Guild Wars 2

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to learn necromancer and come up with a conditions plus minions build for when the specialization changes happen. Originally, I was designing around having the reaper elite, but I think this approach is better. I’m hoping to use this for roaming in WvW.

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQCtANoBWw~
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBLRDbkjm+abrxrG2bAA-TFyCABAcQAO+BAAoehHOBALv/gnq/koSwsU+RIgJrBA-w

I would love any feedback on what you think will be the issues. Here’s what I think are the strengths:
- High condition damage (high base stat, plus lots of vulnerability)
- Can apply every condition. Rapid re-application of conditions.
- Constant 100% condition duration
- Assuming minions work okay, base damage output should be pretty good (several bleed stacks, poison, minion damage)
- Good mobility (nearly 100% swiftness uptime)
- Great toughness and vitality
- Good condition defense (minions, dagger 4, consume conditions)

Here are the things that I think are possible issues but don’t know enough about playing necro:
- Not sure how I’ll handle thieves
- Limited gap-closing
- Tricky to create burst (stacking 13-14 bleeds is very doable, but getting confusion or torment plus burning at the same time is going to be tough)
- Will it generate life force quickly enough

Any feedback would be great – thx!

I forgot to add two other possible issues.
- Stunbreak – reaper’s protection gives something like a stun break every 60 seconds, otherwise there’s just the flesh worm and the chance that Last Gasp breaks a stun
- Few dodges – there’s nothing that brings back endurance faster (I did consider the 40% endurance regen food)

Thanks much for any help!

Traits
I would consider Path of Corruption, what you have now is also good, but boon removal is fairly important for MM builds.

Skills
Drop Shadow Fiend. He’s just so awful its not worth it until they fix his active

Also I’d be worried that you have no sustain. No regen, no rune/sigil heals, just consume conditions, so you basically have to burst someone (not something condi MM is good at) or lose, as MM has to spend a fair bit of time not in DS to keep up minions.

I’d wait until the changes are revealed in full. If the changes to blood are good it might be a good option. Especially if you can give Vampiric Aura to your minions. Or if Parasitic contagion is moved to Blood. Unfortunately Minions are not disposable. I’ve actually thought about a Death Nova build myself. but Minions dying left and right weakens you too much to be worth it.

Thx very much for the feedback, Bhawb. Even though I leveled my necro to 80, I’ve probably spent more time looking at things on paper than validating them in the game.

I agree Path of Corruption looks really tempting. I was trying to get 100% swiftness for WvW, and I was trying to give myself more frequent warhorn dazes to proc perplexity runes. But I can see path corruption being more important.

I don’t understand what’s wrong with Shadow Fiend. When I fire his skill, he waits about a second but then it seems to work fine. Does this fail with bad terrain or something?

The last comment is probably most important. What I’m trying to do with this build is have very high defense. So all dire gear and a lot of condi removal with the minions, consume conditions, and dagger. It feels like all that combined with death shroud should keep me alive for a pretty long time. What would I be doing when I’m not in DS to keep up the minions? (Re-summoning them?)

I realize I need some real fighting experience against other players to understand how a fight will typically go. I’ve been holding off on testing until the specialization changes come because I can’t easily test the whole build.

Thx again for the help!

Haunt takes three seconds to activate, for an attack that deals 1.5x damage of a normal AA. Meaning, you end up losing damage with his activation, and his active (LF + blind) isn’t good enough to warrant how unreliable it is, as people can move out of range, LoS, all kinds of stuff for it to fail. In a condi build you’re better off using Bone Minions for the added burst, though without DN its a bit weak, or a condi utility like CB.

Things with minions would be making sure to use their actives, especially with Haunt its important to be using them a lot, plus it takes 1.5s to summon minions. Though it won’t be as bad as before now that siphoning should go through DS so staying in should be okay, though you won’t really have high LF generation with scepter MH.

Thx – I really appreciate the insight.

The concept that I’m going for in this build is to try to focus on condition damage. I’m hoping for 1300 or so dps from the minions. Most of that is from the flesh golem (around 700) and the flesh wurm (300).

So the way I’m thinking about this build is that the minions are really more for utility and support of the condi damage strategy. I don’t know exactly how the Necromatic Corruption trait will work, but I’ve been playing with Empathic Bond as a ranger for a while. Assuming the minions are pulling one condi every ten seconds and trying to transfer a condition to the opponent every ten seconds, it feels like a really nice passive condi management (4 conditions removed every 10 seconds is better than I was getting with empathic bond). Since they are putting the conditions back on the opponent on their attack, all I really need is for the minion to hit fairly often. (If the minions actually transfer conditions on every attack, then Shadow Fiend is even better since it attacks pretty frequently.)

