(edited by Sunarah.6432)
New player, Necro PvE, ranged ok?
Axe works, sceptor works, personally don’t like staff but it also works. The only time you need to concern yourself about specific builds is if you are doing specific (player mostly required) things like fractals (high level) and raids. Dungeons they used to get in a snit about for speed running but that sort of faded.
Axe or scepter works well, both are mid range rather than far away like the staff, but you can still be far enough away to stay out of trouble. One of my mains is a Axe/Dagger Necto using wells rather than minions, and for open world pve she manages fine, although Scepter/Focus can make a great combination as well.
For the time being, concentrate on exploring the world and doing personal story, try out as many weapon combinations as you can, to find what works for you. Most of the openworld areas in core Tyria (pre HoT areas) are fairly forgiving and you shouldn’t have a survival problem unless you let yourself get mobbed. Don’t worry too much about gear and builds they will come with time, just try and make sure that equipment isn’t way lower than your level. (I doubt I am the only one that when wondering why my level 70+ character was having problems realised that rings, accessories and occasionally even my secondary weapon choice were in the 20s).
Most of all remember to have fun, and, unless you are going for serious competitive play, it really doesn’t matter if you prefer a weapon and skill set that aren’t optimal. you can still hold your own in open world.
Welcome to Tyria.
It’s always a good idea to have a melee weapon handy to switch to in case you run into an enemy that is functionally immune to ranged attacks. That being said, the only TRUE melee weapon a Necro ever uses is the Greatsword (if you get the Reaper elite specialization). Dagger has a melee autoattack, and the rest of the skills are mid-ranged (600 for main hand, 900 for off-hand). Axe is a mid range weapon as well. Necros are made to fight at range 99% of the time, and their weapon skills reflect that.
The exception is the Reaper. Going into this Elite Spec changes the class into a primarily melee class. It’s incredibly effective, but if you prefer to stay a ranged Necro, just don’t use the specialization.
I’d keep an open mind about your weapon choice for the future… when you’re at lower levels, you haven’t unlocked the traits or have the experience to make the most of your other weapons, so staff seems better.
Necro staff is more of a utility weapon; not best in power or condi DPS, but has a lot of useful effects in its #2-5 skills to make up for it. It’s fine for levelling, but whether you continue to use it once you get to level 80 depends on the content. It’s useful in pvp and wvw where long range and utility are needed, but it’s more of a niche weapon in pve… other weapons have better DPS, and long range rarely has any real advantage over mid range. That said, with weapon swap, you don’t need to commit yourself completely to a single weapon.
Another thing to note, when you’re doing harder pve content (fractals and raids), you often fight in melee range even if you’re using a ranged weapon. That’s for 2 reasons; it stops the mob from running all over the place, so increases the effectiveness of your melee teammates (or any ranged that benefits from a stationary target i.e. staff eles); and it helps with party support (boon sharing, combo fields, rezzes).
Wow. Thank you all. These are incredibly helpful comments so far. <3 <3 <3 So glad I asked. Taking note on all of this. Glad to see that I can do mid range and be effective and can even open up to melee range more…And see it as an exploration, not a block on fun!
The meta build for necro uses a scepter so I’ll drop this here http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Viper_Horror