly what I was gonna post^

I use the glass build in certain dungeons and the DPS is nasty

I also use the condition build in places I know there will be alot of adds etc, also a solid choice.

You only want to be going for dps in dungeons. Nemesis’s zerker build is a solo build and is very innefficient in a decent group environment.

This is the highest dps build you can do.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhhu1IjW6elmxGDfCA6Ru46cMjjXm+w6A-jAyAYrBRTQgpMgUBgkXR0YLuFRjVXjpcJiqBA-e

Can swap out BiP for Well of Corruption if your group is giving you max might. Or you can swap it for a situational utility. Flesh golem is probably the elite you want most of the time. Lich is less dps than dagger but good for fights like the dredge power suit in fractals.

Ill just quote the rotation from the other thread i posted it in.
“The rotation is basically to keep locust swarm up and flash DS on cooldown for fury and weakening shroud. The rest of the time its just dagger auto attack, but you treat it like warrior axe due to the huge damage of the final strike. You either cast the wells at the start or save them for below 50% so they benefit from close to death. Im not sure whether focus 4 is a dps loss or not. But you can cast that for extra vuln, on a single target it works out as pretty much permanent 12 stacks of vuln as long as you use it on cooldown.”

Perfect, I will sift through all of this helpful information!

Nemesis is horrible. Use Spoj’s build. I just took it through TA and CoE and it was fine. Just be careful with your wells when you have an ele. Conversely, you can treat it as a race to see who can put down fields first and then laugh at all the Area Blindness that comes up. Great class for trolling your team. The vuln stacking and aoe blind well for LoS pulls is pretty decent, but the lack of any other party boons means that the best you can really hope for is not to slow your party down over another class. You occupy the generic DPS slot.

Spoj: Is Unyielding Blast (Soul Reaping VI) really worth it? If you’re just flashing DS on cooldown, you wouldn’t be using Life Blast at all right?

Broadicea.8294:

Spoj: Is Unyielding Blast (Soul Reaping VI) really worth it? If you’re just flashing DS on cooldown, you wouldn’t be using Life Blast at all right?

Not really, but there isnt any clear better alternative. You could take the DS cooldowns trait so you can aoe burst slightly more frequently, but thats rarely needed. Its kind of like warriors discipline line, everyone takes signet mastery because theres nothing better. On the plus side piercing life blasts are pretty good when you need to range for whatever reason, and you can sort of use them as a cleave. If im running around open world i take spectral mastery so i can keep permanent swiftness with spectral walk and locust swarm. Also can be considered if you need spectral walk/armour for a stunbreak.

I alternate between conditionmancer and powermancer for dungeons. You’ll only want to go with conditionmancer if you have a static dungeon group and you are the only condition damage dealer. Anyway, the build is something like this:

30/30/10/0/0
Reaper’s Might, Dhuumfire, Filler
Terror, Lingering Curses, Filler
Staff Mastery

Call carrion or rabid gear (I personally prefer carrion)
Food: Rare Veggie Pizza
100% bleeding duration at least via runes, sigils, or giver’s weapons.
Scepter/Dagger, Staff.
Required Utilities: Epidemic, Spectral Wall

I don’t list much more on specifics, because contrary to popular belief, there is no best build or set way to make a type of build. Personally I like to use Training of the Master with Bone Minions and the Flesh Golem to have supplementary direct damage alongside of conditions. Some people like to do things differently than that. I also don’t keep all of the utilities static, often changing them around on an encounter by encounter basis.

I also have a power build that I run:

30/0/10/0/30

Reaper’s Might, Axe Training, Close to Death
Ritual of Protection
Unyielding Blast, Deathly Perception, Filler

Trinkets + weapons berserkerk, armor is knights.
Any offensive Food
Axe/Focus, Dagger/Warhorn
Only required utility: well of suffering.

And this can run pretty good in pugs. I usually run it with well of corruption and Signet of Spite, though sometimes I’ll go full wells and use well of blood along with well of power. The pug friendly nature comes from Ritual of Protection, which gives protection to everyone in range of the well for a short time. That way, when dealing with overzealous but incompetent people, the wells offer some form of damage mitigation while doing damage themselves.

Why do the necro’s follow me into the dungeon forums >_<

>powermancer
>knight’s
>lol

Broadicea.8294:

>powermancer
>knight’s
>lol

Actually, the trinkets, weapons, orbs, and build are all berserker. I chose Knight for the armor because necromancers don’t have all the vigor and blocks and controls that every other class has, so they need at least some defense. You won’t believe how often that 400 toughness has saved me.

A necro in full Knights is about as tough as a full zerker guardian. Which is to say, you still really need to dodge everything and you might as well not kitten your DPS in the process.

Yeah. Whereas a necro in full zerk still has like 19K HP. Same room for error as Warriors.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

A necro in full Knights is about as tough as a full zerker guardian. Which is to say, you still really need to dodge everything and you might as well not kitten your DPS in the process.

^ This.

I tried all zerk + knights armor for kittens and giggles on my power necro, and the extra “survivability” was non-existent. Immediately salvaged it and went back to my zerk armor set. Technically yes, it’ll keep you up a few more times every now and then, but at the cost of crippling your DPS all the time.

Mossman at lvl 48 doesn’t give a kitten about your knights gear.

Tentonhammr.7849:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

A necro in full Knights is about as tough as a full zerker guardian. Which is to say, you still really need to dodge everything and you might as well not kitten your DPS in the process.

^ This.

