Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAoYWjMad6VaaaM8JkpHZz4oNRFOGqHlz68hA-jEDBYLCiEEQkFAEBgJPoZPERjV1FRjVvATXKpKXAaXR2bQZVGg8JA-w

There is my current gearing + traits and skills. Pretty much a all out aoe power build, with decent defense via vit stacking. As I note in the video, Death Shroud (and I think Lich form too) have their own hidden armor rating, so its redundant to stack toughness. The traits in the Blood and Reaping tree’s are too good to pass up also. It’s so easy to quickly drop two wells then enter DS and start doing 100% crit. While dual daggers isn’t the best shroud dmg, I still prefer it so the instant I am out of DS I can continue the attack and don’t have to mess around with weapon swapping and potentially get stuck with the wrong wep at the wrong time. Not to mention, dual daggers are just cool. You can’t deny the Rule of Cool you know?

I don’t really like long explanations. Heres the vid I quickly shambled together. The fights aren’t the best, but then the best fights are too intense for me to record

Edit: my tests show my info to be out of date and wrong. however the build still works fine.

So its a very interesting build idea but the fact that your claiming that death shroud and lich form has its own “set” or “modified” Toughness rating has peaked my interest. You can visibly see the changes of the buffs that lich form gives you on your Hero menu (buffs to precision and power and vit.) but nothing to toughness is shown so i have my doubts about the lich form BUT even if you take Deathly Perception (50% crit chance increase while in death shroud) the Hero tab does not update the crit chance while in death shroud so that leaves the possibility open that it could have a hidden toughness rating. so my question is do you have any proof backing this up? a link or a video showing that proves/states it indeed does follow a different toughness then the one you hold? On a different note: Nice build I might try it out add my own little touches to it make it my own but over all looks try-able

Somewhere in this forum there is talk about it. I wish the search function worked better. From what I remember, when they fixed the issue with DS taking more dmg then it should, they actually caused DS to take less damage then it should. As I remember, the effect is like having a armor rating of 2600. What I’m not sure is if this overrides your current armor, add/multiplies with it, or if the game takes the greater of the two. It’s a hidden mechanic so its hard to say.

As for lich form that is probably just my wishful thinking…but I do feel tankier in Lich form. May just be my imagination though. I hope someone with a better memory and/or actual data can answer your question better. anyway thanks and hope you like the build

Interesting build. Power’s great, crit chance is good and the crit damage is very strong.

I was wondering why you opted for three wells. Most DS heavy builds take either SArmor or SWalk to help refill their life force bar. I guess dagger 1 does a pretty good job of this, though.

I was also curious about the PVT armor/gear this build is running. You have a sizable health pool but it seems to me that your armor’s a bit on the thin side. Was this done to maximize power/HP in favor of toughness/crit chance?

Looks like a fun build to play. Could be effective in PvP … three wells can really heal clean out bunkers. =)

I get more usage out of wop then I do a untraited spectral ability. Especially as part of a skill group it just brings a lot more utility. If your enemy is spamming conditions you can quickly get lots of boons. I could also go wod and trait it to chill…preference really.

In my opinion:

You have so low armor with that mixed set that it would be better to drop all toughness items and go focus on vit/power/crit.

Even though staff is op it is still not optimal without any condition damage in my opinion. I’d go for another dagger set or axe maybe unless zerging in wvw.

With that many wells you would probably also want really consider that chill and protection traits for wells. And drop that mostly useless well of power for well of darkness which helps you in so many ways more unless you know you’re gonna get hit by massive condition spam.

Basically you could just go full zerk or zerk/valk with spite 30 SR 30 and 10 something else you want which is the norm and do dps job properly. Or then go full toughness/vit and be proper tanky support with damage at the level of a fly.

This build probably works, especially in wvw group where little things don’t matter, but just saying if you want ideas.

Also since someone mentioned: While in Lich Form, the necromancer’s base power is tripled, and base precision and vitality doubled. At level 80, this adds 1832 power, and 916 precision and vitality.

