Guild Wars 2

Hi there guys!!

Lately, I decided to do a come back on my Necromancer. Been about 2 month since I played it, but I still love the class.

the last month I played on my second main, an engineer, and did everything in my power to make a build viable for WvW roaming. With the traits choice and utility available, I was able to make a really strong build for 1v1 and group fight, and still having survivability to escape zerg and focus fire. (Slick shoes are so useful for this!)

Now I want to do the same with my necromancer. I know I could easily pull a roamer with a thief, a mesmer or a DD Elem. But I love the challenge making a necro roamer.

I’m not up-to-date with how the necro class evolued, that’s why I require you guys wisdom.

For Roaming, I need :

Good damage : If I want to hit and run the zerg, kill people before the reinforcement arrive, I need some pretty good damage. Bunkering is out of idea, because I wouldn’t be able to kill anyone.

Swiftness : I require at least one source of swiftness, to travel and escape.

Escape Mecanism : I need to have ether Spectral Walk or Worm. With those 2, I can use terrain and teleport to escape most danger if I have the time. If you have any other idea, let me know!

Damage mitigation : With my engineer, I could go Glass cannon and if I timed my ability right, I could be as hard to take down as a bunker. I have yet to find any kind of mecanism into the necromancer to do the same. We don’t have any block or invulnerable. Only DS can delay our death, but Thief seems to cut thru it in 2 hit.

Here! If anyone could help me, I would really appreciate it.

Oh By the way, in WvW right now, I have a full Exotic Berserk and a full Exotic Rabid.

I just spend like 50 gold on random thing with my engineer, so I’m pretty poor (around 30 gold) to buy new gear.

Thanks!

I find it easiest to roam conditions with Rabid…. but…. any good 2-3 man is going to kill you pretty easily. A zerker build is going to have the same problem. By and large roaming I can handle anyone one on one for the most part (except exceptionally good thieves). The sad part about roaming is you will run into 2-3 man groups a lot… and you won’t be able to get away unless you WP immediately.

That being said it is stil fun, just don’t get your hopes up about having an epic battle where you crush uneven odds. It happens, just not that often, and you will be dying a lot.

I wll try as many build as I can, I hope to find one that could fit it.

With my engineer, I can prolly go in a 1 vs 3, and if it goes well, I can at least kill one or two before running away.

Sadly It require a lot of dodge and block. Something I don’t have on my necro.

And if it didn’t go my way, I could turn back and use double speed from slick shoes to escape mostly anything.

I can do the same with Worm/Spectral Walk and a good positionning, but it’s harder.

I would prefer a Direct damage burst, since my Engineer is Confusion spec, but I will go Condition if needed.

Yesterday I tested a GC build. I didn’t go really well, but I was surprised by the downed state damage.

I had 50% more damage in downed trait and 20% damage downed food, and man was I hiting hard. I was hiting for around 700-1000 damage a tick, at a very fast past.

Too bad our number 2 is pretty weak, so I can’t damage longer. Number 3 downed state also hit like a truck.

Death is your friend as a roamer. I do it quite a bit, but you must be ready to die. Don’t fear it, accept it as a natural occurance of being a great Necromancer feared by many, loved by a few. Rennoko talked about roaming in wvw in the podcast this week. Check it out: http://sittingonacouch.com/category/gaming/

If you are solo roaming than glass cannon is just as viable as pvt since both will get crushed by the zergs. It’s best as a necro to find 3-4 friends to roam with. You are strongest when working with others.

Necro is not the best roamer. Lack of a good teleport and mobility in general, lack of front loaded burst damage and no great way to finish downed people are all problems. Check this out WvW Guardian Roamer though, it has good tips about building and having a plan of attack.

Unless you are a Norn with Snow Leopold, I don’t recommend you to roam at all. Stay with your local zerg.

Necro simply do not have anything it takes to roam in wvw. They cannot escape from a zerg. And you will be hard pressed to beat 3 enemies at once, something that you often have to do when you choose to roam. Your best hope is that no one see you until you get to your zerg.

I don’t mind dying to zerg, as it happens often as a solo roamer.

@Zainey

Our worm is a good teleport

Just yesterday when I was testing some random builds. I was in a borderland, in between the 2 south towers, in that island-like part. I was jumped by 2 guy, one mesmer and one Elem DD. I fought these guys before, and while they were not top players, they were hard enought to not take chance in a 1vs2.

I ran and jumped down near the water. They followed me. I used 2-3 time my worm to get up on the island from the water, and escaped them each time. I could have easily escaped, but I wanted to test it. I only failed when I ported but felt down.

It’s not the best escape mecanism, since you need set up, but it still not bad. Same with Spectral Walk Activate.

Well I guess if you don’t mind dying, any class can roam. The question is though, when you roam, what benefit are you bringing to your server. For example, do you kill yaks better than thieves? Do you take camps faster than an ele?

When you think of this from the objective point of view, it makes little sense to roam as a necro.

Necro’s strength in wvw is in zerg fights.

@CHIPS

Well I could care less about score. I didn’t play WvW for score since 2 month.

I will get Dolyak and camp from time to time, but only because I don’t have anyone to kill.

I actually roam for the fun and the challenge of it.

I could just follow the trend, pick a guardian and follow the zerg. Or create a DD Elem and roam.

But where is the challenge? Anyone can do it.

I will try Necro roaming, I found a thread where some guys did something similar. I will prolly fail, but it’s going to be fun.

CHIPS.6018:

Well I guess if you don’t mind dying, any class can roam. The question is though, when you roam, what benefit are you bringing to your server. For example, do you kill yaks better than thieves? Do you take camps faster than an ele?

When you think of this from the objective point of view, it makes little sense to roam as a necro.

