Guild Wars 2

Hi all. I’ve recently made a necro to play with my ranger friend and I’m looking into builds for him. Wells seemed a natural choice as the’ll help my friend both directly through their effects and indirectly through combos. As such, I’ve decided to go with what is mostly a power build since wells seem to synergies well with them, as well as both death shroud and lich form, which I’m quite fond of. As for the weapons, staff was an obvious choice and daggers feel much better to me then axes so I wend with d/d and staff. So far my build looks like: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAoYWjQaV6ZaKbM8JAJFXj9kisHP6xxDzMA

I picked dagger as an offhand since my experience with my guardian has taught me how valuable blind can be, and enfeebling blood gives me a little extra aoe when using my daggers as well as allowing me to maintain almost an 100% uptime of weakness. The aoe is bleed damage though, but hopefully the condition damage I get from the curses trait line will be sufficient in making it, and mark of blood on the staff, worth casting.

I’m not too sure about some of the traits though. I’d like to have greater marks but I’m not sure if it’d be worth swapping out ritual of protection or staff mastery for it. I’m also not 100% sold on the last 10pts in curses.

I think that a focus off-hand would be a better choice if you intend to play with a friend most of the time, the vulnerability and regen are probably better than the blind and focus 5 can really help with boon stacking enemies.

Also as a Necro with staff you always have access to 2 interrupts, 1 single target from DS and another from the Staff 5.

Does the ranger use shortbow? If so Epidemic might be more useful than Well of Corruption.

Signet of the locust is really bad for combat active, swap it out for another Utility when you go into combat, I suggest Well of Darkness since you seem to be used to using blind for interrupts.

I personally prefer Greater marks since it doubles the mark radius and putrid mark transfers all allied conditions in a 1200 AoE to enemies inside the Mark.
Ritual of protection is a very short protection spell which would only be useful as a reaction, something that’s unlikely with well casting, so I’d swap that for greater marks.

The whole blood magic tree is questionable really, I ’d rather have more crit damage and Soul Reaping has some very good traits like piercing blast and Soul Marks, which combined with staff traits generates huge amounts of Life Force.

Using Death Shroud as a third weapon set, interrupt, damage mitigation and burst damage is key to successfully using Necros, so it’s something you should really focus on if you don’t have practice.

EDIT: Just saw you intend to use Lich Form as your Elite, in that case Critical damage is really essential. Almost every hit in Lich Form is a critical strike, any Crit damage is pretty much applied as a straight damage increase while it lasts.

Kiriakulos.1690:

I think that a focus off-hand would be a better choice if you intend to play with a friend most of the time, the vulnerability and regen are probably better than the blind and focus 5 can really help with boon stacking enemies.

Also as a Necro with staff you always have access to 2 interrupts, 1 single target from DS and another from the Staff 5.

Does the ranger use shortbow? If so Epidemic might be more useful than Well of Corruption.

Signet of the locust is really bad for combat active, swap it out for another Utility when you go into combat, I suggest Well of Darkness since you seem to be used to using blind for interrupts.

I personally prefer Greater marks since it doubles the mark radius and putrid mark transfers all allied conditions in a 1200 AoE to enemies inside the Mark.
Ritual of protection is a very short protection spell which would only be useful as a reaction, something that’s unlikely with well casting, so I’d swap that for greater marks.

The whole blood magic tree is questionable really, I ’d rather have more crit damage and Soul Reaping has some very good traits like piercing blast and Soul Marks, which combined with staff traits generates huge amounts of Life Force.

Using Death Shroud as a third weapon set, interrupt, damage mitigation and burst damage is key to successfully using Necros, so it’s something you should really focus on if you don’t have practice.

EDIT: Just saw you intend to use Lich Form as your Elite, in that case Critical damage is really essential. Almost every hit in Lich Form is a critical strike, any Crit damage is pretty much applied as a straight damage increase while it lasts.

Thanks for your advice. With all of your recommended changes (baring the utilities as they will change from encounter to encounter) my build looks like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAodWjQaV6ZaKbM8JAJFX/c0jjHmZKFrzOA

I definitely see your point about Soul Reaping over Blood Magic. The only trait which I’d feel particularly bad about loosing is Ritual Masterly as the cooldown for Well of Blood is a bit long for my liking. Would it be at all possible to swap out some points in curses instead? For example:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAodWjQaV6ZaKbMcKAJFX/8kisHP+wx0HWH

As for the utilities, the ranger prefers to use longbows so epidemic may not be the best choice. I’ll probably swap out the signet for non-trivial combat and for dungeons and well of corruption will be swapped out as well depending on the encounter.