Guild Wars 2

Greetings ladies and gents!

Long time necro here, all the way from the start of the game. I’ve been reading these forums, following the top necromancer players, and all that this entire time.
Well I think it’s time I shared some of my own insights in this relatively downed state of the Necromancer attitude.

Now these builds are what ‘I’ use. They are tailored to my playstyle, rotation preference and similar. I provide these as a base idea for you all to take and run with. So read over them, and hopefully you’ll get some ideas. Comments? Go ahead! Share! I will check this daily to help with clarifying and providing what answers I can, if any.

I made these builds for one of the top WvW guilds on Tarnished Coast on their forums, so forgive me if the format doesn’t transfer well. I will post two of the most requested builds I get from people. Conditions and Power.

Let’s begin!

Time for a horrendously tanky Juggermancer build.
________________________________________________________________

Here is the build link, as requested.
The Juggermancer

Time for some Question and Answer, I think. Okay? Okay.

Q: What is this build?
A: This build is a juggermancer. What is that? It’s a high-power, high-defense build.

Q: Right, well, how do we know it works?
A: Every build I suggest outside of theory crafting will be from a minimum of a month or more of play in both PvE, PvP, and WvW.
May as well share my greatness, and all. Also, this is the build I currently run in WvW.

Q: Yeah but, why should we trust you?
A: I’ve been playing a Necromancer since Beta, through all the changes and patches. I have won a handful of public tournaments, as well as beaten some of the top major league players in duels. Take that as you will. I like to think I know what I’m talking about. But these builds are just for pointing people in a direction, not dictating function.

Q: Ah huh, sure. What are the pros and cons to this build then, smart guy?
A: Excellent question!
To start, my favorite thing about this build is the wiggle room. In most situations, you’ve got a lot of space to recover and soak damage for your mistakes, if any. However if you do lessen your mistakes during fights, it has great potential to scale upwards.

Q: Are you…going to answer the question?
A: ……Fine.

Pros:
- Tanky (Burst resistant and Condition Resistant)
- High Health (28,000 – 32,000)
- Effective AoE
- Great area denial and zone control
- Steady and reliable life gain
- Exceptional Zerg contribution, and staying power
- Good damage spike if landed properly
- Can fight with front line squads. (Warriors, guardians, etc)
- Good Condition management
- Protection gained from Wells, plus flipping conditions into boons makes you incredibly tanky
- You can actually kill and damage objects, like doors and such! For shame, Conditionmancer, for shame…
- Many more you’ll discover!

Cons:
- Low mobility (You’ve got the unreliable Dark Path, and…yeah, good luck!)
- Higher cooldown utilities
- Melee (Can suck in boss fights and zergs)
- Staff skills are mainly used for CC, Regen, and Condition management
- Extremely cooldown dependent in evenly skilled matches (It’s easy to miss you wells in 1v1, which leaves you open for a while)
- Wells offer great utility, but only if they land. Hit or miss.
- Slow (As all necros are if you don’t flip between Locust Signet and another utility when out of combat)
- No real stun breakers, but this is minor due to your tankyness.
- Items can be a kitten to get
- Flakey life force gain

Good Against
Thieves
Warriors
Rangers
Elementalists

Fine Against
Guardians
Necromancers
Engineers

Handicapped Against
Mesmers

That’s about it, from obvious standings! There will be more, obviously, as you play with the build, but from an outside perspective this should give you a nice first look.

Traits

Spite:
Alriiiiiight! Power build! We’re going to hit things hard and consistently. So for Spite, we’re going to stick 10 points in. Wait, what? Yeah, at first 10 Points in Spite doesn’t seem like something a power build would do, but this more tanky than offensive. Juggermancer, juggernaut? Get it? Right. So 10 points.

Pick up V: Spiteful Spirit for some damage return when you flip into Death Shroud. Not a crucial trait, so feel free to swap it out for something you prefer.

If you’re using Signet of Vampirism, pick up Signet Mastery instead.

Curses:
Zero! That’s right. None. You will have less critical hit chance than a redneck has teeth. Don’t need it for this build. Don’t get it. Moving on!

“But…but Caiden, Curses is where you get ground targetting Wells. That’s like, the most important thing in a well build! Uguu!~

You’re half right. Yes, in any Power well build, Focused Rituals is a huge must have. However with this build, you need to consider yourself a ‘melee’ class. You’ve got more HP than most people, more armor, high sustain and more. Our wells are PBAoE’s in this style of play. It’s highly important to focus on your positioning. If you do it right, it can but just as effective.

