Guild Wars 2

Does it exist? Been trying build after build utilizing wells to minions to death shroud, nothing seems to work. Can’t hold a point against more than one enemy.

This, unfortunately, is a failing with Death Shroud being our sole defensive mechanic. Because of it being extra health, it cannot be balanced against varying numbers of foes. Balance it for 3 enemies, and one person will never bring it down. Balance it for one person, and it’s little more than a speed bump for more.

Pure Death Dancer bunker:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQAQRAoY3djc0UbbnN+0wejCQ6h1Qz7kiv3GqwuUFcH-TsAA1EZp8y5lJLZX2uGFsKYLyUEA
Condi removes up the A tanks like a boss. heals all the time. lots of retaliation

Well you can build a necro really tanky, but necros make bad bunkers because of the awful access to stability. While you in fact can get a decent uptime of stability as necro the problem is it is to short with only a base of 3 seconds and costly with 30 points in soul reaping.
Sometimes i think, it would have been better as a 30 point dm trait….

Stability blah. Been running this for nearly a year now and it is quite an effective frontline necro – yep, frontline, you go in with the guardians and warriors – definitely requires a playstyle that virtually all necro players are unfamiliar with.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAnYWjMah7Vaaa87JApHY/8vTP4u7xpK4OA-jUCBYLCiJQFRjtMqIasKbYqXBVDDRFLyWzJ2geQryAwMGA-w

Here is a build I have been using to bunker for a while. You can use this to bunker side or mid or far. This is going to be posted in 2 posts since I kind of made it long.

It is based on Wells, Death Shroud, Boon duration and Healing power. See the build link below. Ill also try to explain some of my choices.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQAQNAnYWjk0UUbNN+0wfbCQSB2WPp47xpe4O7nD-TsAgzCmI8S1lrLjXyds7M+Y9x0AA

Armor

Amulet: You can switch between clerics and shamans amulet pretty freely depending on the team comp you are facing or what you are more comfortable with. Neither make a huge difference in how the build plays or feels.

Runes: 2 water, 2 earth, 2 monk. These were chosen to get maximum Boon duration and protection duration.

Weapons

Staff: Because of the Soul Mark trait this is used for more than the marks its also used as a good way to get Life force. Use Mark of Blood as much as possible for the regen and Life Force gain.

Chilblains is good to keep people out of the point longer and help with your survivability because of the chill.

Putrid Mark is one of your condition removers.. don’t spam this.. or waste to get LF.

Reapers mark is good to knock people out of points (although the 1 second time make it so unless they are at the edge they won’t get knocked out.) and save people from getting stomped.

Main Axe:Rending claws is pretty much useless (so just let it auto attack if you don’t have any skills to use).

Ghastly Claws is a good tool to get Life Force or help burst down an opponent (assuming your team can coordinate), try to use as much as possible to get Life Force.

Unholy feast the main reason I use Axe. This skill is multi-function skill. This give you retaliation (which helps vs fast hitting classes like thiefs and engineers.) Removes 1 Boon from opponents.. which helps during team fights and also cripples opponents which allows you to keep people out of points longer.

Offhand Dagger: Deathly Swarm another must for this build. This is another way to get rid of conditions. Not to mention it also blinds.

Enfeebling blood.. keeps you alive longer vs any power based classes.. mostly vs warriors and thieves.

Notice all my weapon choices are ranged weapons. You do not want to be fighting in melee range vs people if you don’t have too.

Explanation of Traits

Death Magic: 20% boon duration and 200 toughness
IV (Ritual Of Protection): Since this build uses a lot of wells having this trait is a must.
VI (Shrouded Removal): Until recently I was using Greater Marks and then I realized.. unless I am fighting another bunker that this trait is pretty much useless. So I figured more condition removal is also good so I choose this trait.

Blood Magic: 200 Vitality and 200 Healing power
III (Mark of Evasion): 7 second regen and 3% life force possible every 10 seconds if you dodge into your opponent (but if you don’t dodge into them it still puts the mark down for them to either avoid/run through/dodge roll though).
VIII (Ritual Mastery): 20% cool down on wells.. this helps with your heal and all the other wells.. this is a must

Soul Reaping: 30% More Crit dmg (useless) and 30% more LF (awesome)
II (Vital Persistence): This helps a lot.. the degrade of LF is too fast without it.. and I can’t live without this trait.
X (Soul Marks): 3% life force per mark.. this include the mark from the Mark of Evasion trait… with this trait the staff if by far easiest and safest way to get Life Force
XI (Foot In the Grave): This is a must.. Stability is needed for a bunker.. (for other who say its not never fought a top team)

Disadvantages

No access to swiftness. This sucks when you need to get back to a point faster

Weak vs condition Necro. This is because since most of the condition removal is from transfers rather than removing fighting a condition necro can be tricky and almost never ends well.. Pretty much when fighting these try not to apply any bleeds to them and only transfer when needed… although bleed likes to be the last one to transfer soo most of the time your screwed.

No Group Stability (this is one of the main reasons why Guardians are really good bunkers in my opinion)

Using light armor since your a necro…. you loose I think 300 armor or something..

