Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone.

First of all, I’m a french guy, so please excuse my english.

As you can guess, I’m new on this game, and I have some questions.

I decided to play a necromancer, I reached the 8th level this morning.

I have well understood that weapons give you specific skills. For the moment, I like the dual dagger combo. I like the satff too.

But I’m totally lost when it comes to skills themselves. Alteration, burst, dot ? Skills which work with power, those which work with something else ? Which piece of gear is better with this kind of gameplay ?

I tried to get a tutorial that explains all of this, but I didn’t find it. I watched the video on the top of the forum, but I didn’t understand it well enough.

Can someone please enlighten me ?

Thanks, and I hope I have been understandable

I hope you’re liking your necro, it’s my favourite so far

So for weapons, the staff can be used in a condition (dot) build or a power build. It doesn’t do a ton of damage but it has a lot of utility. Most necros I know use the staff.

The dagger main hand is for power builds as it does straight damage and is a melee weapon. Offhand it can be good for a condition build or power as well, although from what I’ve seen most people running dagger MH use a warhorn or focus offhand.

Sceptre is all about conditions and later has a trait to make all conditions made by the sceptre to last longer.

Everyone will tell you that the axe is garbage but it works just fine in PvE. It is also for power based builds but is medium range and a bit safer than the dagger.

I wouldn’t worry too much about gear at lower levels as necros have PvE pretty easy. If you want to make things easier for yourself you should probably pick Vitality, Toughness, or Power/condition damage depending on your weapon.

As for utilities in PvE pretty much anything goes. Some ones that can be good to have is Well of Darkness. This makes soloing almost anything (except those kitten dredge) really easy. Well of Suffering is good too and adds a lot of damage.

Minions aren’t terribly reliable right now but they can be pretty useful in PvE, especially at lower levels.

Thanks Levian for your answear, it really helped me.

As a matter of fact, I played a warlord for 5 years in WoW, I’m guessing I’m gonna love playing necromancer

Weapons:

Dagger: Close range quick damage, puts you in hitting range of mobs but does the most damage, has a okish healing skill that does alot of damage.

Axe: Medium ranged decent damage, fast burst skill and AoE cripple, inflicts vulnerability every hit and 8 stacks of vulnerability can be kept on targets which boosts minion + allies damage.

Scepter: Condition damage (DoT) stacks bleed and poison quickly, though in big events your damage will suffer alot due to the 25 bleed stack cap on monsters. 4 or 5 seconds of #1 spamming with scepter then Epidemic can deal alot of damage to a group of mobs.

Staff: Extremely long range and alot of AoE semi-spammable skills. nice for quickly removing conditions from yourself and laying down chill poison combos, builds Life Force very quickly.

Builds
Minion Master: Uses all minions as utility skills and traits boosting minions health and damage. Very strong for PvEas they act as meat shields allowing you to solo pretty much anything. Suffers in PvP due to minions terrible AI and lack of defenses.

Conditionmancer: Uses Scepter and Condition inflicting/ transferring utilities and traits for condition damage & duration. Okish in PvE, suffers in large events because mobs dont survive long enough to deal damage. Can be very effective in PvP small scale fights but tends to suffer alot in larger fights because of all the AoE and self-target condition removals.

Power Necromancer: High power and critical damage that uses bursty skills and wells to drop targets quickly. Can be very effective in WvW PvP with the combo fields acting mostly as perma-blinds in large fights but suffers abit in small scale PvP like the mists because of focused CC. A nice happy medium build for PvE, damage sticks and can be dealt fast.

Hope this helps!

Ascii’s information is pretty much on the spot in terms of accuracy. I’m actually going to save his text block for future use.

For your first Elite skill, definitely choose the Flesh Golem. That thing is a great tank, heals out of battle and deals good damage. It let me solo Veteran mobs several levels higher than me.

This is more of a general tip, but make sure you switch weapons midfight and go in and out of Death Shroud frequently. Don’t simply stand there and autoattack just because your current skills are on cooldown.

Other than that, enjoy the Necro!

Darthaemos.6370:

This is more of a general tip, but make sure you switch weapons midfight and go in and out of Death Shroud frequently. Don’t simply stand there and autoattack just because your current skills are on cooldown.

I echo this advice, even as somebody who generally dislikes the Death Shroud mechanic. The Life Transfer ability is a great way to deal a healthy packet of AoE damage, and Fear is a good way to take an enemy out of the fight for a few seconds while your allies beat on him (or to give you an opportunity to flee if the fight’s going against you).