Guild Wars 2

Good morning folks (at least, morning for EST),
My Necro just hit level 80. I am beginning to craft (Jewel and Artificing), running some dungeons and Edge of the Mists as well as event farming to get my trait unlocks.

I’ve been reading the guides/builds here and elsewhere and most of them mention that I need Berserker gear and scholar runes. I am enjoying the grind, exploring, etc but I want to make sure that my efforts are directed towards what I “should” be doing. For those of you that have a Necro at 80, what did YOU do after hitting max level? What gear did you chase after? How did you get it? Did you get all or most of your traits unlocked? What gear is a “Wow” moment for you when you get it?

Having lots of fun so don’t worry about recommending a grind – I’ve been playing a “cryptic” MMO for two years so I definitely know about “the grind”

Thanks

First off, unless there is a very specific thing you wish to do that requires certain stats (or somewhere like PvP/WvW), you don’t NEED beserker gear and scholar runes. There are people that have the opinion where if you don’t have x gear you’re not doing it right, when that doesn’t hold any truth to it. Get the gear to go with the build that you are happiest playing.

I have 10 level 80s of varying professions. I don’t PvP/WvW much but that’s something that you can look into. There’s working on map completion if you want to have a legendary weapon in the future. Crafting you’re working on, which is great if you want to get some achievement points, craft for profit, craft legendary stuff and ascended gear for higher level fractals.

There’s completing the personal and living stories, if you haven’t kept up with those (if you intend on getting the expansion when it comes out and haven’t done the most current living story, I would highly recommend picking that up and working through that). Tied with the last LS is also working to get the luminescent gear from the Silverwastes (plus there’s plenty of events for karma, champ fights for drops, and chest runs). If you like gear hunting, then there’s trying for the ambrite weapons stemming out of Dry Top, and starting to gather materials for a legendary weapon.

My own Necro – I’ve been working on doing Tequatl at reset every night in hopes of getting her a Sunless weapon eventually. That will be my ‘wow’ when I get it! Her gear, I can’t remember the name off the top of my head as I’m at work, is high in power and condition damage. I play around with some PvP in the practice arena, do map completion, dungeons, unlocked traits for the hell of it, join up with an EotM zerg, and I’ll take a night here and there and follow a boss timer for all the big boss events around the maps for more karma and loot. Then there’s working things for achievement points (slayer deeds, jumping puzzles, fashion collector, other collections) for AP and the like.

So there’s plenty to do, depending on what your fancy is and what you want to get out of it

After I hit 80 on my necro, I just did some basic minimum gearing up and I think the first real goal I had was to obtain the light armor set, “Armor of the Lich”, from the arah dungeons. I started doing dungeons a little bit (which I hated) but stuck through it until I got my armor.
I did get the berserker set and I did actually end up putting scholar runes on it lol.
-I played edge of the mists a lot because it’s tons of fun on a necromancer, you do ridiculous amounts of damage in zerg fights, plus you can fear people off cliffs for lolz.
Tried to unlock every useful trait and skill during this time.
-Eventually joined a guild and played real WvW.
-Started group event farming and started doing World Boss events every day (Mostly “Tequatl the Sunless”) World bosses are pretty fun and make a decent amount of gold.
-Started doing PvP to get titles and have fun, then PvP quickly became my favorite mode of the game by far.
-Became obsessed with getting lots of expensive armor and weapon skins, also dyes.
-Now i’m currently set on crafting and getting ascended weapons and armor from playing PvP/world bossing. Also trying to make as much gold as possible.

TLDR; Get gear, do dungeons, play EoTM/WvW, Kill world bosses, play PvP, join a guild, get better gear, git money.

Excellent suggestions. Thanks Maethor and Sabre!! I appreciate it.

Hope to see you (on my team) in EotM

Just a word on meta builds for necros,

I have zerker with scholar runes and also rampagers with scholar runes – the rampager’s actually does far more damage than the zerker for my necro, I find. I swap them every so often and quite honestly I’m really surprised at the difference in dps. Given this, I’m not quite clear why some always insist zerker gear is the meta for all classes. I once saw someone say that ‘rampager is the zerker of condition classes’, and I think that may be true.

Back on topic,

Once you’re an 80, skipping through maps becomes a lot more fun because as an 80 necro, almost nothing can kill you really, not even multiple mobs (yay for death shroud 4 and 5). So farming for high-end mats suddenly becomes easy and fun, if you do artificing it’ll save you a ton of money, if you sell them they’ll make you a ton of money, it’s a win/win. World bosses and champs are also a pretty easy and fun way to make gold/mats

KILL ALL THE THINGS!!!

