Guild Wars 2

So I started a necro character, thinking it would be a fun class to try. Very different than the other classes, but I’m trying to figure out how to build him as I level. I was thinking a scepter/dagger combo seemed like the best, with a curse/blood magic build. I wasn’t a big fan of the staff for soloing (haven’t tried grouping yet). The dagger seems a little to in-your-face for my preference, the axe seems ok, but doesn’t seem to pull great weight and the warhorn’s abilities seem weak in terms of doing much of anything.

So, for those of you who have played to the mid-to-high levels so far, what insight can you provide? Or am I aiming myself towards the area that most necros have gone so far? Have you found any niche skills or traits that you don’t want to give up?

It seems like condition damage, toughness, vit and criticals are the most-to-least important things for a necro to build around.

I’m running a scepter/dagger Necro and I’m having a lot of fun with it. I find it a lot more fun and active then the plain minion spec lots of people seem to be running.You need to focus on lots of condition damage because it’s a bleed heavy spec.

What do you run for skills?

Well of Blood, Well of Suffering, Well of Darkness, and either Signet of Undeath for dungeons or Signet of the Locust for everything else and Lich Form as my elite

Honestly, I love the ax/horn combo. The vulnerability on the ax’s auto-attack helps with my minion or ally’s damage and the AoE cripple is nice for chasing down or kiting enemies, while the horn’s daze attack is invaluable in fights where you need an interrupt, which you will definitely want someone to have at higher levels. The speed boost is nice just for running around since you’ll be doing a lot of that unless you spend a lot of money on teleports.

Skills tend to vary on what I’m doing. PvE I just run around with a Locust Signet and a bunch of minions. Dungeons I like to have a Well of Darkness, Spectral Grasp (another interrupt), and Spectral Wall (protection for the whole team and half the cooldown of Spectral armor which only helps yourself).

Traits wise… not found anything too impressive. Reaper’s Might is nice to power up via Death Shroud early in a fight or whenever you have the life force. Be wary of Blood Magic, it sounds impressive with all it’s heals and siphons, but I haven’t noticed a whole lot of benefit from it, especially the siphons.

Scepter/dagger is easily the best bet for low levels without many traits available with the exception of Minions which are dull. I really enjoy this spec. It’s damage is constant, no burst, but you can rely on it.

Scepter/dagger for your first set, staff for your secondary weapon set. Alternatively take dagger/warhorn for the second set if you go into WvW to level like I did – for the Root, daze, speed boost.

Consume Conditions for your heal, or maybe Bloodfiend. Try them both, see if you get snared too much by mobs or debuffed otherwise. If you’re okay, go for Bloodfiend for it’s passive healing and minor damage boost.

Blood is Power, Epidemic and Signet of Spite for your three utilities.

Plague for your elite.

Single target strategy:
Blood is Power to put your longest Bleed on them – however BoP puts a Bleed on you too. Then hit Deathly Swarm (off hand dagger’s 4 button) to send your own conditions (the bleed you just put on yourself with BoP) onto your target. Then it’s a matter of 1 key spam with your AoE snare/bleed, direct damage/Life Force generator and other AoE bleed as needed. At low level, before you get BoP, you can hit Epidemic despite it being purely AoE and send the Vulnerability debuff you have on yourself to the target via Deathly Swarm but it’s not needed. Hit Signet of Spite as you like. Longer CD, but it puts on six conditions. Check out what they are and you’ll learn five seconds of several of them can be nice in different situations, you’ll know when to use it then.

AoE strategy:
Blood is Power->Deathly Swarm->Signet of Spite->Epidemic. That’s your four most powerful bleeds and all of Signet of Spite’s debuffs going in an AoE area, a large one. Then you have the AoE on your two and five buttons to hit off CD. Hit Epidemic every time it’s off CD on the target your focusing down to keep the AoE bleeds flowing out from that. Combo Blood is Power to Deathly Swarm as they’re both ready. Before you get BoP just stack a few bleeds through the weapon, then signet, then epidemic to open with. Every time Signet is back combo it with Epidemic too.

Plague? Plague is pretty cool. Damage spam on the one key. Blind spam on the two key. Cripple spam on the three key. Surrounded by foes? Set your Epidemic AoE combo going with Blood is Power, then pop Plague and spam 2. They’ll be blinded once per second, meaning you take very, very little damage and your bleeds get free time to run their course. When under less pressure, spam 1 for damage. The cripple spam technique on 3 is very situational and only ever really useful in PvP.

Your staff also has decent damage with bleeds on the 2 key, a poison and a snare on 3. Both are AoE. Use it as necessary.

As for your traits, make sure you get the 20% Bleed duration as soon as you hit level 20.

…

I’d recommend this. It’s not as powerful as minion spam in my opinion, but it’s a ton more fun and decent for PvP too. Hope it helps.

I’ve been using a Scepter/Dagger weapon combination for the majority of my playthrough. I occasionally switch over to my staff whenever there’s a DE in a tight space where it’s easier to force mobs to walk over marks.

I started playing with minions but I’ve been moving away from them slowly, I only really use them underwater now.

For the utility skills I’ve been using Well of Blood for healing. It makes sense to have something that not just heals myself but also others around me.

Then I’m using Spectral Wall which is a wall that gives allies protection and makes enemies vunerable. I like using it because it’s a two sided skill and it’s really the only way my necro can buff others besides healing them.

I use Signet of the Locust mainly for the speed boost. The only time I actually use the skill is by accident.

Lastly I use Radiation Field and Summon D Series Golem (as my elite) which are both Asura skills. However they’ve served me well. (So much so I didn’t realize Radiation Field was a racial skill until I checked it up now)

Oh and whenever I want to move somewhere fast I’ll use the Spectral Walk skill (which gives a speed boost) and cancel it at the last second so I don’t teleport backwards.

axe/dagger’s my main weapon equip, staff is secondary.

most pve content is fine with minions, but being able to use death shroud, dodges, and wells/minion aggro to max effect is far better.

I’ve been able to practice until I get to the point where my cooldowns aren’t cooling all at the same time. Necromancer gives you all sorts of options from various sources, and using them all is very difficult.

be aware that your death shroud skills augment your other strategies immensely.

After leveling a thief, a mesmer, a ranger, an ele, and a warrior, I’ve come around to my necro, who is currently a level or two above 60. Previously I’d been using dagger/warhorn and axe/focus.

A few days ago I started running scepter/dagger and axe/focus (basically shooting for Nemesis’ hybrid damage build, but my gear is still pretty much a mess at this point). Yesterday in Sparkfly Fen I soloed that Champion Jungle Troll. Now, maybe that’s not a big thing for a lot of folks out there, and maybe he’s an easy champion to solo, but it was pretty darned exciting for me. Only ever soloed one champion before – the champ quaggan in Frostgorge Sound, with my thief.

So, anyway. Yay, necro. And thanks, Nemesis, for all those awesome necro build videos!

I am also still in my low levels, but just looking at the skills and only being lvl 8 i do not see damage wise why Scepter/Dagger would be better then Dagger/Dagger. Could anyone care to explain?

^ Simply because you are a light armor class and you can keep your distance with scepter but not with dagger MH.