Guild Wars 2

New to the necro and so far, it seems rather capable! Despite still learning the necro, I am doing very well (pve stuff is my style, not pvp, for what it’s worth).

But 3 things perplex me a bit ( and probably more will as I progress!):

Some abilities inflict damage to the necro…which somehow seems less than an exciting idea, you know? What is with that? I HAVE to be missing something here.

Also, it seems many dislike the axe. I have been using staff ( which seems really great), and usually axe/dagger. I have fun with axe/dagger and seems good. Scepter seems good too but it simply holds less appeal for me and I use it rarely.Is the axe somehow really bad? Maybe it does not compliment the staff well?

Blood Fiend; I have been using it, but I am not entirely comfortable with it. It gets really low on health eventually…and I usually kill it and summon a new one. Seems to be doing ok….as I really take no damage except in rare instances. But reliably refiling it’s health seems a bit problematic so far. I noticed that it does gain health at times but not reliably. Just makes me uneasy as it gets low and I wonder if there is a better healing method instead of the blood fiend. As it has worked OK so far, I keep using it, but I am so new to the necro I wonder if there are better alternatives yet.

In general I really enjoy the necro, though.

The reason the corruption skills apply conditions to you is that Anet originally wanted the necro to sacrifice his own health for a lot of skills. However they thought this concept was too complicated for players and instead made it condition application.

Axe is lack luster in that the vulnerability doesn’t outweight it’s low damage ouput on auto attack. It’s otherwise good.

for self heal currently consume conditions is the best in PvP and well of blood is the highest self heal by a large margain. Until they fix the blood fiend and actually apply the 200% increase to the health siphon they claimed to have done in the november patch, it’s going to be sub-par unless you’re a minion master.

About the self-mutilation part, striker’s explanation sounds reasonable from a design standpoint. If you are into the general necro-goth-dark lore i general, it still makes sense. However, from a clear game pov getting self-afflicted gives you two options:

a) Use a dagger offhand, the #4 skill (Deathly Swarm) will take up to three conditions and slap them to your taget. Works for all conditions, those others put on you and those you put yourself there.
b) Use Consume Conditions for your healing slot. The skill has a strong self heal and adds more per condition consumed.

I use both of the above for levelling in Pve and usually with the Blood is Power skill. The self bleed can either add to my stacks or help in the heal. Bit tricky to time but nice.

ngel.9847:

About the self-mutilation part, striker’s explanation sounds reasonable from a design standpoint. If you are into the general necro-goth-dark lore i general, it still makes sense. However, from a clear game pov getting self-afflicted gives you two options:

a) Use a dagger offhand, the #4 skill (Deathly Swarm) will take up to three conditions and slap them to your taget. Works for all conditions, those others put on you and those you put yourself there.
b) Use Consume Conditions for your healing slot. The skill has a strong self heal and adds more per condition consumed.

I use both of the above for levelling in Pve and usually with the Blood is Power skill. The self bleed can either add to my stacks or help in the heal. Bit tricky to time but nice.

And you can also use them for Well of Power, converting conditions into boons. Not the most reliable way of gaining boons, and it only strips one condition at a time, but it’s another option.

@OP

That was my concern with the Blood Fiend as well. It would generally get aggro before I would, die, and then I would get focus fired and have my heal on cooldown without having healed. His active life stealing on hit doesn’t give enough health to make it worth while.

I’d suggest using Well of Blood, as you can usually just stand or kite in it without worrying too much about the enemies in PvE, especially if you’re using minions. Also as a bonus, it can heal your minions!

If your minions are dying fast, try using staff 2 as often as possible to give them Regen. Also, 10 points into Blood Magic can get you Life Transfusion, making Death Shroud’s #4 heal all nearby allies for a substantial amount, and can save your flesh rats every 40s.

Putrid Mark from staff is another option for moving self inflicted conditions to enemies.

Brtiva.9721:

Some abilities inflict damage to the necro…which somehow seems less than an exciting idea, you know? What is with that? I HAVE to be missing something here.

actually, sacrificing his own health/well-being to fuel some powerful spells was always a rather big part of the guild wars necromancer and necros/dark spellcasters in general.

if anything, the self-hurting and the effects of the skills should be greater, imo, because most of the time, the conditions you inflict on yourself can be ignored since they dont last long.

RashanDale.3609:

Brtiva.9721:

Some abilities inflict damage to the necro…which somehow seems less than an exciting idea, you know? What is with that? I HAVE to be missing something here.

actually, sacrificing his own health/well-being to fuel some powerful spells was always a rather big part of the guild wars necromancer and necros/dark spellcasters in general.

if anything, the self-hurting and the effects of the skills should be greater, imo, because most of the time, the conditions you inflict on yourself can be ignored since they dont last long.

Personally I want them to implement this by making skills that consume large amounts of Life Force for powerful effects. But I daydream a lot.