I tried all zerk + knights armor for kittens and giggles on my power necro, and the extra “survivability” was non-existent. Immediately salvaged it and went back to my zerk armor set. Technically yes, it’ll keep you up a few more times every now and then, but at the cost of crippling your DPS all the time.

Mossman at lvl 48 doesn’t give a kitten about your knights gear.

Mossman is usually busy trying to make me his Moss Wife

You lose very little damage when mixing in knights. Only 91 power an 18% crit damage. When standing at 2729 power and 99% crit damage already, this is a mere 3.3% from power and 7.2% from crit damage. This is, of course, assuming that the food used is curry butternut squash soup and Master Maintenance Oil.

What is won in exchange? Well, this depends on how you look at it. If you go with the build I posted and have 100 in death magic, then the 315 toughness gives you a 16.3% reduction in damage. If you go with a pure DPS 30/10/0/0/30 build, then this comes to a 22.6% reduction in damage. For now, I’ll run with the 16.3% in further examples.

16.3% of your health is about 3000 HP, and factoring in DS (as an additional 156% of your health), this is about 7,700 HP. So, an easy metric to see how often it is this armor saves you, look at your health whenever it is low. If it drops below 3K HP, or 7.7K HP if you wore down Deathshroud first, then the armor just saved you from dying. A second, harder metric is to look at your health and see what percentage of damage enemies are doing when they hit you, and divide that up into halves, quarters, thirds, etc. If 16% more damage than what you took would put you over half, third, or a quarter health lost, then the armor has bought you an additional hit, two hits, or three hits that weren’t there previously.

I drop below 7.7k HP quite frequently. Mostly because the dagger really makes you belly up for the damage it does. I even drop below 3k on occasion to, in which I usually just go into DS and then wait for an opportunity to use a healing skill. There is a further thing to add to this, too.That 16.3% increases the overall effectiveness of heals, so you can take that 3K HP, and add an extra 850 for every consume conditions, as well as 16.3% of every heal your teammates give you. In long battles that last over a minute, this threshold for “the armor just saved you” gets pushed to 6.4K HP, for using consume conditions 4 times or more.

I wouldn’t even know how to begin factoring in life force generation. So all in all, that extra 315 toughness contributes a lot, and at a minuscule decrease in damage that is less than what the RNG in the game varies anyway.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I drop below 7.7k HP quite frequently. Mostly because the dagger really makes you belly up for the damage it does. I even drop below 3k on occasion to, in which I usually just go into DS and then wait for an opportunity to use a healing skill. There is a further thing to add to this, too.That 16.3% increases the overall effectiveness of heals, so you can take that 3K HP, and add an extra 850 for every consume conditions, as well as 16.3% of every heal your teammates give you. In long battles that last over a minute, this threshold for “the armor just saved you” gets pushed to 6.4K HP, for using consume conditions 4 times or more.

I wouldn’t even know how to begin factoring in life force generation. So all in all, that extra 315 toughness contributes a lot, and at a minuscule decrease in damage that is less than what the RNG in the game varies anyway.

Sounds like a learn to play issue to me.

If necros had access to vigor, blocks, and invulnerability it would be a L2P issue.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

If necros had access to vigor, blocks, and invulnerability it would be a L2P issue.

Thats why you take an energy sigil for the more difficult encounters until they decide to give necro’s vigor.

Then you have to sacrifice sigil of force or fire and switch to an inferior weapon just to dodge. The damage lost here from no more sigil of force is roughly on par with what you would lose with just going in knight armor and keeping the sigil of force or fire.

Force on dagger, strength on warhorn, bloodlust/perception on focus. Have a second focus with energy. You dont lose dps if your swapping offhands.

91 power and 18% crit damage is nothing? That’s like 11-12% overall dps. And you quibble about losing 5% from a sigil as a reason not to use Energy?

what

I love when people from the class subforums wander into the dungeon forum

all wide eyed, all full of hope and moxie, all believing in themselves

Broadicea.8294:

I love when people from the class subforums wander into the dungeon forum

all wide eyed, all full of hope and moxie, all believing in themselves

:D

@Nike
Would bloodlust or perception be better for my build?

spoj.9672:

Broadicea.8294:

I love when people from the class subforums wander into the dungeon forum

all wide eyed, all full of hope and moxie, all believing in themselves

:D

@Nike
Would bloodlust or perception be better for my build?

Actually i know of this spreadsheet that was created by Nike whom i found in his warrior guru guide (i believe he is the same Nike whom is posting in the topic) to answer just your question. Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At-9DjTMMF1jdFRCMmM1V1VzRHMzR2VjLU0wRWVObFE#gid=0

Anyway i punched in the numbers and results differ in different situation.
1) fury+ 25 might stacks or 25 might sttacks without fury= perception is better
2) fury only= bloodlust better
I assume the damage modifiers to be 10% scholar runes+5% force + 20% close to death + target the weak 8%.

Maybe u will like to play with the spreadsheet yourself.

spoj.9672:

Broadicea.8294:

I love when people from the class subforums wander into the dungeon forum

all wide eyed, all full of hope and moxie, all believing in themselves

:D

@Nike
Would bloodlust or perception be better for my build?

Assuming 25 Might, Banner of Discipline, and Fury. Also assuming 5 conditions on target.

Bloodlust is better by about half a percent.

Oddly enough, if you use Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup (100pow +10% crit damage) Perception becomes better by about 1.5%. Since that costs a crap ton of gold probably best to stick with Bloodlust.

edit: I didnt take into account Scholar runes or Sigils. and i counted Close to Death as 9%, which is what it is over time.

Ok thanks. Means i dont need to buy a new sigil ;p