As far as gear/builds I found I really like playing conditions. (Such Bleeds). If you are running in groups, condis arent the greatest, but if solo stuff, condis are awesome. But thats just me. In any event, try out different things, and have fun.

Go for a legendary, or ascended armor, or both. Go for some of the achievements. I’m currently working on the Treasure Hunter one, and so far it’s pretty fun.

Good luck!

You don’t need berserker gear, but if you want to be contributing as best you can in group play you will want it.
As for runes, scholar would be best, but there are cheaper alternatives like ogre and eagle runes.

Exotic berserkers armour can be obtained a few different ways :
Trading post.
Karma vendor in the Temple of Grenth found in Cursed Shore (42k karma a piece).
CoF, CoE and Arah armour vendors in Lions Arch.
Crafting.
There may be other methods, but that’s all I can think of right now.

I’d highly recommend looking into consumables for dungeons.
Strong and potent slaying potions that correspond to the dungeon that your doing can be bought cheap from the trading post. My personal preference for food is blackberry pies (50 precision, 325 life steal / health regen at lvl 80 and a 1 second internal cooldown)

More great tips. Yay!!

Thanks Greyhound, pdavis and Ronin. I appreciate the tips. I hadn’t thought about food buffs much. Good to know.

If you play a little bit of WvW/EotM, I think the cheapest way to get a set of exotic armor is the armor master in your eternal battlegrounds (WvW teleport). They sell armor for a mix of badges of honor and gold, so it ends up costing you less than 1 gold a piece for a whole set of exotic.
You can also do this with weapons, any exotic weapon for 1g each from weapons master.
(This is all assuming you have some badges of honor left over, since you said you play EotM)

I got my full exotic zerker gear transmuted to cultural T3 Sylvari armor with the darkest of dyes, combined with toxic shoulders and gloves and black feather wings.
I feel awsome, and look awsome whenever i play him. And spamming 1 in DS on a tanky butt warrior cosntantly hcritting 4-5K through all dat toughness feels amazing.

Keep the tips coming.

Never thought about the WvW armor master – I’ll check it out. Thanks Sabre.

Noha – I haven’t looked at cultural stuff yet. How do you get it?

silence.4513:

Keep the tips coming.

Never thought about the WvW armor master – I’ll check it out. Thanks Sabre.

Noha – I haven’t looked at cultural stuff yet. How do you get it?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cultural_armor

Its found in your races home city. Look for a blue armor symbol on the mini map.

The Tier 3 gear can get quite expensive. But I do love the medium T3 human armor.
But Tier 1 & 2 isn’t too expensive, and offers some great looks. So far I’ve only look at human, but will have to roll an Asura and a Charr to unlock those skins.

silence.4513:

Keep the tips coming.

Never thought about the WvW armor master – I’ll check it out. Thanks Sabre.

Noha – I haven’t looked at cultural stuff yet. How do you get it?

Be aware that your Runes cannot be salvaged out of WvW/karma armor. So while you may save value going that route for the armor, it comes at a cost on the rune side if you ever decide to get new armor.

Still not a bad option, just something to be aware of.

Jerus.4350:

silence.4513:

Keep the tips coming.

Never thought about the WvW armor master – I’ll check it out. Thanks Sabre.

Noha – I haven’t looked at cultural stuff yet. How do you get it?

Be aware that your Runes cannot be salvaged out of WvW/karma armor. So while you may save value going that route for the armor, it comes at a cost on the rune side if you ever decide to get new armor.

Still not a bad option, just something to be aware of.

^He’s right but that basically only applies If you get ascended armor to replace it. Anything else you can just transmute the WvW armor to whatever else and it’s just the same. Once you get to ascended, an extra 5 gold for a rune doesn’t mean much to you anymore xD

Well, berserker and scholar are for a DPS build….

When you look at builds for necro you can splice ’m apart
Generally you see a limited amount of builds but there are a lot of builds posssible and viable for PvE and WvW, though some require builds which are not recommended for PvE dungeons due to condition usage, but this could change in the future. what you play is your choice and we can only give suggestions. I will refrain from suggestions but restructure the information:

Builds are either:

Power based:

1. DPS based on berzerk/assassin (dagger or axe, warhorn) (META)
2. Support: based on zerk, zealot/clerics/celestial (staff and dagger/focus)
3. Minion: based on berzerk, zealot assassin (staff or axe/warhorn)
4. Vampiric power: based on berzerk, zealots assassin (dagger, axe)
5. AOE bomber based on berzerk/assassin (staff)

Condition based: (scepter/dagger and staff)

1. Terrormancer Based on rabid, dire, sinister, rampager, carrion
2. Ep(idem)ic Condimancer based on rabid, dire, sinister, rampager, carrion
3. Condi support based on Apothecary/Shaman (very niche)

