Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, just wanted to share a necro build that I’ve been using lately (and hopefully get some advice from the more experienced people here).

It features the following stats:
- 2050 power
- 1050 condi damage
- 3148 armor (fully buffed)
- 26562 health.

Why death magic over blood magic? Simple, my Rise! gets buffed even further and I gain a lot of toughness, 20% condi damage reduction and a lot more condition cleanse. Overall, the sustain feels much better than on the blood magic version of the build on metabattle.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBmWD7kZTocTsvGwbTgeTsQNYxdwS4KkKGUDyUSBgBQKD-TZxFwAOLDk4JAc4gAA4CAIc/BA

(replace Carrion amulet with Mercenary)

Sorry, no video because of my bad connection. Looking forward to feedback (and sorry for potato English)!

There was some good discussion on DM reapers in this thread, namely look for mine and nearlight’s posts if you are interested.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Power-Reaper-in-SPvP/first#post5859004

At the time, I was using this build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBmWD7kZTocTsvGwbTgeTsQNYxdwS4KkKGUDyUSBgBQKD-TZxFwAOLDk4JAc4gAA4CAIc/BA

I was using viper back then, which worked in the bunker meta but is unfortunately too glassy in the current bruiser/dps-heavy “non-meta” that we’re playing now, so you’re right to use the merc amulet. As a matter of personal preference, I would take shrouded removal and death perception over flesh of the master and dhuumfire. Both FotM and Dhuum are sub-par traits imo, whereas SR and DP are very build-defining: SR makes you virtually immune to steady condi pressure in shroud, and DP increases the dps of all of your shroud skills (why would you want a GM trait that rewards auto-attacking?). If you haven’t tried those with your build, you might want to give it a whirl. All the other differences seem to be personal-preference-based so I’ll leave it at that. Looks like a fine build.

Hey, thanks for the feedback

I haven’t actually tried Shrouded Removal with this build yet (the main idea was to buff Rise! to be more tanky in teamfights) and so far I didn’t have issues against conditions. However I can see it being helpful and I’ll definitely give it a try.

Is death perception really worth taking on a non-curses build? I found Dhuumfire to give me a lot of DPS (since I don’t usually start spamming big skills when I enter shroud or when I have to stay in shroud for a while, let’s say when a thief keeps harassing me – you won’t hit those with your telegraphed skills anyway).

As for FotM, when your CF stacks are at 10, you have ~2850 armor out of shroud, so adding 120 armor (from FotM w/rise) gives you major diminishing returns. Check out a graph I made on how toughness mitigates damage: https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/198335/gw2_dmg1.jpg

The top graph is basically showing you that, compared to a base toughness of 1800, your damage reduction at 2850 armor is ~63% (i.e, you take ~63% of the damage someone with 1800 toughness gets). Increasing your armor to 2970 reduces your damage received to just over 60%—less than a 3% difference. Keep in mind that this is all scaled to 1800 toughness, but the broad trend is there—you aren’t getting too much from that extra 120 toughness. The condi removal from Shrouded Removal on the other hand is amazing and literally carries the DM line—for example it lets you win every “spin to win” shroud battle with another condi necro because you can absorb their entire Shroud 4 spike and barely take a scratch.

As for DP…it’s pretty great with any decent amount of power over 2k, so not having curses isn’t a problem. If you like Dhuum then use it, but having DS 2, 4, and 5 critting increases your spike dps, whereas dhuum increases your sustained dps. I guess it’s just a matter of personal preference, but I always felt like not critting in shroud made me hit like a wed noodle. Cheers.