Guild Wars 2

Hey everybody, this is one of my first posts on here, so bear with me, but I need some help right now. I just finished getting all my ascended trinkets and I’m a little over halfway to an ascended staff. The problem is that all my trinkets are rabid, so I’m locked into condimancer. I shouldn’t really mind considering how cool curses necros were in the original games and how awesome the concept of a necromancer is. I need help dealing with some parts of the game where I just feel helpless though.

Please note: I am aware that there is a lot of disappointment with recent patches from the necromancer community. As much as I would love to vent alongside you, I’m dedicated to making this build work for me (I doubt it would be quicker to get a separate set of ascended trinkets regardless) so please try to keep an optimistic tone (in this thread at least).

But I’d like to know what my options are to deal with:

Condi Immunity
As seen actively on warriors and passively on engineers and elementalists, this seems to be a total shutdown for me, is my only option to put on zerker armor and hope I can keep up a respectable dps with life blast? Has anybody seen or heard of an acceptable check to these abilities?

Crowd Control
Warriors seem to be able to keep me dazed or knocked down permanently. Other classes can be almost as bad. The only solution I can think of to this would be to give up terror or dhuumfire for foot in the grave to get some nice stability uptime (this might synergize well with weakening shroud, but I’ve never tired it).

Disengage/mobility
Particularly in WvW, most classes can reset a fight or run away when I might otherwise be winning. Maybe I just don’t know when to use staff three, but it seems as though I never have enough chill to kite or chase. Also, does anybody know when to use spectral grasp or that other chase skill. It seems as though whenever I use them it’s too late. Also, is there an angle from which I have to throw these skills? It seems like they can be simply side-stepped, let alone dodged, especially when they are already retreating.

I came up with something that would require the zerker armor but might otherwise not be that awful. build

(Splitting into two posts since post is too long)

I know feel your frustration with warriors and their seemingly permanent stun-locking, stability, and condition immunity. The simple answer is that, if you are set on a condition build, there’s simply no way to counter condition immunity or stability. You simply have to recognize when those skills are up and make sure to not burn all your cooldowns. That may mean just kiting back and forth for a good ten seconds not doing anything, but there’s literally nothing you can do if they’ve got condition immunity up (same with stability, don’t use your fears in desperation).

A major, major weakness of the necromancer is the lack of or difficulty in attaining stun breakers, chase skills, or stability without a major inconvenience or damage hit to a build. Unless I’m forgetting something, the only things that you can use to counter warrior stun locking is Spectral Armor, Spectral Walk, and Well of Power. In addition, all three you can use even if you are currently stunned/knocked down to break the stun. Well of Power grants stability too while you are in it. The bad thing is, all these skills are on relatively high cooldowns in comparison to how many stuns you are likely to get hit by (since necromancers have zero sources of vigor outside an extremely unreliable Well of Power condition conversion ). Still, even breaking a stun lock once can make the difference between going down or not. I’d take one (Spectral Armor or Spectral Walk) if you intend on roaming and aren’t confident enough in your dodging skills. The downside of course is that one of your limited utility slots are going to be taken up by something whose main job is to break stuns. I’d take Spectral Armor or Spectral Walk over Well of Power because overall, they have more uses. Spectral Armor provides some defense and can still aid you in the rest of a fight. Spectral Walk is very useful for running away from right situations, and chasing to a lesser extent.

Now about disengaging/mobility, this is a kittene. I would personally never take Spectral Grasp on land. It’s a one-shot use skill with a high cooldown that has a relatively easy to recognize animation that can be dodged. Granted, it’s payoff is very high and probably means that whoever got caught running away is very likely going to die. Unfortunately, people who run away are usually leaping away at great distances or going invisible so it’s very unlikely Spectral Grasp could even be used in most cases. In the case that they aren’t stealthing or greatsword leaping away, you can simply chase them down with Spectral Walk, Signet of the Locust, or just continually autoattacking and running (Chill of Death trait in Spite helps). Instead of focusing on offensive mobility, I feel it’s more important to think about defensive mobility and disengaging. Granted, necromancers are terrible at both, but its a little more feasible to run away than it is to chase down an invisible foe with swiftness. In both these cases, anyway, I’d recommend Signet of the Locust and/or Spectral Walk. If you want to be super safe, take both. If you don’t really care about giving chase to fleeing foes, just take Spectral Walk. If you don’t really care about living when you realize you have to get away from being stomped on by 5 dudes, just take Signet of the Locust. Taking both, however, diminishes your ability to fight a bit in combat. Also with an honorable mention here is Spectral Wall, staff marks, and Plague. Spectral Wall and the marks can act as zoning hazards, and if someone gets hit by a fear, virtually guarantees your safety. Also if someone gets hit by a fear, it’s useful offensively. Plague just straight up increases your toughness and health (and provides stabilty), and the AoE fear temporarily shuts people down. It’s mainly only useful for retreating back to allies though, as there’s no way to run faster and just delays the inevitable if you’re being chased by a mob.