No Long duration Immobilize or fast casting immobilize

Advantages

Large amount of group healing. With this build your well of blood can potentially heal teammates for 6200 over 10 seconds.. Also you have perma regen with mark of blood spam.

A lot of support conditions that help in team fights. Chill, Cripple, Weakness, Vulnerability, Blind. These also help keep you alive.

Good at fighting Stun Lock warriors (hammer/bow). With the amount of stability and healing you have, fighting these solo are easy. (It will always end in a draw.. you will never win.. Healing Signet out heals your damage)

People will attack you first because your a necro.. no on expects a necro to be a bunker…. this gives you the advantage normally at the start of the match.

With the +40% boon duration from runes and traits you get 4.25 seconds of stability every time you go into DS. This potentially gives you a very 42.5% stability up time… but normally its more like 30% up time. Because of this fighting decap engineers does not suck as much…. still sucks.. just not as much.

Lots of group protection with wells. 4.75 seconds per well.

Extremely good vs burst classes. 20K HP pool and 15k DS pool.

Well of Power is awesome.. pretty much using this in a fight give me tons of vigor (bleed = vigor).. not to mention the team support aspect of it… although don’t waste this if fighting a class with lots of stuns and knock backs.

Death shroud resing and stomping is awesome.. Also since you have 4.25 seconds of stability you have 100% stability when stomping and resing (unless they are getting hit) also to note.. you can cast Doom while resing and stomping in DS and not cancel the stomp/res.

Can actually kill people in 1v1 battles. Unlike some other pure defense bunkers you will actually be able to kill people in 1v1 battles. Keep in mind this build is built for pure defense.

Other Notes
Please feel free to switch well of corruption for spectral armor if you feel you need another stun break.. but most of the time I find that one is fine.

Minions can bunker points pretty easily if you’re spec’d to Clerics/30BM/30DM. I wouldn’t use a Necro as a team-fight bunker, but you can hold up until 4 people are spamming AoE on you, depending on how well you managed to get minions positioned and how much help you have.

Other than that, there are a few builds that can also bunker, but not as well, imo. I’d never use a Necro as the main bunker of a team, but they do very well for immobile off-bunkers that are going to sit in high traffic areas to free up your real bunker (probably Guardian) to roam.

Necro bunkers exist and do fine within reason.

If you are holding a node and 1 person comes at you – easy.
Two people – possible sure and if not you will survive long enough to call for help from your team.

Anything beyond that and you will fall over dead instantly before your team can even respond.

There are better options but under certain settings it works fine.

Thanks for all the input, as soon as I have the time I’ll go through and try out these builds to see what works for me.

The real problem with bunker necros, is that you need stability so 30 points are spent almost immediately. Then you can pick between death magic and blood magic which are both very lackluster when compared with other classes toughness, vitality trait lines.

A side question, but can anyone tell me what the correct terms for " bunker " and " tank " are? a lot of ppl mix them and i dont want to be preaching stuff thats false.

The way i heard it:

Bunker = survival + team support. Ex. bunker guards, with clerics amulet. Role is to be in the team fight

Tank = survival + damage/+CC. Ex. Hambow warriors, with soldier amulet. Role is to switch with guard on mid , as
1) the guard is needed in the teamfight
2) they have damage to actualy kill attacker
3)they are “tanky” enough to not die fast, should they mess up or under 2v1 attack

Edit: I ask cz, necro can build for tank (minions / spectrals often with soldier) or bunker/team-support with wells and stability. To know which role OP is asking for.

Bunker= PvP role is to Bunker capture points and hold as long as possible while back up arrives. Knockbacks, stuns interrupts etc.

Since there is no tank because of the aggro system, tanks just sacrifice high burst for massive survivability while sitting at low to medium damage, most of the time tanks will outlast their opponent doing good sustain dot either by pressure or condiis. war ham bow is tanky. yet the damage is good due to traits and stuff but the burst isn’t high.

They are used interchangeably, there is no real difference in this game, with the lack of a true taunt-like system.

In general a bunker only matters in PvP modes, where it is your job to plant yourself somewhere and be immovable, whereas a tank’s job is a bit more generically just to take as much of the damage focus as possible. A bunker does not necessarily have to be a tank, but all tanks could function as bunkers.

It doesn’t have to do with what “extra” things they bring besides survivability. Some bunkers have no team support because they aren’t team-fighting much, others have a lot, while some bunkers bring a lot of damage and others do almost no damage. Same with tanks, the only difference is that tanking requires holding aggro, which traditionally in games requires securing a lot of “threat” really quickly (often involves doing a crapload of up front damage). But in PvP this doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

To clarify, I was speaking of a Bunker build. However, I am no longer in need of one. I got back on my Engineer and remembered how amazing Block and Invuln skills are. Not to mention better healing and group support and I gets a Flamethrower.

In all seriousness I love my Necro, but I do miss my Engi so I figured there is still much I could be doing as far as gearing and tweaking builds with my Engi that I’m just going to bench my Necro for a bit.