Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of predictable builds in the necro communities these days. Many are either power builds with wells/spectral utils, or condition builds that use scepter/x and BiP/epi or corrupt utils. Sometimes I see a minion build here or there to act as a pvp node locker or pve leveling build.

So, I’m just going to ruse on here and try to look into how we build our necros most commonly and how to make the class better and more diverse. (I understand many people will want to ask Anet to “fix” their utilities or mechanics to make their builds more powerful, but that isn’t always the best solution)

For the sake of construction for this topic, I’ll go through how I usually go about building a necro.

Starting with how to deal damage
Like most classes, we are subject to dealing damage through direct damage (power builds), or Conditions (bleeds/poison/etc).
Note that there are other ways of dealing damage (such as “mastering DS” and minions) but those are not based off of what we do with our skills 1-5.
So naturally, most builds we see will have 20-30 points in either spite or curses, or both. Also, a lot of our “active” traits are located in those trait lines.

Taking damage
If at this point, I haven’t designed a glass cannon build, I will be thinking about a source of ablative hp or method of mitigating damage. There are many ways to do this, be it the death or blood traits, focusing either on Vitality, Toughness, Death Shroud regeneration, or siphoning as a central mechanic in their builds.
So, naturally, I see about 10-20 points put into Death, Blood, or Soul Reaping respectively.

Gear selection
Usually for me, choosing gear is related to how I deal damage. I think most players seek to deal a satisfying amount of damage first than to lean towards being a cleric/tank/support based build. In the game, its really feeling like a kill-or-be-killed global mindset. The more time you’re not using to hurt the opposition, the more crucial seconds you’re wasting letting them chain and re-chain everything they have on you. So the following gear choices are what I have in my head: Berserkers, Knights, Carrion, Rampagers. I have yet to see a necromancer toting a set of valk, cleric, or any other armor set (other than cof/arah special armor bonuses) and each of these armor sets focus on either power or condition damage as their main bonus.

Utilities
As I have stated earlier, I mostly see the following utilities being used:

• Well of suffering
• Well of darkness
• Epidemic
• Blood is Power
• Spectral Walk
• Spectral Armor
• Spectral Wall
• Bone Minions (Blast finishers)
• Flesh Wurm (Teleportation use)

We have quite a few more utilities, and some are used in special cases to punch a hole in the opposition when really needed (such as corrupt boon to de-godify guardians and warriors going on boon-sprees) but otherwise I don’t see much viability or motive to use the other utilities seriously. (given, some people use the signets when traited)

It would be nice to see more accessible and logical uses for other gear (valk, clerics, etc.) in our class design. As an example, it would be nice to have life siphoning scale with healing power, that way some players can see some use out of using a Cleric’s set and perhaps building a more blood magic based build that relies on staying alive longer in that sense rather than dumping into vitality or toughness like other more common builds.

To clarify a little more, it would be nice to see the other three trait trees becoming just as primary a choice as Spite and Curses. Because from what I see, a lot of players feel like our DS mechanic doesn’t mesh well with a lot of builds, except for power/spectral central builds.

I’m sure i have more to say about the topic, but currently it doesn’t come to mind. Anyone want to see death/blood/soul becoming more primary in builds?

Sheobix.8796:

Note that there are other ways of dealing damage (such as “mastering DS” and minions) but those are not based off of what we do with our skills 1-5.

Was that sarcasm? lol

the quoted part was sarcasm. minions actually do damage, when they finally attack your target.

I find the bone minions to be a unreliable blast finisher.

If you don’t know, the blast finisher from bone minions are quite… unusual. Although the damaging blast is centered around the bone minion, the blast finisher is in fact based off your position.

That is, you could be standing in a water field with a ranger buddy, and your bone minion could be next to a couple of mobs in a fire field, but when you detonate it, no area might happens, but an aoe heal effect would happen around you.

(if people don’t know this, maybe I should list it on the bug thread?)