It’s really not worth going into the Death Shroud line just for a measily few seconds of stability, especially if you’re not even running a power/DS build. Zerkers is so bad in WvW; players aren’t mindless monsters that just hit hard and overfilled with fat. They’ll rip you apart if you have no defenses. Not to mention in zerg fights, your fast and generally guaranteed death will cause dozens of rallies for the opposing zerg.

So for build I’d recommend (assuming you still want to play conditions): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMax7tbKb07JEoHuHuAiRKOmghSh7kOA-jECBYLIINDakkWQjKAJHqIasVTFRjVdDTHjIqGA-w

Change Epidemic to Spectral Walk or Spectral Wall (taking along Spectral Mastery trait instead of Vital Persistence) when you’re not with a zerg. Signet of Spite is also a viable variation, though it’s much more risky and you really have to watch out for when your opponent has a block up or not. If you do choose to use the signet, take Signet Mastery in the Spite Line instead of Spiteful Removal. As to the second sigil on your dagger, take a Major Sigil of Bursting as I believe the Major and Superior versions of the same sigil do stack (at least they did when I tested the Minor and Major versions). Condition damage matters much more than duration as lots of players bring ample amounts of condition removal. Koi Cakes and Toxic Focusing Crystals for optimal food.

Personally, I run mostly Rampager (Prec priority, Power/Condi Dmg off), though I use 4 Knights for Armor and a Knights Earring (just for a bit of toughness on my glass). I also run Sig of Spite, Corrupt Boon, and Plague Sig, corrupt boon being the key to dropping Stability.

If I notice an Ele just not taking condis, I’ll switch to DS and Life Blast for about 2k a crit at roughly 80% crit rate with the Fury. I mostly WvW so it hasn’t happened much to me to be honest, but I do remember one occasion where I just didn’t care at all about Diamond Skin.

I never run into Engis, so.

As far as Warriors go, I don’t run into many of those either, surprisingly, and I roam around WvW solo a lot. The one that gave me the most trouble I’d say was a M/S+Hammer Warrior, especially since I wasn’t running Sigil of Energy at the time and I didn’t know he’s pack that little mobility in WvW. Caught me off guard more than anything.

The key is really dodging the stuns and just running against the Warriors until their Zerker Stance falls off. Pop a fear to see if they have Last Stand, and if so, I’d say try to kite with chill/cripple until that one falls off. Then you can fear again with Doom, and if they add Stability again, Corrupt it and drop more snare on them while they are stability-feared.

Honestly, if you can make it through the initial Zerker Stance and don’t time the Corrupt Boon poorly, you can make a puddle out of Warriors. The kicker is learning to dodge those stuns and generally survive. One tip you can use, if you carry Spectral Armor, is to use SA, then go Death Shroud. Basically every Hammer hit at that point will generate 8% LF, which means you’ll most likely just float around the same LF , even if he’s chaining you. If you don’t carry SA (I don’t), but have at least 15 points in Soul Reaping (you most likely do, but maybe you don’t?), you can use the free SA at 50 health and go DS once you hit that. Just sit in the CC, don’t panic, and wait for the SA to proc. Then go into DS and enjoy the floaties.

If you start the fight with no LF, I’m not sure what to say. I always prep my LF while running around WvW, and I haven’t really done sPvP duel arena things, but it seems like a terrible way to start the fight as a Necro.

Also, if you don’t want to spend the $ on Koi Cakes, you can get +36% condi duration food for like 1/7th the price, iirc.

I don’t think many people will support the Rampager decision, but I personally love it. My condis don’t hit as hard, but I have the flexibility to LB reasonably hard considering the condi dmg. The removal of complete dependence on Condis, though, is what I love the most.

EDIT – Oh yeah, mobility. You can jump hilarious distances if you run Flesh Wurm + Spectral Walk, but you have to plan it out in advance. Personally, the utility of the other Necro toys trumps a burst of mobility in my opinion, so I just run Traveler’s runes and deal with the fact that I’m probably not escaping from a fight that’s going south unless I get out in advance.

Huh, totally forgot about Corrupt Boon that Cogbyrn brought up. Probably better than Spectral Wall in most situations actually, especially while actually fighting. I’m gonna edit the build in my post, but just putting this here to give him credit and agree with it.

Wow, all very good advice. I think for now I’m going to go with something like

So for build I’d recommend (assuming you still want to play conditions): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMax7tbKb07JEoHuHuAiRKOmghSh7kOA-jECBYLIINDakkWQjKAJHqIasVTFRjVdDTHjIqGA-w

Corrupt boon, spectral wall and spectral walk seem to fit my playstyle best. At least until I start playing around with rampager’s. I like the idea of having full access to chill, fear and weakness. Something like this

Run corrupt boon. The instant a warrior jumps u and pops zerker stance just plague and wait for it to run out then corrupt stability after and kill him