Guild Wars 2

Hey there I was wondering if someone could tell me about their experiences as a necromancer as i just rolled one to make my main for WvW. Also where do you guys find out what are the best builds to use for WvW. Please explain to me if necromancer is a good choice or if it is a bad choice. I appreciate your feed back.

Do you plan on going conditions? or dagger/wells?

Dagger/wells is a mystery to me, but people claim it’s viable, and I can’t comment…

…but people also claim conditions is a viable build, and those people have lost their grip on reality.

Condition builds have pathetic direct damage, and actually have a harder time stacking bleeds than other classes, like.. warrior. engineer.. ranger…

Necro condition builds are squishy, a lot of our heals are based on getting crits/hits and our main attack with the staff is likely the slowest in the game.. I think it’s even slower than the warrior/guardian’s hammer.

Necros also don’t have passive regen, which all other bleed build classes have access to. We’re supposed to use our pets for that passive healing… it fails horribly.

but I’m getting way off track with all of this. The bottom line is, in WvW people make glass cannon builds that will kill a condition necro in seconds, or they make bunker builds that remove conditions with ease, and will basically be immune to everything you can throw at them.

Necro are one of the best class to play when it comes to GvsG situations, it is a fact. A power necro is deadly for his direct dmg, a condition necro is deadly when it comes to debuff and screw other the oponent group.
Everyone in this forum is negative and full of nonsense. When it comes to WvW, let 1vs1 to those poor glass thieves who think it make them pro, while they can’t survive 3 sec in any big open field fight. And if u REALLY are so much about 1vs1 situation, then you should go play sPVP. A mmo is all about teamplay and despite what most here are saying, necros can bring a lot to their team : combo fields, debuffs, a crap load of aoe, huge survivability, and the best crowd control u can dream of.

Depends ‘what’ exactly your role in WvW is?
All roles have some varied specs which will suit what you want to do.
Solo roaming, I tend to avoid doing it as there’s far better classes to do it with, some people do however and seem to enjoy that. I have no idea what they use.
Open Field, a Power-Well spec for running in and bombing people, does just fine.
Support-DPS, some fairly standard pure condition/aoe builds, does just fine.

Personally, I do Support DPS. I spray around conditions, do some crowd control, take conditions off my allies, cover large tracts of land in AOE condition-bombs and kill tons of idiots that don’t have condition removal, the ones that do, tend to die eventually as I overwhelm it. The negative is that I can’t even dent a stacked group running permanent condition removal.

Open field, run in, dump wells all over an enemy group, take conditions off your friends, turn buffs on your enemies into conditions, some group healing and running AOE blind so the enemy can’t hit back as much. The negative is you have fairly long cool-downs, so in any protracted fight you’re pretty much down to spamming weapon attacks for about 40-60sec after.

charas.8321:

Necro are one of the best class to play when it comes to GvsG situations, it is a fact. A power necro is deadly for his direct dmg, a condition necro is deadly when it comes to debuff and screw other the oponent group.
Everyone in this forum is negative and full of nonsense. When it comes to WvW, let 1vs1 to those poor glass thieves who think it make them pro, while they can’t survive 3 sec in any big open field fight. And if u REALLY are so much about 1vs1 situation, then you should go play sPVP. A mmo is all about teamplay and despite what most here are saying, necros can bring a lot to their team : combo fields, debuffs, a crap load of aoe, huge survivability, and the best crowd control u can dream of.

+1. We could do with a less prevalent terrifacebad Necro player base on these forums.

Necros aren’t a must-have class like Mesmers or Eles nowadays, but can be very useful nonetheless.

In organized Zerg vs Zerg warfare the boon><condition and aoe blind wells are extremely useful, as is Plague form ( mostly for the blind ) and the general tankiness even in a more dps oriented spec certainly helps. If we use flanking, I will usually stick with the Warriors and Guards breaching the enemy lines going for the glass cannons at the back.

In higher tiers the Zerg vs Zerg battles tend to be pretty short, so the cooldowns on wells really aren’t that much of an issue and I have the cd reduction trait too of course. One problem I see with a wells spec is that your traits will have to be all over the place. You’ll want ground placed wells ( in WvW, not necessarily in sPvP ), cd reduction on wells, larger marks – that’s already 50 points in three different lines and leaves you with just 20 to customize the build.

Condition builds are somewhat more flexible, but i don’t think the usually more caster oriented playstyle makes full use of the class’ strengths.

I generally wouldn’t recommend dagger main hand in WvW btw. Its main asset is the superiour damage on the auto attack chain and for that to land you have to be standing pretty much inside your target. In any realistic scenario other than a 1vs1 you’ll be out of range a fair amount of time, cutting down on your dps substantially. The other main hand options aren’t great for a power build either unfortunately.