From a tpvp perspective, you’d have to do some fancy talking to get me to invest more than 10 points in the top 2 trait lines. The bottom 3 are much stronger.

Spite is particularly bad, with about 3 or 4 useful major traits, only 1 of which is what I would call a strong choice, and then only if you’re using a dagger mainhand.

Curses is much better. It’s very narrow beyond tier 1, but it has strong talents. Just not as strong as the stuff you can find in DM, BM, and SR. Focused rituals is the only one there that can compete with stuff like mark of revival, foot in the grave, or mark of evasion.

War Mourner.5168:

If you don’t know, the blast finisher from bone minions are quite… unusual. Although the damaging blast is centered around the bone minion, the blast finisher is in fact based off your position.

That is, you could be standing in a water field with a ranger buddy, and your bone minion could be next to a couple of mobs in a fire field, but when you detonate it, no area might happens, but an aoe heal effect would happen around you.

(if people don’t know this, maybe I should list it on the bug thread?)

Actually there are two blasts. One from you and one from your minion. I’ve gotten chaos armor from a friends chaos storm with my minions finisher when I wasn’t in the field.

Necros do lack a lot of diversity. Most that I see run heavy condition builds that revolve around the scepter. The thing I hate about this is the fact that there is a bleed cap and how easily some classes can remove conditions. Because of this I have decided to stray away from this kind of build. That did however lead me to a well/spectral build. I really would like to have a pure power option to make use of a full clerics set. If daggers were buffed like you said I believe it would make perfect use of the stats.

As far as traits go I would have to disagree. Most of the valuable trait’s for a necro are south of the typical power enhancers. I am currently running 10/0/20/20/20 and find it to be very survivable. When all the bugs are fixed I might even have reason to reinvest that 10 down one of the lines too.

Actually there are two blasts. One from you and one from your minion. I’ve gotten chaos armor from a friends chaos storm with my minions finisher when I wasn’t in the field.
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Hm, just tested it in well of blood, the minion’s combo blast happens around 1 second after the one centered around the character, which makes the aoe blind potentially more useful then I realised.

Is there no love here for a fill minion DM build? sniff
I’m a slow poke, so only just hit 40th with necro. Having a lot of fun in PvE & finding a summoner to be quite playable. What am I missing? :-/

Nostromo.4126:

Is there no love here for a fill minion DM build? sniff
I’m a slow poke, so only just hit 40th with necro. Having a lot of fun in PvE & finding a summoner to be quite playable. What am I missing? :-/

The issue in pve and in pvp instance minions die to easy, do not do enough damage to a target if they even get to the target and we cannot command to attack or be passive, or just die so we can re-summon with full health. Open world pve they are fine if you can deal with them running off and attacking things for you or keeping you in combat. Its just in instances and pvp for the most part they are a hindrance.

I want a MM again even partially like from GW1. I want weapons to actually support the build besides a heal from staff 2 and axe 3 for defense for them. We need a way to control who they attack, we need a weapon or weapons to actually help them by summoning more minions or buff them besides restoring health and that small retaliation from axe 3. Its like they stopped half way with MM and gave us pointless signets for the most part and partially developed weapons after they noticed they made DS to strong in betas then nerfed it and never looked at necro again.

Nostromo.4126:

Is there no love here for a fill minion DM build? sniff
I’m a slow poke, so only just hit 40th with necro. Having a lot of fun in PvE & finding a summoner to be quite playable. What am I missing? :-/

The issues are in dungeons and PvP. In PvP their lacking AI makes them too unreliable, and in dungeons they die too quickly to AOEs.

Another factor to take into account, is that some bosses scale their number of AOEs to the number of allies (not players) you have with you. This leads to minions becoming completely detrimental in some dungeons. (Arah is a good example)

striker.3704:

Nostromo.4126:

Is there no love here for a fill minion DM build? sniff
I’m a slow poke, so only just hit 40th with necro. Having a lot of fun in PvE & finding a summoner to be quite playable. What am I missing? :-/

The issues are in dungeons and PvP. In PvP their lacking AI makes them too unreliable, and in dungeons they die too quickly to AOEs.

