At Level 40, where to go?
You can get away with using Staff to level all the way to 80 if you want. The utility it provides is good for almost any build you care to try.
I just hit level 40 and I’m a bit lost. I don’t know much about Necromancer and it’s not very straight forward to figure out by just looking at traits, weapon skills, utility skills, and such.
Er… Yes it is? They all tell you exactly what they do…? And it’s not like this game’s PvE is particularly hard or punishing. I leveled my necro to 75 with a lvl 40 staff (green one, mind you), lvl 20-30 accessories (blues and greens) and “whatever best power/condition damage gear I could find” for my armour, which rarely kept up to level. Still took on, and completed, content over my level. Hell, I only noticed I still had a lvl 40 staff when I started to wonder why it was taking me so long to kill veterans at lvl 70.
Now for your specific questions:
• Does condition damage start doing notable damage by 40? I’m most interested in a the Conditionmancer but I’m not sure when to start trying for it. I’m also open to the power burst build and the other notable one that I can’t name right now.
Conditions do good damage from level 1 if you know how to use them (i.e.: stack bleeds). However, conditions are designed as an anti-tank mechanic: They deal less burst/DPS than raw power attacks, but bypass armor completely. Thus they deal considerably more damage to heavily armored targets and less to unarmored targets.
In PvP conditions are invaluable to take down bunkers, who are traditionally heavily armored targets.
On the other hand this points towards a noticeable design flaw in PvE: monsters don’t have a lot of kittening armor.
Tanky monsters are tanky because they have a billion hitpoints to wade through, not because they have noticeable damage mitigation… I might be wrong here, but I haven’t noticed a lot of armored targets in PvE at least. Most of the ones with significant damage mitigation aren’t really using high armor, but instead some boss-specific mechanic you gotta counter in a specific way, and will otherwise massively reduce ALL damage, conditions included.
In the end this means that raw power builds generally kill monsters in PvE faster than conditions. Conditions can still do good damage mind you, but not as much as a raw power build.
• What traits and trait lines do you think will be best for this area? Up until now I just put everything in Death Magic and Blood Magic because they benefited my weapon skills the best.
Thing you gotta realize about trait lines is that the actual stat increase they give you is, for the most part, relatively marginal later on. Most of your stats come from your gear, not your traits. As such, you generally trait into areas that have the minor and major traits you’re looking for, and not because of the specific stats they might give you. Those are just a bonus.
What traits you pick, on the other hand, depend entirely on what kind of build you’re going for. Are you going for a power build? A condition build? What about skills? Focusing more on Corruptions, Wells, Spectrals, Minions…? All the skills tell you what they do, so you gotta think about what you want to build and then pick traits and skills that have the adequate synergies.
• I’m mostly a PvE/Dungeon player (dungeon master with 2 characters at 30+ Fractals). What build do you think works best in PvE and Dungeons?
I’ll leave this one for more PvE inclined players. All I’ll say is that power generally gets you better DPS, conditions generally get you better utility.
I run a bit of an hybrid, using power on wells and condition damage on marks and scepter/dagger( or focus) on switch. I find my build quite successful, but then again I’m more of a PvP player. Not a Dungeon Master nor do I do a lot of fractals. So “mileage may vary”.
• I rather like Staff more than anything. Is this viable for any build or am I going to be limited to the one-handed weapons?
Staff is an extremely good weapon to have as a necro, regardless of build, in my book. It is a weapon that synergizes mostly with condition damage, but with power as well, offers good life force generation, good control of a fight through everything being AoE: auto-attack pierces, AoE bleed+regen for allies, AoE chill + poison, a free AoE “ALL conditions” transfer (not just remover) that works not just for you but your team mates as well, AoE fear… It’s also the only long range weapon the Necro has.
All in all, while it’s not a perfect weapon (the staff’s auto attack is a massive dongsicle against fast and erratically moving targets), and it’s definitely not mandatory, it is quite useful.
I used a combination of staff/wells/DS to roll through PvE. I even got to the point where I’d try to pull 5 mobs, hit staff 2,3,4, drop wells, then DS4 and collect loot.
Veteren’s took a little longer where I would have to switch weapons.