Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone!

I’ve been watching some videos on YouTube and talking with some other players here on forum some months ago (I’m kinda out of GW2 because of the Master’s Degree is taking away my time =x), but I’m planning on creating another Condi Necro build for sPvP.

If anyone can give me advices and answer my questions, I’ll be really grateful!

First, a link to the current build I’m using:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAW7Yjc00bb5NG3wfbigBRyWfi+QgJU+NKA-TVRAwAAOCAiVGs5CAkTXAnHAAA-w

The questions:
1) I’m not sure about my utility spells. While I really wanted to use Flesh Wurm (because of the Mobility), Corrupt Boon and Spectral Walk are a MUST and Spectral Wall is another Fear (and one I can control easily). Spectral Wall not only gives me (and teammates) a boost of Survivability, but also Fear, which is AWESOME against those LOVELY Rogues. Do you think I should dump one for the Flesh Wurm?

2) The decision from topic one is important for this one: I’m not sure I’f I should use Spectral Mastery (Soul Reaping IV) or Path of Midnight (Soul Reaping III).
Path of Midnight allows me to Fear more and that is awesome, but If I’m planning to use both Spectral Walk AND Spectral Wall, Spectral Mastery is really good. Reducing in 20% the cooldown on a guaranteed Fear is awesome, not to mention the Swiftness (and Mobility) from Spectral Walk.
If I’ll only use Spectral Walk, maybe I could switch Spectral Attunement (Curses X) for Path of Corruption (Curses XIII).
What do you guys think of it?

3) Can someone help me with Amulets and Weapon sigils, please? I’ve chosen from what sounds good, but I’m not sure if those are really the better I can get.

4) Scepter + Dagger or Scepter + Warhorn?
I’ve noticed both are good, so I’m taking suggestions. Dagger seems nice, since it can apply Blindness, but Warhorn can Daze (only 2 seconds, unfortunatly) and can add Swiftness to you and Cripple on a foe.

Ok, that cover up the questions about the build.

I have one last question, not aboud the build but about HOW TO PLAY, lol.

Ok, so I have both a Staff and Scepter/X (Dagger or Warhorn), but I’m not sure what i should be doing.
From what people speak in YouTube guides, Necromancer’s Scepter Auto-Attack (Scepter 1) is really good, and Scepter 3 can inflict heavy damage when you’ve just used Corrupt Boon, since it damages per condition.
On the other hand, Staff Mastery reduces all Staff’s cooldowns by 20%, which means i can almost apply Bleed (Staff 2) all the time, not to mention Chill, Fear and Condition Transfer.

I’m not really sure what I should do with my “filler spells”. Should I use all my Staff spells, change to Scepter, use the heavy hitters and than I auto-attack until all Staff-skills are refreshed?
Or should i stay more time on Staff, that allows me to almost spam bleed (Staff 2), only changing to Scepter/X when i want to use some specific spells (Like Scepter 3 to damage per condition, Scepter 2 to Cripple, Dagger 4 to apply Blindness or Warhorn 4 to apply Daze)?
Or there is no “optimal” choice? So in which scenario should I use each approach?
I’m fairly new to the game and I’m testing out the way I can, but I still lack the “vision” to evaluate which strategy is the strongest.

Thank you for reading this far and thank you again if you can help me in any way!

I was cruising Reddit for tips on Condition Necromancer not long ago. This stuck into my head:

“You can give yourself Chaos Armor by planting a Spectral Wall on top of someone then hitting them with Putrid Mark. This is however very difficult to manage as it requires a lot of things to be just right. You and your target essentially need to be standing INSIDE the Spectral Wall and Putrid Mark needs to hit your target to blast the wall. If you manage to give yourself Chaos Armor you can also apply Confusion. Or, an easier method to apply Confusion is to drop a Spectral Wall between you and your target then attack them through the wall with staff AA’s (Necrotic Grasp) and you have a chance at applying Confusion via Physical Projectile.”

