Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I just got to dusting my L50 Necro off the shelf and decided to make it my second main. I used ToKs to level to 80. I have HoT and plan on getting the hero points to get Reaper later on because I hear that is best. However, for now while I am still using core skills what is the best weapon set? I only play PvE (some dungeons and fractals but mostly open world). I was thinking staff/axe/dagger.

Also what are the best stat sets for armor and weapons to pursue for Necro that will eventually also be Reaper? I’d like to go ahead and buy the armor (exotic for now) and runes/sigils I’ll need later on.

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance to any replies.

Staff is good AOE…but I think it’s cooldowns have always turned me off. It’s only really good for swapping and spamming your marks before hopping into Death Shroud. I’ve always been more fan of a hybrid approach for open world PvE. My favorites are Scepter/Dagger & Dagger/Warhorn. It gives you a decent amount of everything. You got some cleaving direct damage, aoe condition damage, hard CC, boon corruption, condition transfers, life force gen, movement speed and even some sustain, and all the hits are pretty reliable.

Spite and Curses are probably pretty solid for leveling up. Spite gives a lot of passive might generation, which is good for both condi and direct damage.

Foreword: I levelled necro at launch, when core necro was the closest it has ever been to being balanced. I’m also nervous about saying anything remotely good, since the “balance” team seems to take any positive statements from necros as necros being overpowered. This is also only my opinion on things.

Core weapon set, if you’re going power:
Staff – Best used for only a few purposes:
1) Use it for it’s condition transfer and blast finisher(less important than transfer)( #4) and Fear (#5) Both are on long cooldowns.
2) Swap to it just before you go into Death Shround(in a build based on that) because it provides the highest base damage
3) Use it to aggro things from 1200m before switching to a weapon that can actually hurt things. (Fire at target, run around corner, mob(s) come to you where you can dagger them.

Your mandatory skill tree is Spite. It’s the core of damage-dealing on Necro.

Your main weapon set should either be:
Dagger/Warhorn – More reliable for non-death-shroud, but you’re melee range. You do get a stun, an immobilize and decent swiftness and a steady, if slow, drip of life force. Dagger main hand auto attack is base necro’s highest damage skill.
→ If you go this , use Blood Magic for dagger and vampiric abilities that will help you survive out of death shroud. Can either go vampiric or well based builds in this tree.

The other choice for a power set is
Ax/Focus – Tends to be much more burst damage than dagger, although over time it is less. Ax has the advantage of range, and unlike staff, it’s auto attack cannot be reflected. Good for building up vulnerability and the combo of focus(4) and Ax(2) can give a very respectable portion of your life force bar quite quickly.
→ For this I actually like to go Death Magic. It gives you the option of a stronger and decently tankier Death Shroud, or gives you the option of running minion master.

Now, for your third choice you can either pick the other of the two(Death Magic or Blood Magic, respectively) which will make you tankier than you really need to be while levelling.

However the more reliable damage choice is to take Soul Reaping. Your first skill can be whatever you want, your 2nd pretty much has to be Vital Persistence, and your third is usually best served as the +50% crit boost while in Death Shroud.

If you want to run conditions, your main weapon set should be
Sceptre/Dagger(off hand), and you’ll want to run Spite+Curses+X(Where X is usually Blood Magic, but can be Soul Reaping.)

I’ve been having success with scepter/dagger, Axe/warhorn in PvP for condi necro. S/D gives boon corrupt and cleanse, A/W physical damage burst and speed with Lifeforce building.

If you want to go vanilla Power then you go Dagger/Warhorn. If you want to go Condi you go Scepter/Dagger. There’s pretty much nothing more. Don’t use Axe, it’s garbage. It’s fine to have a Staff on the switch for some AoE coverage and additional CC. Tho Necro staff is the most boring weapon in the whole game.

For maps/dungeons/fractals you want Power. Full Berserker and Scholar Runes. For raids you go Condi Viper with Berserker Runes.

JustTrogdor.7892:

I only play PvE (some dungeons and fractals but mostly open world). I was thinking staff/axe/dagger.

Open PvE:

Full Zerk, Dagger/Warhorn + Staff

Everything else is inferior. D/Wh@ zerker gear gives you max. dps, tons of lifeforce and swiftness. Staff is only for event farming to hit multiple mobs.

Don’t go for a hybrid or condi build in open world content. This will take you three times longer to kill mobs. You are just wasting time on your way to reaper unlock.