From wiki. That’s why you feel tanky in lich. You shouldn’t really try to tank in lich form though it never plays out very well. It does nice dmg though.

The build looks interesting. That being said, I have long run a 10/0/25/30/0 axe/dagger and, depending upon situation, either staff or dagger/warhorn on switch. Wearing all PVT (along with full stacks of bloodlust, Melandru runes, – condition duration food, plague) and my build has near 2600 power, 2000+ toughness and armor, and with 5 stacks of fortitude, 34K health. I frontline tank mobs all the time…wvw loot bags galore and I love the build.

@ Jalmari Well of Power is mostly useless? It’s a stun break AND a aoe condi cleanse that gives you boons. You mean in this stun train and condi spam meta you would tell me that I should give up my only stun break and 1/3rd of my condi removal that also assists my team? Really??

Furthermore, There is no way I could take protection on wells without either giving up Quickening Thirst or Deathly Precision. Neither of which I am willing to give up for a tiny bit of protection.

I know toughness helps me brawl when I am not in DS. I also know that replacing all my soldier with valk would give me epic crit damage. I decided to strike a balance, which is what this build is all about.

To be able to waddle into the middle of a enemy zerg and drop my wells + DS combo, I have to be somewhat tanky. So your usual balls out 30/25/0/0/15 build is not going to fly with me. Amazingly, not only do I survive being in a enemy zerg, thanks to Well of Power I can usually get out, heal up and do it again. Thanks to Focused Rituals and Path of Midnight, I can repeat that combo every 32 seconds as opposed to every 45. If you ever roll with a proper zerg busting skill group as a necro, they are going to want you to go either Condi or Wells and for good reason.

I’ve tried every single necro power build there is, and even invented a few people don’t know about. So no, I’m not looking for ideas or mention that I was. I appreciate if you are trying to help but… lines like “This build probably works, especially in wvw group where little things don’t matter…” What are you trying to say here, exactly, friend?

Lorelei.3918:

If you ever roll with a proper zerg busting skill group as a necro, they are going to want you to go either Condi or Wells and for good reason.

An effective, zerg-busting condi build? Please share.

i have 81% crit damage and 2580 armor with food.
you need more armor if you want to run with the big groups.

It is all about ur play. these days roming solo is almost impossible because you get zerged from a small groups to map zerg. I’m running with full zerker staff/wells and dagger/focus (to pick up enemy outside the group). 30,10,0,0,30 is pretty much what i need while running with zerg. Just don’t rush headless in zerg and try to find best position for yourself outside of the mess and strike them from there but still being close enough to your group.

Since you don’t care for criticism i’d just like to say that i don’t like the build and don’t believe it to be particularly effective. At the same time i want to congratulate you on killing the mesmer that killed you commander buddy and the upleveled.

Monkeymonger.9235:

Since you don’t care for criticism i’d just like to say that i don’t like the build and don’t believe it to be particularly effective. At the same time i want to congratulate you on killing the mesmer that killed you commander buddy and the upleveled.

I don’t care for trolls, either. So here is your bait, you can have it back good sir.

Lorelei.3918:

I wish the search function worked better

I just searched for the word “Necromancer” – no results.

This is the worst search function on the internet!!

This I like!

Not experienced enough with the class though coming from a D/D Ele background and recently decided to play my Necro more, so take my “like” with a pinch of salt…

I’m gonna give this a try while roaming for sure, perhaps I’ve found the bigger brother to my Ele finally. Yeah D/D goes hand in hand with the rule of cool!

Well builds are nice for zerg balls but anyone with more than a few brain cells wont just stand in your wells. Going 30 into blood just for well traits and possibly the worst way a Necro can get movement speed just seems like a waste to me. Those points could be spent in Curses to get more of those juicy traits or Spite for more power.

I will say that I greatly enjoy running D/D and it is a lot better than most players give it credit for.