Brtiva.9721:

Also, it seems many dislike the axe. I have been using staff ( which seems really great), and usually axe/dagger. I have fun with axe/dagger and seems good. Scepter seems good too but it simply holds less appeal for me and I use it rarely.Is the axe somehow really bad? Maybe it does not compliment the staff well?

Axe damage is Power-based, whereas most of the Staff’s damage comes from Malice (condition dmg). So, in a sense, they don’t synergize particularly well, unless you run a hybrid build with both Power & Malice increased.

Axe is a better weapon for support builds, you can get it to hit ok but only if you spec for it in the power trait line. Corruption skills, as some mentioned, are a tradeoff of getting large (in theory) benefits at the cost of hurting yourself (which for necros is not an issue, we have so many options for removing those conditions they are negligible, and assuming you can’t remove them for whatever reason we have so much hp its still not an issue), at lower levels you might not find them as useful so might need to avoid them until you get higher and get better traits and hp (there’s a trait specifically for corruption skills that reduce recharge and it’s awesome). The blood fiend heal is ok for a solo exploring necro, but by far one of our worst heals unless you’re going specifically minion master (bad idea right now, the minion AI is bugged and minions in general are underwhelming and mediocre at best), I would recommend consume conditions as a general heal or if you do insist on running a minion party, well of blood and should you spec into the blood magic traitline at least 10 points you can use a trait skill for life transfer (death shroud skill #4) to AoE heal all your minions. Couple it with well of blood at the same time and you can fully heal minions on the brink of death easily. If you need anymore tips or help, look me up in game. Have fun with necro :-D

RashanDale.3609:

Brtiva.9721:

Some abilities inflict damage to the necro…which somehow seems less than an exciting idea, you know? What is with that? I HAVE to be missing something here.

actually, sacrificing his own health/well-being to fuel some powerful spells was always a rather big part of the guild wars necromancer and necros/dark spellcasters in general.

if anything, the self-hurting and the effects of the skills should be greater, imo, because most of the time, the conditions you inflict on yourself can be ignored since they dont last long.

Problem is the spells inflict conditions on you, but you dont get a massive amount in return.

The spells arent more powerful than spells other classes get and they dont get bleeds and poisons on them in return.

The idea behind Corruptions is that Necros boast some of the highest amounts of Condition Manipulation in the game.

From being able to transfer those conditions you applied on yourself (dagger 4), to changing them to boons (well of power), or noming them and increasing how much you’re healed by with Consume Conditions (a freakin’ awesome heal skill). You can then taken those conditions you just spread to an opponent and spread them via epidemic.

Ratphink.4751:

The idea behind Corruptions is that Necros boast some of the highest amounts of Condition Manipulation in the game.

From being able to transfer those conditions you applied on yourself (dagger 4), to changing them to boons (well of power), or noming them and increasing how much you’re healed by with Consume Conditions (a freakin’ awesome heal skill). You can then taken those conditions you just spread to an opponent and spread them via epidemic.

I still don’t think it’s worth the detriment. Against other players there’s already enough conditions coming at you for you to have your hands full in dealing with them, no reason to freaking help your enemies.

Edit- Know what other classes get in exchange for self-inflicted detriments? Quickness.

Ratphink got it right. Idea is to put conditions on yourself and send them all to your opponent, necros can have many ways to do this. For example i use blood is power all the time for the might stacks and long bleed. When i put 2 bleeds on myself i then use dagger 4 to send them to the opponent putting 4 very long bleeds on them.Once i get a few more bleeds on them i use epidemic and it works very good with the long duration. Its even more fun against players too, if they are putting conditions on me then i get to transfer them all bak to the player. Shortbow rangers dont stand a chance

Kiriakulos.1690:

Ratphink.4751:

The idea behind Corruptions is that Necros boast some of the highest amounts of Condition Manipulation in the game.

From being able to transfer those conditions you applied on yourself (dagger 4), to changing them to boons (well of power), or noming them and increasing how much you’re healed by with Consume Conditions (a freakin’ awesome heal skill). You can then taken those conditions you just spread to an opponent and spread them via epidemic.

I still don’t think it’s worth the detriment. Against other players there’s already enough conditions coming at you for you to have your hands full in dealing with them, no reason to freaking help your enemies.

Edit- Know what other classes get in exchange for self-inflicted detriments? Quickness.

When it comes to pve, conditions on my necro are never an issue, I welcome them because it means more healing for me and more I can send back to the enemy. When it comes to pvp, conditions on my necro are never what kills me. The more I have the better usually. It’s almost always just too much raw damage, and not enough ways for us to escape or block that damage like other classes have. However, every other class also has condition removal out the kitten so even inflicting self conditions and sending them back doesn’t help us much anyway. By the time I load my conditions down they’ve already removed them several times over and I have more important things to worry about, like the 2 warriors and guardian beating my brains out.