Guild Wars 2

I have been attempting to create a Axe burst spec for my necro and im curious if anyone can tell what their thoughts are on this subject.

how i do my burst: well of suffering > reaper’s touch > then ghastly claws. i can get 25 stacks of vulnerability up on a target in a few seconds. but Ghastly claws hasnt been hitting the numbers i want it too… but i think its do to the fact that i just hit 80 and havent gotten the burst gear i want.

gear stats im striving to get (power, precision, crit damage) or (power, precision, toughness) for more survivability.

Weapons: Axe/Focus (Damage)
Staff (control and some Aoe)

Utilities: well of blood mostly, will switch to consume conditions if the situation calls for it
well of suffering: for the vulnerability stacks, also nice it does a bit of damage.

well of darkness: survivability and helps because this build requires you to be closer to targets then most clothies want to be.

well of power: personal preference really. ill change it when i use consume conditions instead of well of blood

flesh golem for my elite, minion AI is kitten but when he does attack he does quite a bit

Talents: 30/5/10/25/0
30 in spite for obvious reasons, more power, condition duration. also the 20% focus CD reduction and axe damage increase
5 in curses for the 66% chance to bleed on crit, thought this was necessary because i plan on 50% crit. you might be wondering “why not put 30 in curses for the precision boost” because the condition damage isnt something that will particularly help me. it would only help my crit bleeds, which isnt that great to give up other traits and i thought id get that precision with gear anyways.
10 in death magic for a little survivability and increase in mark range.
25 in blood magic for survivability and the well CD reduction. the last five was my own preference because i didnt know where to put the last five.

traits: Spite II/III/XI
main traits i wanted was II for focus recharge rait and XI for 20% axe damage
Death Magic II
increase in staff marks, makes the staff better at everything it can do lol
Blood Magic V/VIII
heals on crits is nice and the well recharge rate makes the usually worthless wells not worthless.

I believe that is my whole build. id like if i could get peoples opinions on my build and tell me if they believe this isnt a worthless build to strive for. if you think it is then let me know too lol i dont want to waste my time getting the gear then realizing it isnt worth it. I also want something different then the conditionmancer, but if i have to, i will go conditionmancer.

I would try and shift another 10 points into Curses for 5 seconds of Fury when you enter death shroud. Right before you do Ghastly Claws, hit F1 twice rapidly (if you’re good, hit 3 in between the two) and enjoy your massively increased crit chance. For lack of a better major trait to use, pick Terror (does decent damage even with only 150 condition damage, you should always be getting the damage boost from an additional condition) or Weakening Shroud.

The reason for the fear is to prevent your target from doing things like dodging or interrupting your channel.

Now, the trick is that you will have to probably give up the well recharge. This is actually okay as the whole point of a burst is to get them down before you need to re-cast abilities. You won’t usually be using the wells twice in a fight anyway unless you’re talking bosses. The higher crit chance means those bursts hit harder and trigger your on-crit effects to make them hit harder still.

I would consider swapping Well of Power and Well of Darkness for utilities with either shorter cooldowns or for Signet of the Locust (that movement speed is really handy). For condition removal, you have Putrid Mark on staff and Consume Conditions when you need more, both of which have much shorter cooldowns than well of power. Consider instead Blood is Power. That additional 350 power really helps and the condition damage boost isn’t going to waste either. Alternatively, Spectral Wall, which is another vulnerability stacking skill (good placement and fear timing makes it so this stacks up 25 vulnerability on its own) would work nicely. The protection it gives should not be underestimated.

I played around with axe or dagger in mainhand power/crit builds a long time after I got my necromancer to level 80 about four months ago. These experiments lead me to believe that any necromancer going for full burst spec for PvE is effectively shooting himself in the leg, just compared how much more we can bring to the table with condition damage and how much better other classes are delivering the burst damage. (In WvW and PvP things are a bit different.)

The encounters in PvE, that you actually need to spec for, are longer boss fights and this is where burst damage does not shine no matter how you spin it. Conditions are simply better (unless there are too many condition-based classes in your party).

However, for PvE a hybrid build of axe/focus and sceptre/dagger is a good option, but traiting and gearing up for it can be a pain. Berserker’s axe and focus with +5% crit chance sigil on one of them might be a good start. Perhaps you should go for a full rabid set (condition damage, precision, toughness) as you would in a condition damage build and then throw in some beryl/celestial jewellery for more power and critical damage. If I recall correctly, Nemesis had a pretty decent, albeit way way too long, tutorial for a decent hybrid build (and a burst one too).

@Daeron You’re talking about this one I guess: http://youtu.be/4OCcT7iJUrA

Check out my Hybrid build – it’s Nemesis’ with a bit more power, a little less condition damage, and ~300 more armor. It’s the thread called “a more survivable hybrid, v2.0”. I just finished gearing it and it has pretty decent burst, considering. I do keep a 2nd set of all condition gear for when there isn’t a condition build in the party. But in PuGs there’s always too many conditions flying around to go full condition. So the hybrid is fun.

My advice: Use a dagger instead of an axe. It’s autoattack does about the same or more damage than the axe’s number 2 skill and doesn’t have a cooldown. The dagger number 2 is also equivalent in damage to the axe’s number 2, only a few parts of a second slower. I’m not sure if you’re doing this for PvE or PvP, but if the former, feel free to check out my guide on dagger necromancers.

Ax 2 hits about 1k more than dagger 2 in my tests. I hit about 3k with dagger 2 and around 4k with ax 2. I’m sure you can hit a lot more than that if you are speced as a berserker.

DragonXavier.3964:

Ax 2 hits about 1k more than dagger 2 in my tests. I hit about 3k with dagger 2 and around 4k with ax 2. I’m sure you can hit a lot more than that if you are speced as a berserker.

Are you talking about total for the channel or as highest spike? If you’re talking total channel I can hit about 4-5k and I run no power traits at all. It can be done. My highest single crit spike is about 2.7-3k though. I use rampager’s gear.