Death Magic
Huzzah, toughness! Definitely a must have for this build. This will give you the armor you need to deal with spike damage, and to give you a lot of breathing room for positioning yourself, and waiting for good Well timing. Finding a crucial moment immobilize your enemy, or lock them down so you can slam Well’s on top of them is extremely important for being successful with this build. So the more time we have, the better.

Trait Line
IV: Ritual of Protection -> V: Staff Mastery -> VII: Greater Marks

Ritual of Protection is important. Definitely keep that. However Staff Mastery and Greater Marks are what I prefer. Yes, having your marks be unblockable and huge is very helpful, and lowering the cooldowns allows you for more CC, Regen applications and Condition stripping, this builds main weapon will be coming from Daggers in 1 v 1’s and PvE. So, if you find yourself wanting something else, take it, otherwise I suggest these.

Blood Magic
Oh yes, there will be blood.
Unlike most builds, we’re going to be sticking 30 points into the believed-to-be-useless Blood line. Huzzah! The most obvious benefit of this is more Health. When fully buffed in WvW (food, Bloodlust, etc) you will be sitting with around 30,000 – 32,000 health. Is…is that 12k Meteor shower? Oh man, that’s impressive. Now cast two more to kill me. What’s that? 8k backstabs? Thanks for scratchin’ ma itch, bro!

Trait Line:
II: Bloodthirst -> VIII: Ritual Mastery -> XII: Vampiric Rituals

I’m going to say this upfront, these are the traits I choose. However there are other very good traits in this line that this build can make use of. The supportive VI: Transfusion can heal allies for anywhere from 3,000 health to 6,000 health depending on how much Healing you have. As a support skill, dealing damage while healing allies in a Zerg or while Roaming is very helpful, and efficient.

There is also I: Dagger Mastery which will allow you to cast your dagger skills anywhere from 3 to 5 seconds sooner. Definitely helpful, but I find Bloodthirst more synergistic with my play style. So Dagger Mastery is great, 20% cooldowns brings our second sustain kill, Life Siphon, to about 9 seconds. Very handy. You can decide if it’s what you want

Vampiric Rituals will steal 60-70 HP per target per pulse, up to five, within all of your Well. Now at surface level this doesn’t really sound like a lot of healing. But let’s do some quick math. We’ll say you average 65 HP stolen per target per pulse. You dive into a group, and best case scenario hit 5 targets per pulse. 5 × 65 = 325 on the first pulse. Each well hits 5 times, so we multiply 325 by 5 to get 1625 per Well. We dropped two this fight, so you’re getting a net of about 3250 Health. That’s definitely enough to help you in a fight, PvP or PvE. One on one, not so much, but that’s what Life Siphon is for.

That’s it for traits! Let’s move on to gear. Stay with me, we’re halfway there.

Weapons and Armor

So in the Cons list above, I put ‘Items can be a kitten to get’. If you have WvW Badges, Karma, or Dungeon Tokens, then pretend you didn’t read that. It’s super easy to get Soldier’s gear. That’s Power – Toughness – Vitality gear. But! If you ’don’t’ have an abundance of these things, then you’ve got some farming to do. This stat-set isn’t on the Trading post. So, uh, have fun. HNNGGHH~

Anyway. As far Sigil’s go, it’s really up to you. Our crit chance is incredibly low so try to avoid anything that procs off of critical hits. Anything that increases our power, or crowd control is good. You don’t even have to use Sigils if you don’t want. A Crest or pure stat bonuses work too.

For Runes, I go with Superior Runes of Vampirism. The healing procs on these are 1000 HP. Since they fixed the bug with them, it helps a lot with sustain and, keep in mind, ‘stealing’ health also causes damage to your foe.

The Mist form has saved my life more times than I can count in PvP, and sometimes PvP. It’s one of the main reasons I love these runes, and you probably will too. If you don’t want these however, Superior Runes of the Pack are a great alternate choice.

When you’re all geared up, you should have High Armor for a cloth wearer, 30,000+ Health, and 2,400+ or more Power.

