Guild Wars 2

Ascii,
I’ve been playing a full condition necro for quite a while now and with the latest round of nerfs, I’m very seriously considering switching my build. My question is: what is the “play style” of your Well-o-mancer build? Meaning: Can you describe what weapon/utility combos/progressions you use (and why) and under what circumstances you use them?

BruinsFan.7231:

Ascii,
I’ve been playing a full condition necro for quite a while now and with the latest round of nerfs, I’m very seriously considering switching my build. My question is: what is the “play style” of your Well-o-mancer build? Meaning: Can you describe what weapon/utility combos/progressions you use (and why) and under what circumstances you use them?

Ascii often streams during his guild’s primetime, which starts about 5:30pm server time. http://www.twitch.tv/gw2ascii You can get a good look at how he plays the build by watching during this time.

The build basically plays as front/mid line havoc with moderate DPS and very good survivabiliy. It revolves around Wells, Axe 3 (5 boon rips and 20 seconds of Retal) + WH 5 (walking cripple machine) then Plague to disrupt a stack and/or back line and Staff for utility. It also uses high crit chance for a bit of health sustain and a little DPS via siphons (traits and sigils).

Question: For Gear I have knights/melandru, I have exotic assassin weapons with the same sigils.

I have enough laurels for the Cavalier amulet but that is it currently

What rings and accessories and Backpiece would you reccomend?

One other question why assassin weapons over zerker? I thought the maths had been conclusively proven about power vs precision. Maybe im crazy, but i thought i read a long thread on that somewhere? Same for sharp stones?

is it for the bleeding procs?

bump for help pls

animalmom.1062:

What rings and accessories and Backpiece would you reccomend?

One other question why assassin weapons over zerker? I thought the maths had been conclusively proven about power vs precision. Maybe im crazy, but i thought i read a long thread on that somewhere? Same for sharp stones?

is it for the bleeding procs?

Full Cavalier for Rings and Back. Ascii added in Assassin weapons to be able to go full Cavalier jewelry and still hit 50% crit chance. I’m not sure on the exact significance of the 50% mark, but I’m sure there is some math theory out there somewhere. Anyhoo, the purpose for Precision in his build is to amplify on crit sustain effects from Vampiric, Vampiric Precision and Sigils of Blood. Your mileage may vary though. You can also run this build for more raw damage by going more Power to the loss of crit based siphon procs.

BruinsFan.7231:

Ascii,
I’ve been playing a full condition necro for quite a while now and with the latest round of nerfs, I’m very seriously considering switching my build. My question is: what is the “play style” of your Well-o-mancer build? Meaning: Can you describe what weapon/utility combos/progressions you use (and why) and under what circumstances you use them?

So you say that you want to switch to well-o-mancer? Consider doing what I did. I just went 30-10-0-30-0. Its a scepter/dagger(or warhorn)/staff build, with plenty of cond duration and plus hemophelia, but you can swith to group support with wells if you want. Plus, if you don’t feel like using wells, you can just use siphon on crit, among other things.

I, too, was frustrated by the nerfs; so, i mainly just traited to avoid/profit off of them. Try it out, see if you like it.

ty liquid /15 chars

By the way, Ascii does still play this build in large group WvW. A link to the current build can be found on his Twitch stream channel page here http://www.twitch.tv/gw2ascii, along with live streams and GvG highlight footage showing the build in action.

Just a heads up for those posting, Ascii is probably not going to be able to respond to you here. If you have questions for him it may be best to try to catch him on stream and ask there as he’s usually really good at answering questions there.

I dont get it. Why focus on aoe when ele does it 100 times better?
Personally I like your stats, but life blast can out damage necro aoe due to uptime, so it makes more sense to focus on buffing deathshroud imo.
Sure it may be hard to hit more then 1 person sometimes, but when you get positioning down its totally worth it.

hi. i like your build. just small think, what jewelery will you suggest instead of cavalier. untill i will have anougf carma to get exotic )

What is the opinion on going 0/20/20/30/0 for vampiric rituals and loosing those two grandmaster minors?