Even if they aren’t transferring a ton of damaging conditions, just putting covering conditions on at steady pace is really helpful. Bone fiend and flesh golem seem to keep cripple up very steadily.

I see that shadow fiend does wait longer than I thought before it attacks. I’ve only done a couple fights against human opponents in WvW, so I don’t know how much that’s going to bother me.

Thx again for all the help!

You’ll get 1271 theoretical DPS from just 3 minions, not including Shadow Fiend who would bring it to 1563 or Bone Minions which bring it to 1405-1520. So actually if you are popping Bone Minions nearly instantly as they come off CD, you’re only a tiny bit of a DPS loss to Shadow Fiend, assuming you never use Shadow Fiends active. Its also worth noting that using Bone Minions would increase conditions removed without decreasing conditions transfered (1.5s Shadow Fiend attack compared to 3s for each Bone Minion).

Its hard to say though without playing it. My personal guess would be that Bone Minions > Shadow Fiend due to their burst damage, which is 3980 direct damage every 16s, with the only loss being conditions transferred. However, this will also depend on how they work with things like conditions transferred; Bone Fiend will most likely transfer 2 per AA since he hits twice, and if conditions are pulled on summon Bone Minions might still be fine since that is 2 conditions removed on a 16s CD, compared to Shadow Fiend pulling 2 over a 20s period. It all depends on some specifics, which we’ll find out in 8 days I’m guessing.

Thx very much, Bhawb.

I can see how bone minions would be better than Shadow Fiend. It was a long time ago when I tested them. Sometimes they wouldn’t stay close to the opponent, so I had trouble exploding them for damage. I’ll do more testing.

I’m really hoping we see the changes in 8 days

Looks good enough for roaming WvW but I agree Bone Minions are better than the Shadow because if the putrid explosion.

You will not have good zerg/siege support or many escape options other than wurm and your two binds so use them well.

My advice is don’t run minions. You won’t improve as a player by playing it. And even if minions becomes good (unlikely) then you will still not be good at the spec because players who learnt on more skill-based builds will pick up the spec and dominate you.

Better to learn necromancer on a build which lets you improve as a player.

Thx much for all the feedback!

Here’s a little bit on where I’m coming from and why I want to try this out. I have probably about 1000 hours doing WvW roaming as a mesmer. I played a phantasm build with a lot of focus on interrupts. For about the last 500 hours of WvW, I’ve been playing a trapper ranger build. The trapper build is really amazing. I can easily solo towers, and I can win a little less than half of the 1 v 2 fights I get against fairly experienced players (bronze, silver).

I originally only looked at necro to help out my son. He loves minions, so I focused on those builds. But as I looked at the changes coming with specialization, I got more interested in trying to do a condi plus minion build. I totally agree that if I just played passively and tried to have the minions do the majority of damage, it would be pretty boring. What I’m trying to do with this build is mix in some interrupts to add more skill challenge (and more damage output from perplexity). I’m also working to try to use the minions to body block, and use their skills wisely to set up other attacks.

It may be just that I’m new to the profession, but it feels like there’s still a long ways for me to go in improving my skill and the potential output. If I played a pure condi build, it seems like I would replace the minions with corrupt boon and maybe a couple of wells. I’m not sure that would challenge me in terms of improving my skill as a player than maximizing the minions and nailing my interrupts.

Hopefully it turns out to be both interesting and effective. Thx again!

eldenbri.1059:

Sometimes they wouldn’t stay close to the opponent, so I had trouble exploding them for damage. I’ll do more testing.

One thing to note is the closest minion to you is the one that always explodes first. Make sure to use snares like Scepter 2/Dagger 5, DS 5, or Rigor Mortis to get them to land. It isn’t easy but you get used to it

eldenbri.1059:

I totally agree that if I just played passively and tried to have the minions do the majority of damage, it would be pretty boring.

The only people who say or think MM is passive are people who have never played the build well. Even when you talk about “passively” dealing damage, the reality is that no decent player will stand still while the minions hit them, they will actively kite as much as possible. This means to deal damage you have to be actively CCing the enemy to set up your minions to deal damage and land their actives. Everything about the build requires interplay, saying it takes no skill is like saying other Necromancer builds take no skill because they don’t combo with any fields, so they won’t teach you about one of the most important interactions in the game.