This comment was aimed toward a WvW approach with Perplexity Runes. Even if you already knew, I think it is pretty kitten ed cool.

More to the point, I use this:

Curses: II/IX/XIII.
Death Magic: V/VIII.
Soul Reaping: III/IX.

Staff: Sigil of Geomancy & Sigil of Corruption.
Scepter: Sigil of Geomancy.
Dagger: Sigil of Energy.

Rune of the Nightmare.
Carrion Amulet.

Corrupt Boon (Unblockable, 5 boons into negative conditions)
Blood Is Power (+300 Condition Damage)
Corrosive Poison Damage*/Spectral Wall**/Spectral Walk***/Well of Power****

Summon Flesh Golem

“Weakness is a condition that decreases the rate of endurance regeneration and turns half of all hits into glancing blows (that deal 50% less damage).” -This is something you’ll need to remember while you’re playing. Weakness is my favorite method of dealing with those glass cannon players that think they can kill me before I have a chance to respond. It is especially good vs thieves that can do 9k crits…..

Sometimes I will swap “Spectral Wall” with “Corrosive Poison Cloud” because if I’m up high and my party is fighting below me this can seriously help my team come out ahead. “Corrosive Poison Cloud” is dope because it gives Weakness for 15 seconds (this is before Condition Duration bonus is applied) and you can add some extra duration by sending the self-inflicted Weakness using the Dagger’s “Deathly Swarm” skill. I can’t name the amount of times this skill has helped. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t do anything for me if my target runs away. The only way I can really fight this is by using this skill as something I’d put down when I’m fighting overtop of a Point. In the heat of the moment, sometimes people can be careless while attacking/defending a point and just stand right inside of it. I want to put emphasis on how important Weakness can be for me. Apply with Dagger skill #5 (25 second cooldown, btw) or use “Corrosive Poison Cloud”, it doesn’t matter your method.

Spectral wall is extremely fun to use!! Chaos Armor? Protection boon? Hell yea!

Spectral Walk. If I had a dollar for the number of times I’ve had a skill other than Spectral Walk in my skill bar and died because I couldn’t run away… I would place this skill at equal importance as “Corrosive Poison Cloud” as well as Well of Power.

Well of Power. I’ve seen Condition Necros who use /Warhorn instead of /Dagger use Well of Power and kittening thrive off this skill. They can get a load of conditions, drop this Well, use a heal, and seriously flip out on a target. Personally, I’m not a big fan of this skill, but I won’t deny that I’ve seen others use it with a natural flow.

((It says that I can’t type more than 5001 characters. This is part 2.))

About the Sigil of Corruption, I love it. I started out with Geomancy and Energy Sigils on both weapon sets, and then moved into the Sigil of Corruption on the staff. That feeling in sPvP when you’ve got maxed Corruption buff and then you use “Blood is Power” (utility skill) for an additional 300 Condition Damage… It feels wonderful! It feels… Evil…….

In regards to what weapon set you should use and your order of attacks… Don’t use everything you have as soon as you have an open shot. You have to be mindful about when you use Putrid Mark (Staff #4) and Reaper’s Mark (Staff #5). Same goes with Enfeebling Blood (Dagger #5). If you can throw down Enfeebling Blood (Dagger #5) for the Weakness before they bust out their wombo-combo-big-damage-chain, you’ll live longer. Camping out on a single weapon set means you are going to lose out on a significant amount of damage.

Some people like to save Death Shroud for emergencies. Don’t do this! USE these kittening skills! I like to hop in and out of Death Shroud constantly. Feast of Corruption (Scepter #3) is perfect for regaining Life Force very quickly. Dark Path (Death Shroud #2) is kittening murderous, BTW! I like to use this skill as an opener. It is slow, but it puts you exactly where you need to be: Inside your opponent.

