Guild Wars 2

I just levelled my necro to 80 in order to use it for a guilds small 5-10man group in wvw. However, I have NO idea what type of build I should use and armor/weapons/trinkets.

Someone had mentioned doing Dire armor and dire or rabid trinkets I think to just rely heavily on conditions.

However, I’m not sure if a hybrid between power and condition is better?

I’m basically debating full dire or something like rabid or carrion with dire or zerk? Could any experienced necros help a newb necro out?

Again, this is for 5-10 man groups that typically can fight and win larger groups of around 15-20 sometimes.

I would really appreciate either telling a full build here, or linking one on those sites. I know staff is a must at least. I am leaning towards more of a power/condi hybrid build bc conditions can be cleansed so easily now..

couple different takes on this: I started out all Rabid, then added more and more Dire in over time.

I didn’t fill in sigils and trinket infussions etc. but this is basically what I run in a small man roaming guild.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRQQNAW7Yjc00bb3Nm3wfbighSyWoDiuBCgzlykIKA-TFRGABAoEES1fYT3wSK/IFwiSjA-w

you could drop spectral wall for walk (go back and forth between those two depending), could swap out weakening shroud for Hemo and try that out. Pretty run of the mill build. Path of corruption is absolutely amazing if you haven’t figured that out already.

as for dire vs rabid… ehh early on I ran around with maybe >50% crit chance but currently I have around 30%.

I have messed around with different runes, but if you are going tanky what you get with runes of undead is pretty nice. I have friends who have just gone all in Dire everything and I might go that way, but after crafting my Ascended rabid weapons I don’t feel like grinding out another set just yet.

Oh, I have sigil of torment and might on staff, stacking condi on scepter, and might on dagger.

The added tankyness of dire is very noticeable. Having 2.9k armor >26,000 hp and >2,300 condi damage is great. (with full stacks). Yea you lose some crit proc damage but a dead necro does no DPS

The above build should work well. I would add in though that perplexity runes are the best rune in wvw. If you can afford them then you should put them on your armor. I’d also recommend dropping at least one or even two of those utilities for walk, or spectral wurm. When your facing a bigger group your going to need to outlive them so you need to be able to avoid focus, while focusing down one player at a time with your group. I personally run wall, walk, and wurm (WX3). Because wall is a wonderful spacing tool and it has a 2 second fear, and wurm/walk also allow you to create space. I also drop the dagger for warhorn because with traited walk you can get perma swiftness. This is pretty much what i run when roaming:
slightly different

zapv.8051:

The above build should work well. I would add in though that perplexity runes are the best rune in wvw. If you can afford them then you should put them on your armor. I’d also recommend dropping at least one or even two of those utilities for walk, or spectral wurm. When your facing a bigger group your going to need to outlive them so you need to be able to avoid focus, while focusing down one player at a time with your group. I personally run wall, walk, and wurm (WX3). Because wall is a wonderful spacing tool and it has a 2 second fear, and wurm/walk also allow you to create space. I also drop the dagger for warhorn because with traited walk you can get perma swiftness. This is pretty much what i run when roaming:
slightly different

Perplexity is great, I have a dire set with perplexity on them, shelved them recently and using an undead set. To the OP: if you have the $$ try out perplexity as well.

Since the OP stated he plans to run with 5-10, I really think he should keep Epi on his bar IMO, but what you state about the spectral stuff is spot on. It is all about finding what works for you.

Fraeg.9837:

zapv.8051:

The above build should work well. I would add in though that perplexity runes are the best rune in wvw. If you can afford them then you should put them on your armor. I’d also recommend dropping at least one or even two of those utilities for walk, or spectral wurm. When your facing a bigger group your going to need to outlive them so you need to be able to avoid focus, while focusing down one player at a time with your group. I personally run wall, walk, and wurm (WX3). Because wall is a wonderful spacing tool and it has a 2 second fear, and wurm/walk also allow you to create space. I also drop the dagger for warhorn because with traited walk you can get perma swiftness. This is pretty much what i run when roaming:
slightly different

Perplexity is great, I have a dire set with perplexity on them, shelved them recently and using an undead set. To the OP: if you have the $$ try out perplexity as well.

