Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

I’m quite new to necro, and I’m a little bit curious about how I should gear myself in order to be effective in wubwub. I plan on going for conditions, because that looks like a fun and effective build, so that basically lower my choices to either carrion or rabid (or apothecary, but I want to do the deeps !)

So then, as I tried to look around, I saw that a lot of people would recommend rabid over carrion because they say that rabid is more damage because of sigil of earth and that minor trait which gives bleed on crit. However, I did the math and the damage is so similar that I don’t care too much for one or the other, in terms of damage.

But in terms of survivability, I’m kind of lost. Toughness is usually so good because it also amplifies all the heals you will be receiving, but as a necro, vitality as a sort of double-dip effect as it also increases the size of the death shroud pool. So I would like to get your opinion on that.

Thank you all for your time

ps: Bonus question. Is it worth it to take the sigil that adds vulnerability to crits to “cover” our conditions and make them harder to remove, or is it just better to just take something more conventional like earth or agony ?

Always go rabid as necro’s already have a high base hp pool and as you said toughness makes our heals more effective. Also you can use runes of the undead which give you extra condition damage based on your toughness.

Covering conditions is not really worth it. Chances are you will cover them anyway without using a sigil and most condition removal is more than one condition so it wont help. GW2 isnt like gw1 where you could cover your important hex’s with less important ones to completely screw over your opponent.

Rabid is going to be best if you are using Undead runes, which also ends up giving you the highest condition damage possible. Generally speaking, people also tend to like Rabid because necros have a good bit of healing, and toughness will help out there, and we can’t abuse the extra eHP from vitality in condition builds from lower overall LF generation.

That said, a lot of people like Carrion because it will let you survive burst much better (rabid leaves you with base 18k HP, which can be bursted through). In the end, it is really up to what you think works best for your playstyle and setup.

For condition based builds, always go Rabid. As a conditionmancer condition removal is easy to do so you want to focus on the direct damage being done to you plus we have a high base HP pool to begin with.

Vitality is mainly for Bunker builds who want high HP to scale with Plague Form and Deathshroud.

Rabid for a tankier condition necro. Carrion makes for a more fragile but harder hitting necro, though.

Whoa, hold your horses, gentlemen.
A conditionmancer that uses a scepter and wants to max his bleed stacks through procs: rabid.
Staff-mancer: carrion>rabid

In terms of tPvP you want to run carrion, the added health will give you roughly 2-3% more survivability. Also take into account that the meta is shifting over to high conditions due to Engineers and vitality is much better for dealing with conditions. However the main reason to use carrion as a Necromancer is it increases your deathshroud which gives you A LOT more survivability. In terms of damage it is up to you, I do a ton of damage with carrions and personally do not like to rely on RnG for my damage. The added power does help a lot but still the main thing about carrion is the extra life force you get, it is just too good.

I know staff 1 scales well with power but scepter’s damage is pretty pathetic, so if you were to go Carrion in tpvp what weapon would you actually be using?

manveruppd.7601:

I know staff 1 scales well with power but scepter’s damage is pretty pathetic, so if you were to go Carrion in tpvp what weapon would you actually be using?

Staff main, second set: anything but the scepter. (I use axe+warhorn)

And staff works as a main weapon in tournaments?? I love it in wvw because of the piercing and aoe marks, but I just can’t see it working as a main in small fights!

Staff is an incredibly powerful weapon in tournament, but if you are running condition you need to run scepter dagger / staff with a carrion right now in the current meta of the game. rabid just does not give you enough health for it to be viable and the damage equals out a little bit because you still have something like 15% crit. I have done extensive testing on this carrion is the way to go if you want to live longer; the extra 1 second bleed on crit is not worth the loss of life force and hp.

manveruppd.7601:

And staff works as a main weapon in tournaments?? I love it in wvw because of the piercing and aoe marks, but I just can’t see it working as a main in small fights!

Oh believe me, it does work!
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-Staff-Corruption/
I’ve been meaning to update my guide with a gameplay video, but this will probably still take a while…

Also, I didn’t mention this in my build but there are certain perks to using a staff that might not be apparent at first glance.
For example: epidemic when used after placing marks works a lot like an amplifier. Rather than stacking conditions on one target (as you would with a scepter) and then copy them to a second target, you would cast a mark on both targets and then double up all conditions on the non-epidemiced-target.
This becomes a lot more powerful when running with a second necro.
I’ve played with a buddy necromancer in pvp who also uses a staff+greater marks and epidemic and we would approach other players who are guarding a point together like this: One calls a target, then we both cast mark of blood (=6stacks of bleeding on all of them), then both cast epidemic on different opponents (that’s why you need to call a target). That results in 12 stacks on one guy and 18/24 stacks of bleeding on everyone else.
The 1480 range of greater marks and the 1200 of epidemic almost always guarantees first strike. And if you do this with 3 staff-necros every opponent will have 25 stacks… after a cast time of ~2 seconds, from a 1200 range.

Btw gibbly is absolutely right about carrion being the better survival option. But as I said, with a staff build it becomes an even more obvious pick over rabid.

Why not mix it and get 50/50?

Note Carrion is only there as a combination with Rampagers in hybrids in terms of necro.
For sigil going earth rabid all the way.

You can’t go 50/50 because the jewel has much less stat points than the amulet (only 125-75-75). It would be more like 85/15.

Definitely Rabid. That plus the extra Toughness out of a Condimancer’s Death Magic levels gives a nice chunk of total Armour. You’re also gaining a decent amount of extra Vit/Health from Blood Magic. (Assuming the standard “accepted” Condimancer build of 0/30/20/20/0, that is.) Now, if you wanted a bit more Power, you could go Carrion or Rampager for Staff. However, the damage increase isn’t that great, considering how long Necrotic Grasp takes to hit. YMMV.
As for Sigil, I’d definately go Earth on Scepter/Staff. Geomancy’s fun for your OH weapon. (Dagger, in my case)