Weapons

Dagger and Dagger, with Staff. The main choice for this build, but Axe and Scepter is also a viable choice. Your sustain will be lower, but you’ll be ranged and have a little more room to work and aim.

Main Hand Dagger
Skill 1 - I slash my knife back and forth! I slash my knife back and forth!

Skill 2 - Slurpy McBloodmunch. This is a great skill in my view, only really shining in duels or small scale combat. Make SURE you are facing your targeting, and have about 10 feet in front of you before you start channeling. If they are at your sides, or dodge behind you, it will do nothing and go on cooldown. Dodge backwards, then use.

Skill 3 - Stop right there, criminal scum! Another great skill. A 3 second immobilize? Yes please. Land it, drop your wells, tumble back and use skill 2. Profit.

Off Hand Dagger
Skill 4 - This skill is the our primary means of condition removal, outside of Staff 4 and [color=#b1dcf3]Consume Conditions[/color]. Sometimes I’ll even stand in AoE, or condition applications just to toss this over to my enemy. On top of that, it applies a blind. So, uh, victory.

Skill 5 - Weakness and more Bleeds. I also use this whenever it’s up basically. You’ll never really be able to time when or what someone will dodge, so keeping Weakness on them is good.

Staff
Skill 1 - Pedohand. Grab dat butt. Also good for fondling wild Jadons.

Skill 2 - A large, unblockable AoE Bleed and Regeneration Applicator. With lower cooldowns and the increased size, this is a great siege tool. It’s not a lot of bleeds, but it can be constant, and in a zerg, giving Regen to 5 allies is always good. Look at you being a crappy Guardian for a split second. Go us!

Skill 3 - Chill! This is my, “Oh, you think you’re getting away? That’s cute. Here, have some cold,” skill. Great for locking people down for Well spam or catching a runner.

Skill 4 - Sometimes our Deathly Swarm or Consume Conditions will all be down at the same time! ?_?
It’s okay! You’ll be under some serious pressure on occasion. This is your last hope. This skill will strip the conditions from you once it’s activated. Make sure you’re in range!

Skill 5 - BOO! Yeah it fears. Lots of applications. You’ll figure it out! Caiden believes in you.

Utilities
I need dis…

Phew. That’s, uh, a lot of text. You’ve read more than most kids do for MIddle School Homework. But this is important, kitten! So keep going! Below are skills that are useful, and good to have with this build.

Healing Slot
Consume Conditions
or
Signet of Vampirism

All around, Consume Conditions is a solid heal. With this builds armor and resistance, it gives a great amount of healing efficiency and cures whatever stacks of conditions you have on you. Primary choice for frontline in WvW or similar situations.

However with the addition Signet of Vampirism, there’s been some discussion on which is better. They’re a bit different to compare. Consume Conditions is still amazing for stripping yourself of CC and Conditions, obviously, but with enough armor, Signet of Vampirism becomes an immensely efficient heal. I spent a couple hours testing this skill in various situations, and came out with this:

If you have 2500 or higher armor, Signet of Vampirism is ‘extremely’ good for you. If you have less than that, Consume Conditions heals for more consistently.
Use the Signet on an enemy, and use Dagger 2 for an immense amount of healing, while proc’ing an extra 350-500 damage per tick on your target.

Well of Suffering - Arguably one of the highest damaging skills in the game. But wells are fickle creatures, and require your target to stay in them to reach their full affect. I keep this skill on my first utility slot at all times. High damage, and applies vulnerability to increase further incoming sources. Good all around.

Well of Corruption - Everyone hates this skill. Well, our enemies do. Nice 25 stacks of might there, brochacho. BOOSH! 25 stacks of crap. The longer they’re in it, the more it converts. This skill does medium damage, and has AoE boon corrupting. Invaluable in almost all PvP situations, but not so much in PvE. I keep this on my bar at all times.

Well of Power - Now, I don’t like to sound biased, but I personally believe that in Zerg vs Zerg situations, or massive PvE fights, this is the most powerful skill in the game. No, it doesn’t do damage. What it does do, is flip Conditions on you into Boons. Poison becomes Regeneration, Cripple becomes Swiftness, Vulnerability becomes Protection. How many times have you looked down at your buff bar to see a line of 4+ high timer, high stack conditions on you while PvPing?

When diving in, or holding the line, I drop this at my feet with the front line and hold my position. For the next 5 seconds, it will start removing your conditions, and applying their opposing boons on you for the same duration and stack amount as the condition was applied.