Since the OP stated he plans to run with 5-10, I really think he should keep Epi on his bar IMO, but what you state about the spectral stuff is spot on. It is all about finding what works for you.

Yeah perplexity is so great. Undead, krait, scavenging, or nightmare are also pretty good. Necros in general have some pretty good utilities, so as you said it really is up to personal preference. For the OP I’d also try signet of spite, spectral armor, and well of power. They can all be pretty good depending on who your up against.

Why would perplextiy runes be the best choice? I run those on my condi mesmer, but that’s because he can apply confusion. Necro doesn’t have access to confusion…. Do we? O_o

Precisely justin. We don’t have confusion, perplexity runes give us confusion.

Necro technically can apply confusion using spectral wall and staff #1 for a projectile finisher through ethereal field – this will never happen LOL

You essentially get access to confusion by interrupting your foe with the numerous fears we have as well if you carry warhorn offhand which has an unblockable daze which can interrupt – very nice if I may say so myself from experience

How do you guys deal with swiftness without travel runes or wh#5? Sounds a bit dangerous to roam wvw with such low movement speed.

Justin.5231:

Why would perplextiy runes be the best choice? I run those on my condi mesmer, but that’s because he can apply confusion. Necro doesn’t have access to confusion…. Do we? O_o

Even before they fixed fear to actually “interrupt”, Perplexity was the highest damage rune option for condi builds simply because it had a 3 stack passive proc on the 4th bonus. If you didn’t have a warhorn or Spectral Grasp back then you’d just take 5 runes and one Orb or Crest.
And this was during the time when people still raged about how op those runes are. Now they’re even stronger due to the fear fix, but complaints seem to be getting fewer these days.

Also, we always had access to confusion. Usually by corrupting retaliation and transfers, the latter of course not being affected by any extra condi duration. And as mentioned already, we could use Spectral Wall with either projectile finishers or blast finishers to trigger Chaos Armor.

Kurama.8453:

How do you guys deal with swiftness without travel runes or wh#5? Sounds a bit dangerous to roam wvw with such low movement speed.

In combat movement speed for necros is overrated. It’s nice to have, but you still won’t be able to run away from other classes.

What you can do though is get a second weapon with a sigil of speed. Swap it in when you see a pack of wolves or whatever and enjoy up to 3 min swiftness (or more if you have any boon duration).

For PvE, I primarily use berserker, rampager, carrion, and rabid. Sometimes soldier, celestial, or shaman if i need something tanky.

For WvW, I use soldier, dire, or celestial.

Each set of armor has runes for specific situations, or for just experimenting with. Undead and krait are so cheap you can stick them on anything and not fret over losing them if you want to replace the runes. Both are good starters for Necromancer.

Examples of what I mean by situations or experimenting…
Rampager armor has Hoelbrak runes for might duration and condition reduction
Shaman armor has Exhuberance for no other reason than to experiment with super high vitality
Soldier armor currently has Earth runes for protection duration after the September update affecting Spectral traits
Carrion armor currently has Vampirism from a previous patch to experiment with siphoning (supposed) improvements
Rabid armor has Torment to experiment with maximizing the new condition and is used with a Torment sigil on scepter for frequent critical hit builds.

Choose what you want and give it a shot. Mixing armor with different stats is also perfectly acceptable. The important thing is not to mix runes because that is generally a nerf since the runes were updated.

I’ve been using a slight variation of flow’s hybrid build “Staff + Corruption” with good results lately.

Kurama.8453:

How do you guys deal with swiftness without travel runes or wh#5? Sounds a bit dangerous to roam wvw with such low movement speed.