Necro’s strength in wvw is in zerg fights.

Just to let you know we can take camps faster than an ele :P. The balanced guy is strong, but a good necro build can solo the camp incredibly fast. The problem is getting away if a zerg or 5 man group comes.

Bas.7406:

CHIPS.6018:

Well I guess if you don’t mind dying, any class can roam. The question is though, when you roam, what benefit are you bringing to your server. For example, do you kill yaks better than thieves? Do you take camps faster than an ele?

When you think of this from the objective point of view, it makes little sense to roam as a necro.

Necro’s strength in wvw is in zerg fights.

Just to let you know we can take camps faster than an ele :P. The balanced guy is strong, but a good necro build can solo the camp incredibly fast. The problem is getting away if a zerg or 5 man group comes.

I do not kill a yak faster than a thief, but I can kill a full supply camp faster than anyone, hands down, solo. Before the last patch, we could do the same with the fire buff camp… that’s gone now though

Hah that’s a funny wurm story. I’ve gotten it on ledges in time once in awhile. I always have teleport on my ele and don’t use the wurm at all now on my necro – that’s how different they are in utility to me. Spectral walk is a given for most pvp though and I often have Signet of the Locust too.

With regards to lack of escape mechanisms for roaming, cliffs and water are your friends. Necros can survive any fall, no matter how utterly ridiculous it may be, and people can’t follow you, and we have a dash and swiftness underwater.

Regardless, I don’t do exceptionally well when I try roaming, though admittedly I run a tanky build so it’s not optimal for that sort of fun.

Counter-roaming on the other hand, that’s always hilarious.

I would honestly advise roaming as a glass cannon necro. 30 in soul reaping is a must to ensure you can stomp people even when fighting multiple people. High base HP and DS means you have a natural advantage over other fragile builds, as the difference in damage you can take is rather high, while the damage you dish out is comparatively closer; simply put, you can kill most people faster then they can hope to kill you.

It’s easy to get permanent swiftness with spectral walk and the warhorn, and simply having perm swiftness lets you outrun a lot of people, sure you won’t be outrunning a d/d ele anytime soon, but if you say see 3 thieves coming towards you they’ll be hard pressed to catch you even if they burn all their init chasing you.

Carry CC. Lots of it.Your combat mobility is the worst in the game, there is no way around that. Instead, you can carry loads of CC, lots of cripple and chill and destroy your opponents mobility instead.

The golem I have found after a long time of experimentation is the best elite (snow leopard is probably better, if you’re fortunate enough to be a norn), as even though it’s AI is a junk, it’s on demand charge is exceedingly useful in both combat and chasing down, or running away from enemies. What I’ve found when running away from a fight, is that the golem’s speed is roughly based on how far away it is, if it’s quite far away it starts moving at above normal speeds to catch up to you, slowing down as it gets closer. What this means in practice is that is usually running with the main group of people chasing you. So when you command it to charge the person closest to you, it rams down pretty much every person following you. This combined with doom and perm swiftness makes escaping very much viable, if you do it at the right time.

Abuse high falls where ever possible, you can sponge any fall with both DS, or spectral recall, giving you two more hard escapes in the right situations, as even if the fall isn’t high enough to kill you, anyone that follows is going to be a very low health or death, and knockdowned, letting you smash them before they get up.

The main thing about roaming as a necro is knowing when to fight, and when to run. Running after you’ve commited to a fight isn’t impossible, but is quite difficult, where as most zergs or groups won’t bother/can’t catch you if you run off in a direction where they’re not going, with full swiftness.

I roam a lot on my necro. Its a more tany build. But its fun to just kitten people off. .

I solo roam quite a bit on my Necro… last night I beat down a warrior and a thief (not at the same time).

The flip side is that as soon as a group of enemies spots me, my goose is cooked.

I run zerker gear with Axe/Focus and Staff in the backup spot.

I have a sigil on my Axe with a chance to grant might, and on the focus my other sigil extends vulnerability.

I run Well of Suffering, Well of Corruption and use the run speed signet, but sometimes swap it out for Blood is Power just to have the extra might gain from it.

I have;

Spite 30 Spiteful Talisman, Reaper’s Might, Axe Training
Blood Magic 20 Vampiric, Bloodthirst
Soul Reaping 20 Vital Persistence, Unyielding Blast

It’s a decent build…. i recently switched out from being a Conditionmancer. This spec is so much more fun.

I see a lot saying go DPS, but I would recommend a 100% Fear/Terror build with Reaper’s Protection. Though I recently switched out of it, that trait saved my bacon many many times when roaming.

I remember one thief coming up toward me when I was taking out a yak, apparently didn’t realize that the 20 bleeds on the Yak would be on him if he got too close. After those hit him, he tried to open with a stun, got hit with the Reaper’s Protection and was dead in about 2 seconds, it was the one of the funniest things I’d ever seen.

The 90 sec cooldown on RP is too long for me in the bigger fights I’m in, but just for roaming its almost always going to be up when you run into other roamers. 4 Seconds of Fear should be over 4000 damage with good condition damage, and if they blow a stun breaker to get out of it, fine, you have two more fears to CC them with.

Long fears are also great for sending people over the many cliffs and drop offs in WvW. Likewise, taking Spectral Walk is good for roaming as you can drop off cliffs if you need to get away double tap it right before you hit the ground, no damage.

Toughest thing is not necessarily winning most lone encounters, but rather avoiding ones you have no hope for, 3 on up to a zerg. But if you switch on your Speed Signet while out of combat, you can get away from most groups, or at least have enough time to port if a big group is chasing you. Golem charge is also good if you have to run, but also offensively as an opener to load up a lot of conditions and make someone blow a cleanse right away.