Guild Wars 2

Hi all

I’ve recently just came back to GW2. I’ve played in the beta and just the beginning of launch although I never got a char over lv20 so I hardly really played the game.

I’ve decided to play as a Necro as I really enjoy their gameplay and used the lv20 scroll to get it to lv20. I still can’t find a good build just for leveling or general PvE.

All the builds people post seem to be for players that are already lv80 and for PvP.

In short, what would be the best build leveling to lv80? I really enjoy using the Staff although it seems nobody uses it as their main weapon?

Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated
Thanks

If you are just starting out since you cant put any traits in until lvl 30 look around at the weapons you enjoy. For lvling its all about what you enjoy but the Utility Epidemic is and always will be your friend for lvl. If you stack conditions on 1 NPC and then send them all to the 3 other that came with that 1 it helps incredibly. And you can use staff but its very slow and since you cant Trait it yet it can be blocked so you should look at the other weapons and find others you even just kinda like and use them in junction with staff. That’s at least what I did.

I’m currently leveling a necro (have gotten a little past 50 so far, I almost feel like I’m leveling too quickly).

I suggest:

— try all the weapons, unlock all their skills and get used to how they work, individually and in combination. This also counts for Death Shroud — it can either be a lifesaving emergency measure, or the focus of a build. (Look at a wiki because you won’t really have time to read skill tooltips while in DS.)

— make sure to try the different ground targeting settings — you’ll probably be better off with one of the faster ones than the default.

— decide whether to go for power or condition damage. In PVE solo content, you can make either one work. For dungeons and group stuff, power is definitely better.

— however, just because you happen to choose power doesn’t mean conditions aren’t useful or that condition weapons should be avoided. Whatever works! I personally love the staff as a secondary weapon.

— with the current state of minion AI as it is, and recent trait changes, Minion Master builds are not so great for leveling. The flesh golem elite skill is probably the best for leveling though, even though half the time he’ll stand around doing nothing.

— Signet of the Locust (always on passive) is essential for leveling. Running faster is always good. You can swap it out before a tough fight, but most of the time I just leave it on anyway. Definitely try Well of Suffering, Blood Is Power, and (especially if going for conditions) Epidemic. Others are situational; I like Spectral Grab to interrupt or to pull single enemies closer to melee them while also generating life force. After a few skills you should have a pretty good idea of what’s most useful for you. As far as healing skills go, Consume Conditions seems best.

Don’t take the Flesh Golem. I just leveled a necromancer. He’s so dumb he go to the monster when he’s nearly died… Plague is better, a 20s poison/blind AoE with stability that will help you when surrounded.

First utilities, take Signet of the Locust to run faster. Second one is Well of Suffering, a very nice AoE. Third one is Signet of Spite. It grants you more Power to improve all your damages, reducing the need of power stuff of your level. These three are on the first line, so you will have all of them already bought at level 8. Save your skill points from level 20 to 30 for Plague that costs 10 skill points.

The best leveling weapons are double dagger and staff. Dagger have a strong DPS, a life stealing spell and the #5 skill make foes fumble half their attacks while staff provide AoE, healing and controls. Don’t forget to unlock your Death Shroud skills too. Death Shroud is the F1 necro skill, morphing you in a doppleganger with it’s own life bar.

For your healing skill, Consume Conditions is a must have, it’ll grant you a removing condition that’ll help you many times.

Necro pex build 2/2/4/4/0

I used a axe/focus with a MM build. It was easy peasy.

Honestly any weapon combo for Necro will work, but some are better than others. Axe is very Not Awesome, but you can still kill faster with it in solo PVE than many classes.

No need to hoard skill points if you’re exploring and picking up all the various skill points along the way. You can have both Plague and Flesh Golem and decide which you prefer. (Lich Form is really not worth 30 points though, I don’t think.)

In fact, if you take Flesh Golem I still recommend unlocking Plague for underwater situations.

The way I look at it, Plague is available for 20ss with a 180s cooldown — so that’s 10% uptime. It prevents you from using other skills while it’s up, and while it’s a big AOE, its’s more of a sustained DPS and you can easily burst for a lot more with wells and DS 5/DS 4.

The Flesh Golem is up until it gets killed, until you swim, or a few other things that rarely happen in PvE. Cooldown is 60s. And while all melee minions are as buggy as an ant farm right now, overall I would say he’s doing his job a lot more than 10% of the time. When his AI does work, he is a very effective tank/distraction, eats a lot of enemy CC for you, and his own CC attack is brutal. (Chances are when they fix the AI, he’ll tank more, take more damage and go down faster, and it’ll be just about even.)

I’d argue that dagger/focus is better than dagger/dagger. Dagger/dagger gets more points for style though.

Foosnark.1784:

I’d argue that dagger/focus is better than dagger/dagger. Dagger/dagger gets more points for style though.

My rule of the game: If it looks cool, make it work!

Dagger/Dagger with empty/Warhorn and utilites Spectral walk + w/e.

High uptime of swiftness with superb dps without caring for traits at all is the key to victory xD

Kulvar.1239:

First utilities, take Signet of the Locust to run faster. Second one is Well of Suffering, a very nice AoE. Third one is Signet of Spite.

I would take Well of Corruption instead the signet so you have a good extra AoE or just some extra damage from a well nearly every fight, or you can fire them both on bigger AoE fights or veterans.

I also like staff in my second slot for AoE fights, first cast #2,3,4,2 and throw in the wells and finish rest with dagger

Thank you everyone for their input. This is exactly what I was looking for.

I kind of took everyone’s advise but so far I feel most comfortable with a dagger/focus with Staff secondary. Using Signet of Spite, Well of Suffering, Signet of Locust and Flesh Golem (still saving skill points for Plague). Still need some more skill points to try a few other utilities suggested here.

Right now I’m really not sure in which direction to go with traits. What would be the best traits to get using dagger/focus while leveling?

Imo for leveling max curses Line then max spite and then w/e.

Well you wont be putting many conditions on with dagger/focus, so I would level up spite for power first and curses for crits. Death Magic and Blood Magic lines will help with staff/wells and dagger as well as toughness/vitality. If you are having trouble staying alive, Death Magic would be good as you would gain toughness and can get Staff Mastery and Greater Marks, which will help both offensively and defensively. Its free to retrait, so try lots of ways and see what fits your style……mostly have fun!!

Back in 2012 I was leveling mine with condition focus in mind and Scepter/Anything and Epidemic from level 5-80. I was quite happy with that