Guild Wars 2

Hello all, so I’m theory crafting what armor I should wear for a mid/close range DS power necro for WvW. I currently wear mostly knights and I notice that with death perception and furious demise, I have 110% crit chance in death shroud.

So my question, assuming I want to throw in some valkyrie and/or cavalier stuff in there for good measure, what armor rating should I keep in order for a moderately skilled player (not uber competitive) to survive in zerg vs zerg and skirmishes? With my current gear, my armor rating in 2268.

edit: You can suggest it, but I reaaaly don’t want to give up my 4 in curses. Banshee’s wail plays a big part in my play style.

There is no set number really, just enough for you to survive on. Necros normally go close to full glass in zergs with how they’re used for well bombs, but I don’t know how you play. When you say you run warhorn and close it seems like you’d need a lot more armor to stay in the train, but if you can live off lower armor then do it.

I know melees stick around 3k give or take a little more or less, but you should be less since I assume you’re not in the train the whole time, if that gives you any starting point.

Someone will tell you it anyways but the meta for necros right now in zergs in 6/2/0/0/6 with as much zerker as possible, and running axe/focus and staff. If you ever need advice on that should you choose to change you should get a lot more help from people since many are experienced with that.

I personally run around 2.1k armor but I don’t go into melee to use the warhorn, I stay at ranged lifeblasting rogue squishies/melee and overall range pressuring the train when my wells are on cooldown. In small scale skirmishes power necro can be really good depending on the matchup you fight, even your current knight build, but expect to start hating longbow rangers with every bone in your body. I wouldn’t use warhorn in small scale though, but if you want to keep it and think you’re good at it and it works then yolo. In general the more armor you add in a power build the less successful you’ll be though in small scale due to you kinda rely on your glass cannon damage since you can’t sustain in combat very properly with the current necro mechanics.

A side note, I believe crit chance has a soft cap somewhere, I forgot the number but I think it’s like 85% (someone can correct me if I’m wrong), which I believe is what you were alluding to into dropping more precision for armor. I don’t like gear that’s not main stat power in general unless it’s a piece or two as it does overall hurt your power.

Thanks alot! I currently run axe/warhorn and dagger/dagger with axe being my flanking weapon and daggers for when I need to fight close range or immobilize the occasional thief harasser. In zergs, I run 0/4/0/4/6 or 0/2/2/4/6 with wells. One of the reasons I like warhorn is that it synergizes well with death perception, with constant crits and Lf regen for tanking as well as dazing groups after well of corruption knocks off stability. Embarrassing as it sounds, the reason I don’t go for 100% meta is that try as I may, I cannot get a hold of the staff outside fear chain cheese in spvp.

Max dps build is 62006 going full zerk. If you’re running triple wells with chilling darkness you should be 44006 and only need to zerk until 30% crit chance then you can use valk stats for your remaining pieces. I run around 1880 armor and don’t have a problem surviving, staying alive is all about maintaining proper positioning.

Staff is very important and should be your main DPS weapon. Weapon damage affects the damage of your wells and the damage of your abilities in death shroud. The staff has the highest base weapon damage for necromancers. Putting down staff #3 marks for added chill right before your wells also makes a difference—even more so when all your necros are doing it. You only need to have your axe/* out if you’re being harassed by a thief or need to use your axe #2 ability to burst someone down.

In WvW when running with my guild I’ll run full valk armor with zerk trinkets, use wurm runes, and use the stacking crit dmg sigil. Since most of my time is spent with staff at range it works fairly well.

When roaming around solo or in a smaller group I tend to wear more armor because it’s amazing how quick a Thief can rip through 20k hp. I’ve found running full cav with pack runes and a mix of zerker/valk/cav trinkets to be quite tanky. With 2600 armor you at least don’t give bonus damage to enemy. You’ll maintain the ~220% crit damage, and the pack runes allow you to keep fury up 50% of the time so you don’t really need mroe than 30% chance to crit.

But I’m still fairly new to Necro. The goal will to ultimately use the mix of valk and zerk gear when roaming too.