If this were just for us as the caster? Great, but not amazing. But this works for everyone running through it, and standing in it. Invaluable in situations where you’re expecting condition damage. I keep this on my bar almost all the time.

Well of Darkness - Fantastic for duels, and taking on 2 or 3 melee classes at once. It’s high cooldown is pretty lame, and without Chilling Darkness this skill isn’t as powerful as it could be on a build with points in the Curses line. A blind every second for 5 seconds is great, but I find it more niche than other skills.

Elite Lich Form - Use what you like best. Plague form is great for surviving, and applying blind pressure on your enemies, but without condition damage you’re not going to be killing anything. However, Lich Form is more offensive, and what I use. It has a built in crit chance, AoE condition removal, and a health boost. Pop this on when cleaning up enemies, or when applying pressure to a clump. With your 1 skill hitting for 3,000 – 5,000 damage on 3 to 5 targets, it makes a lot of people panic, and is great for telling that annoying thief to bugger off!

Other Skills: - You can flip flop in Spectral Grasp for grabbing people, Spectral Walk for juking, or maybe a well for some more condition management. Obviously throw in Locust Signet for running around quickly! Otherwise, the top four are the most valuable.

Wrapping up

This build is one I made after my offensive power build. The power build has less health, and toughness, but a high crit chance, and high power. You drop things much faster, but isn’t as tanky as I wanted. So this is the product of some tweaking, and a lot of testing in PvP and PvE. You can’t go full tank for PvE because no one will want you, and you can’t go full offense in PvP because you’ll get…well…you’ll get pooped on.

So this is my answer. I’ve won, I can safely say, over 80% of my duels, and fights with this. You’ve got no crit chance, but with incredibly high power, it’s a stable damage output that averages about the same. You’re utility is amazing in PvE and PvP, and greatly swings fights in your favor if used properly. People will dodge out of your wells a lot at first, and you’ll be frustrated with the melee range of daggers.

But if you watch what you’re doing, pay attention to when you’re doing well, and when you lose, and improve, this is easily one of my favorite, and impactful builds.

Advanced Tactics - I’ll add more if people want! Otherwise I hoped this helped and please post questions to me in game or on here!

________________________________________________________________
I will add the Condition build after this, if it is desired.

Do you have a DeathShroud Tanky-Power build? would be interested in seeing that, its currently what i am running and have alot of fun with it but always keen to see other peoples approaches to the same sort of build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHhhu1IjW1e4m2G9eCRSh18LQKeveh6x6kOfIA-jUDBoLJDfZQ0UEgUHwEBDRL7JiJQDZtMsIas6FY6SBVvSR2jbQruDJWKA2FGB-w

That is what i am currently running, As i am in DeathShroud as much as possible i have taken Vit and Toughness being more important than Critical Damage but even then when combined with traits I can whack out a nice amount of Vul and might for myself which buffs the damage that little bit more.

Just wondering what changes you would make to such a build.

I prefer 20/0/25/25/0, with Axe/Horn + Dagger/Focus. I swap in offhand dagger against certain classes and staff for zergs. Better damage, and you don’t really lose anything.

Also, I am not sure if you are saying this is ‘your’ build or not, but the name Juggermancer was created for a similar type of build be Sheobix back in the day.

While this is my build, the term Juggermancer is just used in name, really. Tanky necro’s and such!

I’ll take a look at your build soon, ArmageddonAsh!

Caiden.9074:

Utilities
I need dis…

Phew. That’s, uh, a lot of text. You’ve read more than most kids do for MIddle School Homework. But this is important, kitten! So keep going! Below are skills that are useful, and good to have with this build.

Healing Slot
Consume Conditions
or
Signet of Vampirism

All around, Consume Conditions is a solid heal. With this builds armor and resistance, it gives a great amount of healing efficiency and cures whatever stacks of conditions you have on you. Primary choice for frontline in WvW or similar situations.

However with the addition Signet of Vampirism, there’s been some discussion on which is better. They’re a bit different to compare. Consume Conditions is still amazing for stripping yourself of CC and Conditions, obviously, but with enough armor, Signet of Vampirism becomes an immensely efficient heal. I spent a couple hours testing this skill in various situations, and came out with this:

If you have 2500 or higher armor, Signet of Vampirism is ‘extremely’ good for you. If you have less than that, Consume Conditions heals for more consistently.
Use the Signet on an enemy, and use Dagger 2 for an immense amount of healing, while proc’ing an extra 350-500 damage per tick on your target.

