Guild Wars 2

To preface, this is, and is not, about this patch. I feel like overall it was a good patch.

I play my necro 95% of the time in WvW.

Im wondering what other Necros are doing now. Whenever a new Necro asks me what to do, I always ask them “Well, how do you want to play” because one thing thats awesome about the class is we can be backline, midline, or front line depending on play style, traits, and weapon choices.

So, for those who might want to help me, my play style is frontline necro Power/Condi hybrid. I also used my build for both solo roaming and small man (semi successfully, its better for being right in there with the tanks)

Old build was 0/20/20/0/30 focusing on terror and foot in the grave. With Chill on Blind being used both with plague and with well of darkness. Well of Corruption/suffering being used as the secondary for either players or camps. 3rd position being used by boon corrupt, blood is power, or spectral wall depending on the situation.

Weapons: Dagger/Dagger and Scepter/either dagger again or Focus. Sometimes in rough fights I would switch Scepter for Staff and move in and out of the frontline as my tricks came back up.

Heres my old build. As you can see weapons changed over time to above.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQUQRArY4djMah6Zayb87JAJFYDdkiiDm6R5pfOA-jEEBIMRGpJg0CgUFBiKAO5DK5EN/ZIjlhFRjVVTQWzATlKpGzQW0B2zLp+DYCBsYOA-w

My gear was good for me, not really good for a beginner with the class. Im really good with shroud management in a 15 man group. Smaller groups where you get re-focused after the fear goes off youd probably want to be more tanky.

Anyhow, the ferocity change hit me harder than I expected. Between that and the fact that most classes have more survivability now, Im not killing them before they kill me in a roaming situation.

Heres the build I am currently trying out.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRAoY7djc0UUbNNW3wfbCchaqhA6BIAu3o3gJIfB-TF0CABOcCAA4ABQjqKRqGxe7P8wBBoTVCczESKac+S5ReaBSUJoe6CySJy0PBgjUCFAABYmlZZGwRb0GNDXmHdmlZpA8TaE-w

Im just not feeling it. Its ok, but again, I find myself losing with the other guy at 5% health over and over again. Right now im actually still stacking corruption stacks, not using the frailty.

I cannot find synergy with foot in the grave and the larger life-force pool that comes with taking it and these other trait lines in such a way that you can both roam and run mid sized groups efficiently. I could go 0/6/0/2/6. That would probably be really nice for solo roaming? I dunno. Perhaps just forgo all the new toys and use my original build and all its built in defense? Switch to full carrion gear and start running around with a staff?

Im just lost. If anyone has had just a lot of fun with something recently I am all ears and thank you in advance.

I sidelined my necro for over a yeah due to its state in pve. Recently me and some friends have been doing some wvw and thats brought be back to playing it. Im especially enjoying the new curses grandmaster for tpvp and small group roaming.

But yeah overall i feel necro has become rather dull. It needs a lot of work to be viable in pve and until that i feel I will always sideline it most of the time just so on the odd chance i do play it im not totally bored kittenless with it.

My thought currently is I need to do a massive gear switch, as Im uncertain that the hybrid build can do the dps I need to do. Im thinking of pushing dire/rabid. Possibly a rune change though I will cry being slow again :p

May I ask why you are as attached as you are to Foot in the Grave? Do you just like the “free” stomp that comes with timing stomp + DS? I’m interested to hear from someone who found a niche for it and uses it in their playstyle, because I never liked it much.

I personally tipped my hat at the cool new traits and kept my old 6/2/0/0/6 build. I’m not entirely build for the front-lines, but that doesn’t stop me from being there with a SA + DS combo and popping Plague w/ Chilling Darkness to cause trouble. I’ll also say that my roaming fights don’t usually end with someone at 5%, because it’s more a game of explosions.

I’m also surprised that Ferocity hit you much at all, really. Besides the 4 pieces of Celestial, none of your other gear even had crit damage on them. With Soul Reaping alone, if you just had that for 30% crit dmg and now it gives 20%, you’re looking at about a 5.6% damage loss on crits alone, and since you don’t use Deathly Perception and have more Condi options with Terror, the impact you should have felt should have been extremely minimal.

If you’re simply bored of the same old, I can understand that, but depending on how long you were using your old build you may need some solid time adjusting, which includes losing fights that you’d think “If I was running my old build, I would have won that”.

I personally got slapped as hard in the face as you feasibly could for a WvW roaming Power Necro, and the fights I’ve lost I have felt confident attributing to my misplays and not the Ferocity change.