Another factor to take into account, is that some bosses scale their number of AOEs to the number of allies (not players) you have with you. This leads to minions becoming completely detrimental in some dungeons. (Arah is a good example)

I should have included that in my complaints above your post about them making boss fights harder. Alpha and Lupi are perfect examples of why minions are bad. The tree fight at the end of TA can be a issue on one path because your minions will draw more spiders. Those are just a few small issues on specific fights because having them out causes more aoes, boss gets stronger, or chance of more adds.

Tx for the heads up guys. I guess if I start serious dungeon-running I’ll have to respec.
Are they also useless/detrimental in WvWvW? i.e. did you mean ALL PvP?
I have no desire to play open world PvP but wanted to try WvWvW soon if possible.

Nostromo.4126:

Tx for the heads up guys. I guess if I start serious dungeon-running I’ll have to respec.
Are they also useless/detrimental in WvWvW? i.e. did you mean ALL PvP?
I have no desire to play open world PvP but wanted to try WvWvW soon if possible.

I have never had a good fight with the minions in wvwvw or in any instance. You are free to try it out for yourself and actually i recommend it. It will be a good learning experience for you.

Nostromo.4126:

Tx for the heads up guys. I guess if I start serious dungeon-running I’ll have to respec.
Are they also useless/detrimental in WvWvW? i.e. did you mean ALL PvP?
I have no desire to play open world PvP but wanted to try WvWvW soon if possible.

WvWvW is a very mixed bag. Since many players won’t have all of their traits/skills you will find yourself with a leg up (assuming you go in at level 80).

The PvP I’m mostly talking about is sPvP and tPvP where the only factors within it are you and your 4 other allies. With each individual players abilities and plays making more of a difference, that moment where your bone minion doesn’t go in can cost you dearly.

Bone minions are really wishwashy since their position makes your rotation outcome change in effectiveness, But getting back to the OP, What sort of changes in traits/utility behavior would you guys like to see that would make more gear a viable choice/ make different builds more accessible and useful?

I would like to see more sources of immobilize and fear, obviously knockdown is more of a brawny CC ability reserved for war/guard/mez but we could see a lot more fun builds if we had much more reliable sources of Fear or Immobilize.

plus, more sources of regeneration procs in our traits please?

Mammoth.1975:

From a tpvp perspective, you’d have to do some fancy talking to get me to invest more than 10 points in the top 2 trait lines. The bottom 3 are much stronger.

Spite is particularly bad, with about 3 or 4 useful major traits, only 1 of which is what I would call a strong choice, and then only if you’re using a dagger mainhand.

Curses is much better. It’s very narrow beyond tier 1, but it has strong talents. Just not as strong as the stuff you can find in DM, BM, and SR. Focused rituals is the only one there that can compete with stuff like mark of revival, foot in the grave, or mark of evasion.

Actually, running 20 spite /30 curses with withering precision, and might stacks from signets+might blast really ramps up dagger damage when you pop BiP+Plague signet
for 13 stacks of might+1 stack for every DS1 auto you land…

There is a vid on the forums of a guy landing 9.6k off of Dagger2 siphon alone, which is pretty nice after unloading a full DS through might blast. 20-30 points in the first two trees is very common.

Not saying EVERYONE does it, but it’s kind of a bread and butter thing. 20-30% condition duration from spite with the chill/blind procs from curses “chilling blindness” really helps with stacking chill on people. Not to mention withering precision stacks with Spectral Wall invulnerability triggers and Spite Grand trait gives you +20% dmg under 50% hp so you could easily pull off 25 stacks of invuln mid fight with someone, which is a HUGE upcurve to damage from the dagger.