Well of Suffering - Arguably one of the highest damaging skills in the game. But wells are fickle creatures, and require your target to stay in them to reach their full affect. I keep this skill on my first utility slot at all times. High damage, and applies vulnerability to increase further incoming sources. Good all around.

Well of Corruption - Everyone hates this skill. Well, our enemies do. Nice 25 stacks of might there, brochacho. BOOSH! 25 stacks of crap. The longer they’re in it, the more it converts. This skill does medium damage, and has AoE boon corrupting. Invaluable in almost all PvP situations, but not so much in PvE. I keep this on my bar at all times.

Well of Power - Now, I don’t like to sound biased, but I personally believe that in Zerg vs Zerg situations, or massive PvE fights, this is the most powerful skill in the game. No, it doesn’t do damage. What it does do, is flip Conditions on you into Boons. Poison becomes Regeneration, Cripple becomes Swiftness, Vulnerability becomes Protection. How many times have you looked down at your buff bar to see a line of 4+ high timer, high stack conditions on you while PvPing?

When diving in, or holding the line, I drop this at my feet with the front line and hold my position. For the next 5 seconds, it will start removing your conditions, and applying their opposing boons on you for the same duration and stack amount as the condition was applied.

If this were just for us as the caster? Great, but not amazing. But this works for everyone running through it, and standing in it. Invaluable in situations where you’re expecting condition damage. I keep this on my bar almost all the time.

Well of Darkness - Fantastic for duels, and taking on 2 or 3 melee classes at once. It’s high cooldown is pretty lame, and without Chilling Darkness this skill isn’t as powerful as it could be on a build with points in the Curses line. A blind every second for 5 seconds is great, but I find it more niche than other skills.

Elite Lich Form - Use what you like best. Plague form is great for surviving, and applying blind pressure on your enemies, but without condition damage you’re not going to be killing anything. However, Lich Form is more offensive, and what I use. It has a built in crit chance, AoE condition removal, and a health boost. Pop this on when cleaning up enemies, or when applying pressure to a clump. With your 1 skill hitting for 3,000 – 5,000 damage on 3 to 5 targets, it makes a lot of people panic, and is great for telling that annoying thief to bugger off!

Other Skills: - You can flip flop in Spectral Grasp for grabbing people, Spectral Walk for juking, or maybe a well for some more condition management. Obviously throw in Locust Signet for running around quickly! Otherwise, the top four are the most valuable.

Having trouble understanding some of this. It doesn’t list your trinkets and details that I can’t fathom.

Would you mind putting up a different link from http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ so we can see in much better detail what exactly you are wearing and using?

Thanks!

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Do you have a DeathShroud Tanky-Power build? would be interested in seeing that, its currently what i am running and have alot of fun with it but always keen to see other peoples approaches to the same sort of build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHhhu1IjW1e4m2G9eCRSh18LQKeveh6x6kOfIA-jUDBoLJDfZQ0UEgUHwEBDRL7JiJQDZtMsIas6FY6SBVvSR2jbQruDJWKA2FGB-w

That is what i am currently running, As i am in DeathShroud as much as possible i have taken Vit and Toughness being more important than Critical Damage but even then when combined with traits I can whack out a nice amount of Vul and might for myself which buffs the damage that little bit more.

Just wondering what changes you would make to such a build.

Made a few changes:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHhhu1IjW1e4m2G9eCRSh18LQKevah6x6kOfIA-jkDBoLJDfZQ00fg0FAEGwEBKaZPRMBaIrlhFRjVvATXKo6VKyecDa1dIxSBwuwI-w

The sigils on the Axe/Warhorn would have a Perception sigil on them to be swapped out at 25 stacks. Sigil of Luck seems decent, shame its not on crit the boons it grants isnt to bad either:

Aegis: 10 seconds
Protection: 3 seconds
Regeneration: 5 seconds
Retaliation: 5 seconds
Swiftness: 5 seconds

Would be our only access to Aegis, decent duration as well. Again it would have been better if it was 50% chance of crit, with say 5-10second cool down and the durations increased a tad for the others