Hybrids, builds mixing 2 or more builds for a specific goal…
As the possibilities are huge I will not provide specific builds…

Fast few basic trait lines:

1. Power 6/2/0/0/6 (VI,?,XI;VI;-;-;II,VI,XII) (META)
2. Terror (power) 2/4/4/0/4 (VI;VI,IX;IV,VIII;-;VI,IX(or II/III)
3. Support 3/0/5/6/0 (III;-;IV,VII;III,VI,VIII;-)
4. Condition 2/6/4/2/0 (III;II,VII,XI;V,VII;III)
5. Terror (condi): 0/6/4/0/4 (-;II,IX,XI;V,VIII;IV,IX)
6. Survivor DS 2/2/6/0/4 (VI,;VI;IV,VI,XIII;-;II,VI)

I do not use a minion master build as minions are unwanted in dungeons, die way to fast in WVW and at world bosses. but it is very fun to level using minions. And a standoff build (axe/staff) can be very fun….

I make typo’s always check before you buy a trait and make sure it does what you expect. And guides should make you think: Why?, not just be there to copy.

I purposely left skills out of this guide. if you have skills you like try to find a matching build/traits or if you fancy a build try to add skills as you see fit.
In dungeons and WvW you’ll learn you need to swith to adapt, not just be a Meta Battle CopyClone.

Have fun playing necro. I hope you can view this and see further then just zerk.

The following post isn’t complete but contains a restructured list of some traits often used in PvE and WvW. I have no clue whatsoever which traits are used in PvP, I generall use my WvW support build there…

-edit- removed dozens of errors/typos

TRAITS for specific functions:

Death shroud:

1. Spite VI, Lifeblast buffs self: might
2. Curses minor master : entering DS gives fury
3. Death magic minor adept: Entering DS gives added toughness
4. Death Magic VI remove a condition when ebetring DS
5. Death shiver IX constantly apply vulnerability when in DS
6. Death magic XIII while in DS regen health, if you are not in DS swith to DS on 1 HP
7. Bloodmagic IV: Lifetransfer heals nearby allies
8. Bloodmagic IX: Area heal when you leave DS
9. Bloodmagic XIII while in DS draw condition from allies adding lifeforce.
10. Soulreaping II : Use of deathshroud life force drains slower in DS.
11. Soulreaping III -15% CD -in- DS
12. Soulreaping V: +25% speed in DS
13. Soulreaping VI lifeblast pierces and does vulnerability
14. Soulreaping VII reduces CD -on- DS.
15. Soulreaping XI gain stability in DS
16. Soulreaping XII +50% crit chance in DS
17. Soulreaping XIII lifeblast heals.

DPS (based on power, precisions, critical)

1. Spite XII: for +20% dmg whe enemy is below 50% hp
2. Deathmagic minor grandmaster, 10% of your toughness is added to power
3. Spite VI & Soulreaping VI: Lifeblast buffs, piercing, vulnerability and might

Wells (AOE DPS: based on power, precisions, critical)

1. Curses IV wells are targettable
2. Deathmagic IV wells apply protection (-33% incoming dmg)
3. Blood magic VIII wells recharge 20% faster
4. Bloodmagic XII vampiric rituals wells lifesteal

Vampiric: (based on power and healing, healing scales very bad…)
But life steal ALSO has great use with rabid/dire condition builds!

1. Bloodmagic (master minor) all hits lifsteal
2. Bloodmagic II liefesteal is 20% more effective
3. Bloodmagic V Crits lifesteal (adds to the all hits)
4. Bloodmagic VII Minions lifesteal
5. Bloodmagic XII Wells lifesteal
6. Bloodmagic IV Lifetransfer heals nearby allies

Minions

1. Spite IX minions deal +25% dmg
2. Death magic III Minion skills -20% CD
3. Death magic X you’ll recieve +20 toughness for each minion, minions have +50% hp
4. Death magic XI minions explode on death, causing dmg and poison
5. Death magic XII mnions can remove boons (10% chance)
6. Blood magic VII minions siphon health
7. Blood magic XI minions draw condition from their master

Support:

1. Spite minor master, gain healing: 7% of your power.
2. Bloodmagic IV: Lifetransfer heals nearby allies
3. Deathmagic IV wells apply protection (-33% incoming dmg)
4. Bloodmagic III place a mark of blood on dodge
5. Bloodmagic IX: Area heal when you leave DS
6. Bloodmagic XIII while in DS draw condition from allies adding lifeforce.
7. Soulreaping XIII lifeblast heals.