I haven’t heard of this fixed armor rating in DS… and I find it hard to believe considering how great toughness has worked for me. I have generally always played in WvW with 20k HP and 2600-3k Armor and I have always felt very durable.

Even though that sounded like a lot of negative criticism.. I do like the play style of your build and its really not that different from the build I use (0/20/0/20/30). I only use two wells with mine, I like my Spectral Walk too much.

Actually I went 30 into blood for dagger cd, well cd, and movement speed. So not just well skills. But I understand how you feel. Spectral walk is epic also. I just don’t like using spectral’s if my build isn’t built around them. Like if you dedicated two major traits for your spectral walk, then that is two major traits buffing only a single skill. I try to leverage my traits as much as possible. So I have one trait buffing all my weapon skills. 1 trait buffing all my DS skills. 1 Trait buffing all my utilities. In fact my attacks come off CD faster then I can think to use them at times.

Also I agree with everyone above, D/D rocks. I used to love D/F for the burst but the utility D/D has is just super. aoe Weakness, blind, condi return and decent aoe dmg too.

Ok so I actually took the time to test it out in spvp and no DS doesn’t seem to have any extra damage resistance. Of course I was recalling some old info so it’s a good chance they fixed what I was talking about when they made our LF bar show real numbers. So my bad there and I will update my vid descrip too.

@ Lorelei,

I have only recently started toying around with a Necro (level 35 atm) as my Mesmer just doesn’t always feel as effective in WvW as I would like. She’s great as a roaming death machine but when it comes to AoE or zerg killing, she feels limited.

Anyways, I’ve been looking over your build and it’s really impressive! I never considered the D/D concept all that much as I was leveling with the Scepter/Dagger + Staff instead. Looks like I’ll go back and rethink what I was doing. Thanks for posting this!

If possible, can you post some more vids please?

Taking into account what you’ve mentioned about DS would you consider dropping some vitality now and replacing it with toughness while trying to retain as high crit damage and 40% crit chance?

Also I notice your swap is to staff, would you consider running axe/warhorn or focus instead of staff taking into account your statement that you don’t like weapon swapping?

Having played an Ele for the majority of my gw2 career I’m quite comfortable swapping d/d to staff while running and would do the same for axe/warhorn if I needed 1200 range.

EDIT: With Exuberance runes I guess the trade off of extra toughness wouldn’t really be that beneficial.

Staff brings too much utility for wvw to not use it, especially when wall fighting. In spvp though I roll with d/d and d/f. Y’know it’s so hard to stat this build. No power traits or runes means you need to use power primary gear. There aren’t many gear types that primary in power. You got Soldier, Zerker and Valkyrie to choose from. Only one of those has toughness. Any increase in toughness, holding power constant, will hurt precision and/or crit dmg. Believe me I have agonized over that, and decided to draw the line at 2k armor.

Even when using mostly Knight’s armor, I end up with 2k power with sharpening stone, which is enough for me. I have 70% crit damage, so my damage isn’t too terrible. I just enjoy having 2800 armor and 50% crit chance, so I like knight’s the best.

Thanks for the response Lorelei, like all things I guess it’s about finding that fulcrum on stat allocations that work for you. Toughness is just so ingrained in my psyche having played D/D Ele for so long.

Very nice build. I tried it out in sPVP last night and was happily surprised at how well it worked. Especially against Bunker’s. Incredibly fast DS generation, really good damage. I dunno about using it in WvW, but sPVP it works a charm. I was fighting a bunker guardian, rooted him in place, dropped all 3 wells on him and preceeding to dismantle him very quickly. May have to try some variations on this, but currently this is my most enjoyable build to play with on Necro.

I’m glad you liked it Xylith! It’s too bad exuberance runes aren’t in sPvP yet.

Gave this build a try today, so far it’s been pretty fun. Though this week we’re not facing servers that can field large zergs, so I haven’t noticed the lack of escape tools.

It plays much different than my mesmer (which is nice) and the big numbers on the crits are fun to see. It struggles against condition heavy builds, but that’s not unexpected.