As has been said a Power/Wells staff/dagger+horn build is awesome wvw Knights+Beryl 30 in SR build around popping in and out of DS you will get kittenloads of badges. Awesome zerg v Zerg spec imo.

For those interested I do a bit of maybe an odd spec 30/0/10/0/30

I roll 0/30/20/20/0 with a full Rabid set of armor and jewels. With staff + scepter/dagger, I can tell you right now it is more than viable in WvW. I oftentimes take on groups of 2 or 3 and manage to kill at least 1 or 2 before going down or getting away. The extra toughness from precision/toughness/condition damage gear helps a lot and bombing with over 1548 condition damage (before sigil of corruption, might and food buffs) and 2798 armor can melt some players very quickly. I would recommend a conditionmancer with wells/corruption skills. If you use wells, the ground-targeting ability is fantastic for disrupting enemy turtle tactics. I highly recommend it.

Also, with all that extra toughness, I can go in head first with Plague and spam #2, allowing my teammates to come in and finish them off while they focus fire me. It works wonders. Moreover, epidemic + mesmer confusion glamour builds MELT zergs. And I do mean MELT.

In a zerg-vs-zerg fight, both power and condition necros have means to “move the frontline”. I play a conditionmancer with corrupt boon/blood is power/epidemic and plague and I’m best at zerg-vs-zerg, wall offense and wall defense. I just love popping CB/BiP/Staff#4/Epidemic on a zerg and watching all the bleed numbers retreat. CB is buggy but once you learn that you have to face your target it hits more often.

Where I’m not much use is small group becuase players aren’t standing on top of each other. There is also some camp fights where the only damage I do to the boss is through bleeds, my direct damage when Righteous Indignation is active is always 0.

I think I will try a power necro and it’s playstyle with the knowledge that I may not be as useful on wall attack/defense. If only I could pull people off walls as easily as a mesmer…..

Yes. Necro is viable.

It’s not a top tier class, but it’s great in these situations – keep defence, keep offence, hit and run group or hanging around the fringes of a zerg. If you’re going condition damage, you’ll love using epidemic against a zerg (until they all cure conditions on themselves).

Currently trying Axe spec with dual wells….. Axe could really use a damage buff to be honest. The vulnerability provided (even at 25 stacks) does not compensate for the terrible damage when compared with other power/burst classes. Not keen on daggers because warriors will /destroy at melee range.

Arena-net doesn’t want us to have high burst damage because we’re an attrition class, but the bunker Guardian/Ele out-attrition us and out-damage us as well.

Arena-net said that there are some classes with 5 or 6 different viable play style options – not the case with the Necro at present. I really hope they have a look at Axe and provide a bit of love.

Peace.

blurps.2340:

I generally wouldn’t recommend dagger main hand in WvW btw. Its main asset is the superiour damage on the auto attack chain and for that to land you have to be standing pretty much inside your target. In any realistic scenario other than a 1vs1 you’ll be out of range a fair amount of time, cutting down on your dps substantially. The other main hand options aren’t great for a power build either unfortunately.

Good comments generally but I have to say I really enjoy dagger main hand. Pair it with spectral grasp and immob (#3 on dagger) and you can get some good facetime even in a zerg range situation. Start out with corruption and its great for taking down that guardian that is in godmode.

You can get some range out of the weapon with offhand for a few attacks also, then just switch to staff which is really our premier range weapon anyway.

Yes, Necro is a very viable class in WvW.

Your experience will vary though, as others said, on the kind of game you play or like to play. I can’t comment on what builds you want in the “zerg”-scenario.
The necro is strongest in an organized environment, especially in GvG or GvRest. If you are part of a wvw-guild you should concentrate on your role as aoe-dps and soft cc. A typical build for this would be something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmODbkRrbPUTTjfPBIp46njUU8wUPWn9zB
with knight’s gear + ruby orbs/jewels.
In general you want to avoid condition builds because epidemic is too hard to land and conditions are constantly cleansed.

Yes, you can solo roam as a necro and i’ve done this for ~500h, both as a condition and power build. The main problem is that you don’t have nearly the same options to escape like a dd-ele or thief do (the reason so many bad players use them nowadays).
A power-roaming build could be for example:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSPczXjhPBIp46njUc8wUPWn9zB
I guess you could switch your traits around for 30-0-10-0-30 but i’m usually too lazy to switch when a raid is coming up.
If you roam as a necro you have to pay a lot more attention to your surroundings than other classes. For camps you have a bit harder time as a power necro, so you will have to pull more.

Also the necro is one of the stronger dueling professions (at least as a power spec). The only classes that will give you a really hard time and are extremly hard to beat, if both players are on an equal skill level, are staff-shatter-mesmers and dd-eles.