FEAR/Terror (scales on condition dmg and condition duration)

1. Curses IX fear causes terror scales on condition dmg, add. dmg: when target has a condition
2. Deathmagic VIII When disabled you cause fear.
3. Soulreaping I fear foes when you are downed
4. Soulreaping VII place a fear mark when reviving
5. Soulreaping IX Master of terror (since all condition now also know partial ticks and do dmg 50% longer fears work, fear being a condition scales with condition duration.

Conditions: (scales on condition dmg and condition duration)

1. curses minor : chance to bleed on criot
2. Curses II bleeding duration +20%
3. Curses III blinding a target will also apply chill
4. Curses VII -20% corruption skils
5. Curses XI scepter increas condition durations from scapter by 33%
6. Curses XII withering precision crits apply weakness
7. Death magic XI minions explode on death, causing dmg and poison

Marks: scale on BOTH power and conditions.

1. Spite VII marks +10% dmg
2. Death Magic V Staff recharge 20% faster
3. Death Magic VII marks are bigger and unblockable
4. Bloodmagic III place a mark of blood on dodge, marks need trigger

Weapon:

1. Focus: Spite II -20% CD, +300 range
2. Axe: Spite VIII +10% dmg -20% CD
3. Scepter: Curses XI condition last 33% longer
4. Warhorn: Curses VIII effects last 50% longer, -20% CD
5. Staff: Death Magic V: -20% CD (also see marks, 4 of 5 attacks are marks)
6. Dagger: Blood magic I: -20% CD
7. Dagger: Blood magic X: +15% speed buff with 1 dagger, +25% with 2 daggers

Skill CD reduction:

1. Blood magic VIII -20% wells
2. Curses VII -20% CD corruption skils
3. Death magic III Minion skills -20% CD
4. Soulreaping III -15% CD in DS
5. Soulreaping IV -20% CD spectral skills

Survivability:

1. Spite minor adept: on kill you gain health
2. Spite III: on kill you lose 3 conditons
3. Curses III: blinding a target will also apply chill
4. Death Magic VI remove a condition when entering DS
5. Death magic XIII while in DS regen health, if you are not in DS swith to DS on 1 HP
6. Bloodmagic (master minor) all hits lifsteal
7. Bloodmagic II lifesteal is 20% more effective
8. Bloodmagic V Crits lifesteal (adds to the all hits)
9. Bloodmagic VII Minions lifesteal
10. Bloodmagic XIII Wells lifesteal

Wow Pax – I’m printing that list off. Thanks much!!

Jerus – thanks for the info. I hadn’t thought about the salvaging aspect.

Sabre – you’re right but it will be a while for me to not care about 5gp

Just to say it, I have 3 necro’s on 15 characters.

I run a zerk (scholar/strength) DS well bomber (6/2/0/0/6) d/f & a/w will do very good dps, if people do not mind me in dungeons and which sometimes gets retraited to terror hybrid (sinister (and sometimes 2 dire/rabid rings) 2/4/4/0/4) D/D & Stff works very well in SW Red Bastion or as a hybrid roamer in WvW. The fact it uses both dps and conditions tends to confuse ppl… leaving me good damage and a healthy amount of bags.

I run a zealot (pack or dwayna) (in wvw clerics earrings and amulet, else/others zerk) WvW well/transfusion support build (3/0/5/6/0 or 3/2/5/4) d/f & stff It has a secondary armor(s) (zerk/pack), and clerics (dwayna)… which is mostly a support tank, like guards, but without stability and reflects. Ppl frown upon it but I seem to last way longer then most of our guild nowadays….) with full (WVW) buffs (including the stacking buffs from wvw levels I get to 3000 power and ~48% crit with 1000+ healing.

I run a rabid (undead/krait/sunless) terror mancer. Most often in WvW…(0/6/4/0/4) sc/d & staff
It is the build -most hated- in EotM, though I’m not really working on terrorwalling ppl into the depths. (mind you with terror you tag them, and if lucky you’ll get 25-50 bags in seconds, just hope you can pick ’m up I prefer BL and EBG roaming.

Someone should sticky this in the Necro subforum. SO MUCH good advice. I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of necro playing yet after reading all that.

Noha.3749:

I got my full exotic zerker gear transmuted to cultural T3 Sylvari armor with the darkest of dyes, combined with toxic shoulders and gloves and black feather wings.
I feel awsome, and look awsome whenever i play him. And spamming 1 in DS on a tanky butt warrior cosntantly hcritting 4-5K through all dat toughness feels amazing.

Mmmm yummy DS goodness

Noha do you have a screenie of the toxic shoulders/gloves, or of the whole outfit? Sounds awesome-looking