I don’t think the new traits are really designed for shoehorning into your current build to come out with something that still works really well. I think your best bet is probably, as you mentioned, 0/6/2/0/6 to take advantage of Path of Corruption while losing out on Reaper’s Protection. That seems more styled for the smaller-scale roaming though, but with free trait switching, it might not be too arduous to swap it up based on who you are running with at the time.

I still think Necro is a really engaging and enjoyable class to play, and I don’t feel bad that I’m not using the new traits. They were pushed into the game to help create new avenues for people to find different styles that they could fall into, but I already really enjoy my current style. The traits fit my style basically to a T, so I had no delusions that the new traits would be something I’d use in the same style. That would just seem like a waste.

That being said, I’ve played with an sPvP 0/4/6/0/4 build that uses Unholy Sanctuary with a Settler’s Amulet and pumps fear out for control, but in WvW I don’t see myself changing.

Sorry, I feel like this thread didn’t help you much, but in short, I’m still having very much fun with my Cav Armor/Zerker otherwise Axe+Dagger/Dagger+Focus Power build.

EDIT – One thing I’ve found in WvW especially is that Rampager looks like it should give you decent Power gains, but it really, truly doesn’t without the Ferocity to pair Power with. At least that has been my Might-less experience. I think you’d be better off transitioning to, like you said above, Dire/Rabid.

To OP: If you are burnt out on front line necros, try standing back with a staff. If you go 20/0/20/0/20 you will have a fully traited staff O’mancer with 10 trait points left over (sorry for the old numbers, I’m still adjusting to the new trait system). Huge unblockable marks that bleed, chill, poison, send conditions, and you will be granting 100% uptime regen on the front line fighters with staff 2. Going with signet mastery and all signets give you good support ability (Signet of undeath, Plague signet) and you will also be laying down quality AoE damage. It’s a lot of fun, if not the most powerful build. Keep in mind the Greater Marks trait also buffs your Lich marks.

Cogbyrn.7283:

May I ask why you are as attached as you are to Foot in the Grave? Do you just like the “free” stomp that comes with timing stomp + DS? I’m interested to hear from someone who found a niche for it and uses it in their playstyle, because I never liked it much.

I’ve used Foot in the Grave since forever. It just makes things easier that you can go DS and get your fears/damage off without a hitch. Damage is nice, but since I mostly zerg with necro, it’s secondary to stability, especially one that has such high uptime.

Personally, I use DS as a shield against damage.

Cogbryn:

I dont think I have bothered stability stomping with foot in the grave more than a couple times. I play as basically the only necro on a zerg busting squad of between 15-20 players most of the time. I will throw in a quick shroud, run in with stability past the 90 walls and cripple fields the other frontline team drops, get down my well of corruption, drop a fear line behind their frontline so they cannot escape, drop whatever other AOE I can and then jump into plague and start messing up their rotations. Pop back out, back into shroud, use my AOE and torment, back out of shroud, drop my wells, hit my heal if need by (probably 2nd time) and then pull back and start sceptering or start locking down and killing with the daggers.

3.5 seconds of stability every 10 seconds is a LOT of stability. I actually had it a bit longer due to boon duration buffage in my old build.

For roaming, its not so much foot in the grave but the long fears from fear master and the very large death shroud pool that were the nice things from that build. Get crippled chilled circled etc you just pop shroud and walk out, cant really be controlled out of your game.

Its nice. Between the stability and the “oh you tried to control me, heres an automatic AOE fear in your face” you get a fairly long time to recover from attempted ganks and such.

Oh and Cog, my old build had a large dose of crit damage from 30 into the last line there…

I chose rampager mostly to get my 50% crit which is there to push crit bleeds and crit torments. The white damage to me was always a bonus.

@Easterbunny: I can see it being useful for that. I just can’t escape the clutches of Deathly Perception myself. Then again, I build to fit a different role, and I think it’s cool that you have a playstyle that enjoys a trait I don’t personally use.

You did have the 30% crit damage, and I believe it dropped to 20% crit damage after conversion. Which really isn’t much at the end of the day, especially for a hybrid build that is getting arguably most of its damage from conditions.

That sounds like a fun playstyle, though. I might at some point try it myself if I’m looking to change it up.

Condition Necros have always been strong and power is better now. The class would be fine if Anet would just buff minions.

Actually prior to the change I ran around 67% Crit dmg I think in total. So, with the 50% drop Im down around 17%.

I also may have made an error changing out earth sigil for torment sigil on my dagger. I expected to see about the same dps in 2 stacks but it hasnt worked out. 6-8 bleeds and 1-2 torments isnt the same as 10-12 bleeds.