The most effective armor in zerg warfare for a Necro is to follow the battle front. No armor will save you from getting singled out and run down, or the best armor is allies.

Necromancer’s poor mobility means you need to watch the flow of the front closely. Other professions can poke in and out of your territory but cannot sustain long against AoE condition spam. When zerging, your best ability is to make the front a mine field for enemy players.

Zerg play and roam/havoc are different builds. In a zerg, your job is to corrupt and condition everything in your zerg’s way and not go down. Blind, chill, poison, cripple, weakness, immobilized, and fear are far more powerful than vulnerability, might, and bleed. You do not need to build for condition damage in a zerg. Duration is more potent but your survival trumps all. Wear what you want but do not die. A lot of other professions depend on your silent cursing when they clash with the enemy.

It actually depends what kind of necro you want to play.

The boring yet effective Gwen meta necro? Then you dont really need armor. Good postioning will be enough. For roaming you will only need to switch some utilityskills and traits.

Or the more frontline, fun, manly but less useful, ohh kitten i have to much knights/soldier/valkyre gear necro? Then like all frontline builds you will want alot of armor (3-3.2k is the rough number). Note that this will also not a good build for roaming since you probably will lack the damage to kill most other professions fast enough.

Full Zerk Ascended, Strength Runes, With Valk/Zerk for Trink/Am/Back Ascended and Cav weapons. 62006 with A/WH, A/F, D/F, D/WH deepening what your doing, with your mainhand Staff for the Soft CC and Condi transfer.

Edit: Armor Wise, I Sit around 1800ish and live just fine.

Thanks everyone for your input! With everyone’s information, I have come up with something like this for zerging.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRBHhhG1IHNt0WbjNN83mYYomsGCiIDgIg6rYJyVA-T1RLwA2V/5lSoaKVgpsAg+BR7P4TJIA-w

I’ve been practicing with my staff in spvp ever since a guildie recommended that I practice using it with the fast ground targeting option on. When I get better, I’ll switch the cavalier armor for valkyrie and change a lot of my traits as well(getting rid of blood magic). For smaller groups, I simply respec for spectral skills. For the sake of flexibility, I’m settling on having 30% crit chance when I have 4 in curses.

Yea that build will work perfectly fine. One thing I’d suggest is to replace Near to Death with someone else. The faster DS recharge isn’t really going to matter that much since you don’t really have anything that procs on DS, except fury on DS which doesn’t matter anyways. You are largely restricted by life force when it comes to DS usage anyways.

Personally I like unyielding blast, because piercing life blasts are nasty. Path of midnight can be used for more utility. There’s also spectral mastery for spectral armor cooldown, but I think any of these will let you get more out of it.

Energy sigils are always nice because necros have no vigor, and you may also try fire/air sigils to do even more damage.

Having near to death can be useful in wvw, even if he’s not just flashing it, ds builds so quick in wvw it will likely be full everytime it’s off cooldown.

ArchonWing.9480:

Yea that build will work perfectly fine. One thing I’d suggest is to replace Near to Death with someone else. The faster DS recharge isn’t really going to matter that much since you don’t really have anything that procs on DS, except fury on DS which doesn’t matter anyways. You are largely restricted by life force when it comes to DS usage anyways.

Personally I like unyielding blast, because piercing life blasts are nasty. Path of midnight can be used for more utility. There’s also spectral mastery for spectral armor cooldown, but I think any of these will let you get more out of it.

Energy sigils are always nice because necros have no vigor, and you may also try fire/air sigils to do even more damage.

I assumed such, my trait choice is more concerned with the fact that after playing condi for so long and never going for any serious zerging contributions, a well build is going to take getting used to, so I equip safety nets like that.

Well, it’s not a bad trait; I just think you would be able to get the most out of something else. When I’m on a necro I try to hit as many targets I can for good damage. But of course try them all out.

i run this build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAnYWjc00SbNN22wfbihha2aIIiLAo+KWicF-TlCEABLqCRiqvslSQmU+ZwTAoNtBdoDAgTAwDHCgY2fgUADsMC-w
i still dont got problems with surviving, also if you die as a necro in wvw it is most common due to bad position, so armor would not help you.