The build I listed has a perma swiftness if you always hit warhorn 5 and spectral walk on cooldown. As flow said though, any good players will never let you disengage as a necro. IMO Travelers is the most overrated rune set in the game, certainly not worth the 10 gold a piece for roaming. For that kind of money you could get torment on a thief or mesmer, hoelbrek for an ele/engi, or perplexity for almost any class and deal way way more damage. 25% movement speed is highly overrated in small group fights where your team could provide swiftness anyway.

I’m having a hard time deciding between dagger or warhorn for an off hand (with scepter) for small scale wvw roaming.

Where is MethaneGas on this thread? :P

Haha… I was just gonna post as I read through the article. zapv already posted a good build in the beginning though.

@Justin,
Being in a 5-man team and a 10-man team is pretty different. In a 10 man team you have a ton more cover fire from your allies, and you likely won’t be the one that’s in the front line, so you can afford to sprinkle in nice damage. In any case I’d still recommend you take either Flesh Wurm or Spectral Walk. That’s just my advice though.

If you go full dire, you’ll be really tanky, but I think mixing dire and rabid is the way to go. Having a crit chance between 30% – 40% is ideal, imo. More crit chance – more damage, less crit chance – less damage but more tankyness. It depends on what you like. I’d personally stick at around 35% or so. If you are running in a group, you likely won’t need all that dire to keep you alive if your allies know what they are doing xD

I think going with staff is a must. Scepter / Warhorn and Scepter / Dagger both work. It depends on your preference. If you have a cleanser in a group, warhorn can become godly. When you don’t take dagger offhand, you don’t have that condi transfer, so if your ally covers for you, it takes care of that weakness, and warhorn allows you to tank really well because it fills your deathshroud like crazy, and synergizes with a lot of things (Minor in curses, plague, runes of krait, on-crit sigils, deathshroud). It also has the AoE daze – nothing like a little more crowd control. Dagger offhand has a nice blind, condi transfer, and ranged weakness and bleeds, which is also very nice to bomb a group with – Grasping Dead + Enfeeble on en enemy group… but you’d have less swiftness (your allies could provide that for you though)… so it depends.

With runes, it also depends. Perplexity is nice, but I’d say that’s more of a small scale thing to bring – maybe a 5-man group. Sure, bringing epidemic could make it more AoE, but the procs are unpredictable, and there is a long cooldown between the confusions so if it gets cleansed you are stuck with nothing. It’s still very good though – if you get 8 confusions on someone with a Necro they might as well roll over dead :P
Another good rune I’d recommend is Rune of the Krait if you have 0 points in Spite. These runes give you crazy duration on your bleeds, and make Plague pretty nice as well (Bleeds, poison and torment when you use it). I don’t think there’s any other rune, aside from maybe traveler, that would be good. But if you are in a group and your ally can give you swiftness in some way, traveler isn’t that necessary.

For sigils, you can never go wrong with one or two Energy Sigils. If you have the money for it. Sigil of Torment is good for some extra condi cover/pressure and there’s sigil of corruption. There’s many variations. I think I’m also a fan of Sigil of Agony (20% bleed duration), at least in theory. Perplexity Runes, Sigil of Agony and Hemophilia would give you the condi duration that Runes of Krait do, but you’d have confusion with Perplexity, for example. You’d lose out on some sigils though. Anyway.

Different people will tell you different things but I swear by Wurm+Spectral Walk. The mobility in small scale fights with those 2 can be pretty crazy, although I’m not sure if that’s good to start off with because it isn’t straight forward. Up to you, and it never hurts to try. If you aren’t using those, and you find yourself dead more often than alive and think you are getting too much focus fire, try using those and see if it changed anything
In a 10 man team, taking both likely isn’t as necessary, unless you are maybe fighting another melee-train guild group. A 10-man group is pretty different in terms of what you need.

The build I use is similar to what zapv linked. He uses Master of Terror, which focuses on damage. Soul Marks is good for sustain as well because it really fills your deathshroud, but you lose damage/CC, so it’s up to you