You’re best off going for:

Dagger/Warhorn

A heal
Well of Suffering
Well of Corruption
Something flavoursome

Blood Magic for reduced wells and increased surviveablity from life siphons. It DOES add up when using warhorn.

You can use Death Magic to get rid of your condi’s
Soul Reaping to just spam 1 in Death Shroud with 100% crit chance.
Spite to get more damage. (especially in Death Shroud)
Curses to get a much higher crit chance (You can pop in and out of shroud to get Fury to crit more)

As for gear, Use beserkers, It’ll be the most useful in the long run. It’s squishy but you’ll learn that your life force is your second health bar. If you’re about to take a bit hit absorb it with your life force.

The first set of runes I used was Pack runes. This gives you 100% swiftness uptime using traited warhorn which makes it great for just running around as well as some extra crit chance.

For open world stuff it can be worth slotting in Spectral Walk or flesh wurm for extra mobility. Flesh wurm can help you teleport places in some fractals too.

For Fractals and Dugeons the current Meta Battle build gives you a good CORE to a build. Of course if you want to spice it up a bit that’s also probably fine.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Necromancer

Fractal Builds are good for dungeons too.

For PvE, I would use Berserker-Scholar, dagger-focus / staff, Soul Reaping, Blood Magic, and either Spite or Death Magic depending on whether I use minions or not.

Avoid Curses unless you are facing husks or in events you need to kite bosses.

Axe (power) and scepter (bleed) are your choices for ranged damage to single targets.

Staff is for tagging in mob train events.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to answer my questions. I’ll give some of those suggestions a try for sure. I appreciate your time.

As everyone says…dagger/the-off-hand-you-prefer and staff works best. I like Focus because it gives me a reliable regen/vul on 4 and boon removal on 5 (helpful in those fractals where the enemies gain/steal boons). I tend to go staff as secondary for the sole reason of I made a Bifrost and want to use it. Axe/whatever works too for ranged but I find that I spam off the marks, swap to dagger and then just use shroud. Also if you use Soul Reaping you can take Soul Marks to gain life force from using the staff marks.

Sorry one more stupid question. Many suggested using warhorn in offhand. I noticed that the first warhorn skill (wall of doom) on the wiki doesn’t show any damage but a 2 second daze and the second one (locust swarm) shows very little damage. If I am going for power necro I’m wondering how that helps. Also they both seem to have fairly long recharge compared to other offhand weapons even with the trait line to reduce recharge of warhorn skills. I think I am missing something here. Is it related to some kind of shroud benefit? Thank you again for your help. I’ve asked profession related questions in other forums and you all have been very helpful compared to the others. It looks like we have a good necro community here.

It’s taken for the daze to break CC bars and Locust hits 10x, 5 targets and cripples…so it’s not as bad as you think when you first look at it. It also has the utility of swiftness if you are careful not to use it in the middle of running through mobs. Mostly though, you’ll be using dagger to regain life force to go back into shroud quicker, your off hands on a necro are mostly for utility purposes and not supposed to be spammed like other professions. It’s usually better to just use the auto for damage purposes.

rabidsmiles.5926:

It’s taken for the daze to break CC bars and Locust hits 10x, 5 targets and cripples…so it’s not as bad as you think when you first look at it. It also has the utility of swiftness if you are careful not to use it in the middle of running through mobs. Mostly though, you’ll be using dagger to regain life force to go back into shroud quicker, your off hands on a necro are mostly for utility purposes and not supposed to be spammed like other professions. It’s usually better to just use the auto for damage purposes.

That makes sense. Thanks for the quick answer.

Rirgul.5302:

You’re best off going for:

Dagger/Warhorn

A heal
Well of Suffering
Well of Corruption
Something flavoursome

Blood Magic for reduced wells and increased surviveablity from life siphons. It DOES add up when using warhorn.

You can use Death Magic to get rid of your condi’s
Soul Reaping to just spam 1 in Death Shroud with 100% crit chance.
Spite to get more damage. (especially in Death Shroud)
Curses to get a much higher crit chance (You can pop in and out of shroud to get Fury to crit more)

As for gear, Use beserkers,

woah, that is my spec too, exactly! XD
i rune mine spite/blood/soul reaping

I did:
Dagger/Warhorn – Staff
Death – Minion buff, condition transfer, poison clouds, popcorn minions
Blood – Speed Boost, Life Steal, Bleeding Signet
Soul Reaping/Executioner
All the Summons you can get, plus Locust Signet for Speed Boost.

Focus is a better offhand for pure DPS, so you’d want to have both D/Wh and D/F as core necro.