Dhuumfire. I’m going to close with mentioning Dhuumfire, the XI trait in the Spite trait tree. Look at it. Consider it. You don’t have to use it, but if you get bored give it a try. This IS an option. If you do, this is the advice a good condi necro gave me for his WvWvW build:
Dhuumfire; 6/6/0/0/2. Rotation: Dark Path (Chill, Bleed) -> Life Blast (Burn, Vulnerability) -> Tainted Shackles (Torment, Immobilize) -> Doom (Fear) -> Grasping Dead (Bleed, Cripple) -> Auto attacks (Bleed, Bleed, Poison) -> Enfeebling Blood (Bleed, Weakness) -> Feast Of Corruption -> Mark Of Blood (Bleed), Chillblains (Chill, Poison) -> Reaper’s Mark (Fear).

You need to actually play in sPvP to get good at Condition Necro. It can be difficult at times. It may take a couple of days before you get good at it. Don’t give up just yet!!
Things I hate about Condition Necromancer:
1.) Turrent Engineers (They have a nerf coming where their turrets are going to be able to receive Condition Damage. omgomgomgomg, SO EXCITED!!!).
2.) Courtyard sPvP map. kitten me… I hate this map.

I hope this helps. Someone else probably has a different opinion.

EDIT: Outside of fixing grammar, I want to note how I feel about Elite Skills. Lich Form is killer, but Flesh Golem has a cripple on it’s attacks and a Knock Down as it’s clickable skill. That Flesh Golem has saved my life on many occasions. We are bros now. Plague is an unusual skill. I only ever like to use the #2 skill (the blind) while using Plague. It just feels weird using it any other way. This is a personal problem, probably. I’ll bet it really is a nice Elite skill in sPvP… Some how…

CommunityScabies.2587:

You can give yourself Chaos Armor by planting a Spectral Wall on top of someone then hitting them with Putrid Mark. This is however very difficult to manage as it requires a lot of things to be just right. You and your target essentially need to be standing INSIDE the Spectral Wall and Putrid Mark needs to hit your target to blast the wall…

False.
Putrid Mark triggers its blast finisher when the center of the mark was placed on a combo field. The blast area will be the entire trigger radius of the mark, which has 60 units more than the regular radius.
That means nobody needs to stand in the wall. The only thing that needs to happen is you standing on Putrid Mark or within 60 range close to the edge of the mark when it is triggered while the center of it is on a combo field.

flow.6043:

CommunityScabies.2587:

You can give yourself Chaos Armor by planting a Spectral Wall on top of someone then hitting them with Putrid Mark. This is however very difficult to manage as it requires a lot of things to be just right. You and your target essentially need to be standing INSIDE the Spectral Wall and Putrid Mark needs to hit your target to blast the wall…

False.
Putrid Mark triggers its blast finisher when the center of the mark was placed on a combo field. The blast area will be the entire trigger radius of the mark, which has 60 units more than the regular radius.
That means nobody needs to stand in the wall. The only thing that needs to happen is you standing on Putrid Mark or within 60 range close to the edge of the mark when it is triggered while the center of it is on a combo field.

Ooo hooooo, that’s neato. I’ve been trying to manage this combo like I had described. Thank you for clarifying!

I just want to note, spectral wall is bad against good opponents. You won’t be getting them to run through the wall unless you really catch them with no cooldowns, so it’s 5 seconds of protection on a 45 second cooldown and maybe some chaos armor and a stack of confusion. Even then, you rarely want to use putrid mark for anything other than condition transfers, so unless you conveniently have conditions on you and wall down you won’t get chaos armor. That isn’t worth it over well of power, or spectral wurm. Also note that this isn’t me disliking the skill, I love spectral wall, but it isn’t effective against smart players.

zapv.8051:

I just want to note, spectral wall is bad against good opponents. You won’t be getting them to run through the wall unless you really catch them with no cooldowns, so it’s 5 seconds of protection on a 45 second cooldown and maybe some chaos armor and a stack of confusion. Even then, you rarely want to use putrid mark for anything other than condition transfers, so unless you conveniently have conditions on you and wall down you won’t get chaos armor. That isn’t worth it over well of power, or spectral wurm. Also note that this isn’t me disliking the skill, I love spectral wall, but it isn’t effective against smart players.

