Guild Wars 2

OK. While I primarily WvW, I do enjoy dungeons/PvE from time to time so I’m trying to get a feel for what I want to do with my (now level 40) necro at 80. I figured there are three overarching styles: Life siphoning MM, Condi, and Power necro.

I’d like to play around with these a little to get a feel for them as I go. This is an alt, so I’m looking for pretty standard, straight-forward stuff. Let me know if I’m off base on these please! I’ve looked around at a lot of builds and I’m starting to get a bit overwhelmed.

MM for open PvE I saw this: clickie. However I thought siphoning traits scaled with power, yet this uses a condi build? Is this optimal? 30 in Death and 30 in Blood seem non-negotiable, but it’s how to gear and what to do with the last 10 points I’m unsure about. And what about Training of the Master?

Power dungeon I copied a build by I believe spoj clickie. I am learning dungeons (still tons I haven’t set foot in >.>;) on a full glass ele so I figure it’s like that but with more HP and deathshroud. :P lol so I figure by the time I get my necro geared I should be fine doing glassy there. This build is pretty well a community standard I understand, even among pugs?

And finally I was looking for a condimancer (or hybrid) for WvW. Ideally I would be optimized for roaming and not useless if I putz around with the zerg. Here’s where I’m very lost. Foot in the Grave seems very important for solo/small groups where you don’t have guards granting stability. Zerging would prioritize staff/marks; but I dunno if there are viable alternatives I could slot instead without respeccing for small group stuff. Nemesis’ WvW build seems fine for small stuff but I dunno about large. Halp?

Well, let’s start from the top!

I’m a bit biased towards how effective minion master can be, as I personally don’t think it hasn’t been and still isn’t viable (yet). Looking at the build in the first link, starting with the traits, they seem to mostly be in order. Personally, I’d remove 5 from death magic and the 10 from curses and put 15 into spite. From there you could choose spiteful talisman or reaper’s might, depending on your play-style. Or, you could remove another 5 from death magic and put 20 into spite, giving you 20/0/20/30/0. This’ll allow you to fit in Training of the Master aswell, and the power gained from your traits will probably be more than what you’d get from deadly strength anyway. The weapons—the staff is good here. Scepter/Focus isn’t a legit combo though, and furthermore, since Deadly Strength is giving you power inherently, there’s no reason to try and use a condition based weapon set, and you kind of touched upon this yourself. I’d use dagger/focus or dagger/warhorn, but if you pick warhorn, be sure to choose reaper’s might in your spite line. Oh, right…for gear here, since you don’t want to focus on conditions here, you’d be best with berserker if you choose to go 20/0/20/30/0 or Cavalier where applicable with 15/0/25/30/0.

Second build! I’ve seen this—I’ve used it, in fact. In my opinion, it’s Necro’s best build for PvE currently. Personally, I took dagger/warhorn but used axe/focus on for my alternate weapon for quick vulnerability stacking and Axe #2 when the situation was available for such things, which allowed for bigger hits. Everything else there is in order.

The last one I can’t give you much advice for, since I don’t really WvW and almost strictly PvE. I can tell you, however, that if you choose to go hybrid, the only real route, trait-wise, would be to go 30/30/0/0/10. Funnily enough, I use a hybrid build currently for PvE. I don’t know how well this’d translate to WvW, but I have all rampager armor, celestial trinkets, rabid scepter/dagger, and berserker axe/focus, along with full divinity runes.

Anyway, I feel like I left things out there, but those are my opinions/suggestions. Feel free to inquire further.

I am aware that MM is probably not super optimal, hehe. But then open PvE isn’t all that hard and it seems a very different flavor from any other class so I kinda want to do it sometimes just for fun (but in the most efficient way possible lol). Thanks for the insight!

I know what you mean, that’s part of the reason why I switched to hybrid in PvE. Though berserker’s the best in terms of efficiency, it’s really boring to play. Hopefully you found my advice helpful, and hopefully you enjoy whatever you end up doing with your Necro.

Very helpful, thank you so much. Definitely still looking for some WvW input from that crowd too

EDIT: I never got a necro to 20 (max) in GW1 despite trying twice … really really enjoying it in GW2 tho.

Nemesis’ build guides are a great place to start. He explains the entire build theory so you have the tools to learn and grow as a player.

That being said, I question his choice of zerg builds. It’s a glass cannon and I never trust those. You tend to see a lot of them downed when a hammer train comes through. It’s fine for back row stuff but… it’s just not for me.

Ascii’s wellomancer is a good place to start if you’re looking for a front line zerg build. You can also try to recagigger the formula to get Foot in the Grave in. You give up a few things but on demand stability is pretty handy.

Yeah, I would not run glass cannon in WvW period honestly, even when not zerging. I watched some of Nemesis’ video for small-scale stuff but didn’t realize it was glass. I’ll have to watch again.

I actually don’t want to mostly zerg, I want to mostly roam/small group it up but not be a useless lump in a zerg, either. I already frontline on my ele so I’m good with changing that up or keeping it the same, either way works for me as long as small-scale is solid.

EDIT: I’m so dependent on stability as an ele … am I overvaluing it on another class do you think?

With what little WvW I do play, I didn’t find the stability necessary on Necro. Then again, my playstyle is killing the opponent before they have a chance to really do anything/CC me, etc. Regardless, the only stability I can think of on our class is via foot in the grave. I wouldn’t take this under any circumstances, because, well…if you’re investing that far in Soul Reaping, you’d probably want Deathly Perception at that point. Furthermore, you probably don’t even want to go that far into SR, especially not in WvW since it’s already a lackluster tree (imo). I mean, I guess we can also use Well of Power to convert a condition into stability, but that’s not reliable at all.

Rainshine.5493:

Yeah, I would not run glass cannon in WvW period honestly, even when not zerging. I watched some of Nemesis’ video for small-scale stuff but didn’t realize it was glass. I’ll have to watch again.

I actually don’t want to mostly zerg, I want to mostly roam/small group it up but not be a useless lump in a zerg, either. I already frontline on my ele so I’m good with changing that up or keeping it the same, either way works for me as long as small-scale is solid.

EDIT: I’m so dependent on stability as an ele … am I overvaluing it on another class do you think?

Nemesis runs a glass cannon as a zerg build. His roamers are condis.

If roam or small group is your thing, a condi or hybrid build should work out. And you won’t be useless in a zerg as long as you switch out a few skills/traits to become more of a disruption/CC type. As long as you can Plague, a necro will always have value. =)

I don’t think you’re overvaluing stability at all. The stun meta is currently the most problematic thing going so having access to stability is a very good thing, indeed. And I’ve noticed warriors don’t like it when you ignore their CCs — it unnerves a lot of them.