Do those minor’s help damage that much? Just saying +120 power over the threshold when you are back line and v rituals really has me thinking about going that route with my almost 80 necro (my 5th character. I’ll get em all eventually)

rpfohr.7048:

What is the opinion on going 0/20/20/30/0 for vampiric rituals and loosing those two grandmaster minors?

Do those minor’s help damage that much? Just saying +120 power over the threshold when you are back line and v rituals really has me thinking about going that route with my almost 80 necro (my 5th character. I’ll get em all eventually)

No top level guild necro runs that gear or traits and vampiric rituals is not worth it as you don’t need that much sustain. If you’re running as a front line necro you’re wasting so much aoe damage potential you might as well run another ele.

I’m no expert with Necromancer, but i run Guardian with my WvW guild for a while now and i just don’t understand your stats choice.

As a Guardian in the middle of the melee train, i some defense to stay alive. I have 2900 Armor and 19k hp and i have far enough defense. The tankiest heavies in my guild have 3200 and 20k HP. This build give to a necro, pretty much the same amount of defense as a tanky melee. That mean, that you don’t really have anything to bring to the table, since as a necro your suppose to bring more DPS in the backline.

Also, this build give so little power. Power will give you way more damage that precision or critical damage. So not only you don’t have that much DPS, you also place your small amount of dps in the wrong place.

Like i said i’m not the expect of Necromancer. But i have a similar build (wells, staff, axe, warhorn, runes of melandru, etc) so you Effective Power and Effective HP are useful to compare to build in that case.

This build give you 2785 EP, mine give me 3344 EP, that’s a 20% increase.
This build give you 35 992 EHP, mine give me 34 959 EP, that’s a 2% decrease.

Basically, i give up 2% Survivability for 20% Damage. I would get lower in survivability but since i still make some mistake on my necro and the profession don’t have that much access on stability, I prefer to stay that way for now. I repeat that i’m not the expect in necro and my build is probably not the best around. But i question your stats choice, that really don’t seem to be that effective.

Hi
I’m back after few month of absence and I wanted to ask about build. It’s still best way for zerg groups or anything has changed ?

Ascii,
I’m resurrecting this post to see what your thoughts are with the April 15th patch. What adjustments have you made to accommodate the mass changes with the latest patch?

Still a very solid build. Probably won’t change anything except staff sigils.

Now I know why there are so many condi builds out there, lol.

Ascii hasn’t ran with us since we transferred, I think he still might be on SoR. Although I am not at liberty to discuss TW builds, the condi build is too easy to cleanse in zerg fights / gvg that I personally never use it and I don’t think any of our other necros do either.

Still viable? If you liked it before I think you will still like it.

Yeah, Anet nerfed the crap out of condi-necros and I’ve been looking for a more powerful build for a while now.

Thustlewhumber.7416:

Now I know why there are so many condi builds out there, lol.

Ascii hasn’t ran with us since we transferred, I think he still might be on SoR. Although I am not at liberty to discuss TW builds, the condi build is too easy to cleanse in zerg fights / gvg that I personally never use it and I don’t think any of our other necros do either.

Still viable? If you liked it before I think you will still like it.

So can you suggest something that would be more viable/better? I’m at a loss as to what would be a good WvW zerg/group build for my necro.

ozmaniandevil.6805

So can you suggest something that would be more viable/better? I’m at a loss as to what would be a good WvW zerg/group build for my necro.

For that, let me quote one of our other guildies…

“Necros are easy to play. Is it on cooldown? No? Then hit that kitten!” -Wutever

Thustlewhumber may be able to speak on this more but I haven’t seen Ascii post here since he was banned from the forums (I don’t know the reason) a long time ago.

As for the build, its still very “viable” in ZvZ. As for better, that would be dependent on your play style and/or group comp. I think right now, with the last patch, people are still working out what the “best” build for necros is.