I find it hard to use Spectral Wall on a target as well. I don’t have it in my skill tay often, but sometimes I like to play around with it in the spvp dueling servers. I find it hard to get them to be willing to jump right onto it. The cooldown length is very unattracting to me.

First of all, thank you for everyone that replied!

CommunityScabies.2587:

More to the point, I use this:

Curses: II/IX/XIII.
Death Magic: V/VIII.
Soul Reaping: III/IX.

Staff: Sigil of Geomancy & Sigil of Corruption.
Scepter: Sigil of Geomancy.
Dagger: Sigil of Energy.

Rune of the Nightmare.
Carrion Amulet.

Corrupt Boon (Unblockable, 5 boons into negative conditions)
Blood Is Power (+300 Condition Damage)
Corrosive Poison Damage*/Spectral Wall**/Spectral Walk***/Well of Power****

Summon Flesh Golem

Thank you for the build! I’ve liked the traits, switching the Spectral traits for Death Shroud ones.
I think the Sigils, Rune and Amulet are an awesome choice too, but I’m kind of “confused” about the Utility Powers…

When I was reading for PvP Necro builds on this forum, EVERYONE told that Spectral Walk, Corrupt Boon and Summon Flesh Wurm were like…. THE ONLY AVAILABLE CHOICE.
Spectral Walk is obvious. It gives move speed, allow you to juke and recover Life Force.
Corrupt Boon is so awesome, it should be a Necro base spell, and one of Necro’s main usefullness on a PvP game (removing boons, adding condis at the same time).
Flesh Wurm should be used for Mobility purposes.

I’m not sure I agree with them.
Maybe, as you’ve stated, It’s better to use Area Weakness than having another Escape Route (Flesh Wurm) on sPvP.

Another weird thing is the use of Blood is Power. Sure, +300 Condi damage is AWESOME, but you have to remove one of those 3 Utilities said to be “THE AWESOME CHOICE”.

Another thing is that it is weird that you all say about Spectral Wall. First: It is another Fear. And that means more CC (that also deals damage and allow the other Condis to damage without a chance of retribution).
About being “difficult to land” against smart players, there are two uses that Walls excel at:
1) Against Melee players, especially Rogues => They CAN’T do kitten, if you drop it on your feet and Strife left and right. It means: Fear yourself, or stand still being damaged by my conditions until the wall disapear.
2) Blocking choke points => You don’t need to fear with the wall, but if the enemies need to ENTER through a wall, you can put it there. They will need to fear themselves or find another way in, which will take time. Time they won’t be capping a place or helping in a team fight.

That said, I won’t use it to stop a Power Ranger, because If he is a good player, it will be useless. But there are a lot of warrior, rogues and melee characters to make this really powerful.
Maybe It’s not ALL THAT AWESOME? Sure, but it is really good indeed. Correct me If I’m wrong.

For Elite skills, I’m using Plague. Everyone recommends Plague. But you’ve convinced me to try the Golem. I don’t like summons, pets and stuff, but I’ll give it a try.

Anyway, that is it. I’m still unsure about those Utility spells, but I’ve moved a step forward to this build ! hehehe thank you all very much!

PS: I’ll give Dhuumfire a try someday. I’m not going to do it now because i wanted to focus on Heavy-CC and I would have to remove some awesome CC effects to get it. But I’ll give a try someday, thx!

You can fear people into the spectral wall if you position correctly can’t you?

Eolirin.1830:

You can fear people into the spectral wall if you position correctly can’t you?

Yes. It also gives you protection, and can be used for area denial.

Bhawb.7408:

Eolirin.1830:

You can fear people into the spectral wall if you position correctly can’t you?

Yes. It also gives you protection, and can be used for area denial.

This is exactly why I’m not sure why people said “good people can avoid it easily”…
I mean… sounds like an awesome spell. If i’m not going to use this… then what?
Suggestions?

Wells spectrals wurm corrupt boon sos