Guild Wars 2

I finished building my two mains, yes two. Now I’m working on two more (I always like working on two characters at a time). I’m building a Sylvari thief and decided to make a Charr necro and I just like the idea of an axe/focus necro with dagger/warhorn as the secondary set. This is for dungeons/wvw

Trait set up I’m considering:30/0/0/20/20
Spite: II, VI, XI
Blood Magic: II, IX
Soul Reaping: III, VI

Heal: Consume conditions:
Utilites: Blood is Power, Spectral Walk, Signet of Locus

Idea is to go high on power with full Knight’s Armor and Berserker weapons and trinkets. Plan is to inflict damage with the Axe and switch to dagger when in trouble with HP and getting out of fire range.

Any help/ideas criticism will be appreciated.

this looks like a confused build to be using knights. you’re spreading yourself thin over your trait tree.

so your UPs are:
+power
+vitality
+crit damage

and your gear ups are:
+tough
+power
+precision

the only problem is with those two varying stat combos is that you’re going to achieve extremely low-mediocre ability scores, and your damage and defense will be lackluster compared to everyone else. I see a few gimmick traits in there like SRVI and SpiteII, which can be traited differently.

axe/focus necros take a lot of time to kill things because the damage on axe main is weak, and the focus synergizes with it only to produce vuln stacks and light regen.

your sources of LF are slim, and close to death>axe master

hmm… no staff is just sad, the utility in the staff is invaluable. BiP is best used by DPS hybrids or crit based conditionmancers that use fury/high prec to powerburst when needed. Swalk is getting old now, speed is becoming more of a risk factor in PvP and Swall/Sarmor are getting more popular and useful. Signet of the locust is a waste of a slot unless you’re hot swapping it just to run. otherwise, use corrupt boon, well of darkness, or well of corruption.

You’ll want lich as your ult and tbh blood tree is useless nowadays without investment in toughness or healing power. (most optimal vampiric play for self-healing is to max out on food buffs, crit proc sigils for leeching, and to grab the crit trait combined with 50% efficiency trait.)

the average health gain from investing in the blood tree is about 15-25 points at most if someone fancies something in there, so only roughly a 1500-2500 hp gain from the ability bonuses. you could stack toughness instead, and run with lower hp and put those points in places that could utilize more toughness on your character.

players should invest in vitality until they reach a comfortable max HP. my sweet spot in about ~19-22k HP with the rest of my resources put in toughness for defensive abilities.

ramble ramble ramble

This video says everything about (my opinion) the best way to use an axe/focus. Using Life Blast as your auto attack instead of Axe auto attack is the key to success. This build can do ridiculous damage, and you can easily swap some crit damage for toughness or vitality if that pleases you.

I really think you should watch this video. He very clearly explains the benefits of using an axe/focus main. The most important thing to remember is that DS 1 attack is your auto attack, not axe auto attack.

More important than what is posted above, is the need for Necros to consider weapon swap like elementalists consider element swap. You should basically ignore Axe #1, however, if you can get accustomed to the paystyle, drop your staff for dagger/warhorn. Use the Axe/Focus for the vulnerability, retaliation, spinal shivers & #2 before swapping to Dagger/Warhorn for the daze, immobilize (4sec if 30spite) and auto attack. DS #1 is great depending on your build for vul and/or might stacking, but you still lose a bit of dps compared to dagger auto… naturaly if you need the range then you’re good to go.

Again, main thing.. treat your weapons and DS as elements. Never stay on one too long or you’re not making full use of the class.

nice advice from talentless. I like to play d/wh with a/f but usually run with staff offhand instead of a/f purely for the range but will be working on my play without staff for sure. its far more fun for sure.

talentless, u take spiteful talisman in spite?

Bull Zooker.1672:

nice advice from talentless. I like to play d/wh with a/f but usually run with staff offhand instead of a/f purely for the range but will be working on my play without staff for sure. its far more fun for sure.

talentless, u take spiteful talisman in spite?

Yes.

jpnova.4572:

This is for dungeons/wvw

Seems to me that some of the advice you got was more PvP oriented…

A few bullet points that I’d want to bring up:

• Be willing to experiment with different stuff. Also watch a lot of videos/read a lot of guides to figure out what works for other people, but take all of it with a grain of salt. Nemesis’ video that was linked earlier is nice place to start. Keep in mind though that that video is about an attempt at a max-zerker necro build, not about a general pve build.
• Somewhat linked to this: you’ll probably figure out through experience that several of the minor traits you picked can be replaced with something more useful. Also, I started with 20 points in blood as well, but blood isn’t very awesome tbh (at least, that’s my opinion) and those points are generally better spent elsewhere. Again though, it might be best to experience this yourself.
• Do consider staff as well, the utility and general usefulness of it is pretty much unmatched in PvE and WvW. To this end, consider having staff at pretty much all times, and switching between axe/focus and dagger/warhorn as the situation demands. If you do use staff, you’ll probably want 10 points in Death Magic for greater marks.
• As said before, when using axe, consider resorting to DS1 as auto-attack. Reaper’s Might and Unyielding blast are very hot traits in that case.
• Utility skills should be changed based on the situation, but I almost always have Signet of the Locust on my bar. The passive movement speed increase gives you all round benefits that can be used both offensively and defensively. For instance, with a lack of access to vigor, the increased movement speed makes it easier for you to just run out of red circles, which in turn means less dodging and less need for increased endurance regen.

This is coming from someone that started off from a similar interest as you. Now, about 8 months later I guess, I’m running 30/0/10/0/30 with knight’s armor, berserker’s/rampager’s (depends which one) weapons and celestial trinkets. I always have staff on and switch between dagger/warhorn, scepter/dagger and, to a lesser extend, axe/focus as the situation dictates. I use this because that’s what works (best) for me atm. This is in mainly in dungeons/fractals and some casual WvW (with a 20-30 man guild group) btw.