Guild Wars 2

All my 80’s are melee (Guardian>Thief>Warrior). I’ve decided to roll a new ranged alt.

So far I’m not liking my Ranger (31), and want a caster style. I wasn’t able to progress passed 7 on a mesmer, and I really don’t want to jump on the Ele bandwagon.

With all this said, I have a Necro at 13, and it feels like getting my teeth pulled to level. Does it get easier? Whats the best build/gear to level? My thief ran conditions, and I had a ton of fun, but I’m not sure if I’ll enjoy it as much.

Any advice would be awesome!

I recommend scepter/dagger & scepter/focus. This is an uncommon choice, but I find it works well, since it lets you stay at 900 range. Kite, kite, kite! Don’t try to facetank.

For the early going, I suggest:

Skills to get:
Consume Conditions
Blood is Power
Epidemic
Signet of the locust

Traits:
5 in Blood, 5 in Spite, then 5 in Curses
Work toward: 10(III)/30(II,VII,XI)/0/20(II,V)/10(III)

Gear:
Vitality & Toughness at first
Rampager/Carrion mix at mid-levels

Deathshroud:
Try to use DS3 & DS4 situationally. DS1 mostly for group events. Try not to let DS Lifeforce drop below 50%.

Necro has alot of different build possibilities. You’ll probably change builds a zillion times before you find the one you settle on.

It does become a lot less painful eventually.

At low levels using Minions + Staff (#2 Mark of Blood can provide regen to minions to heal them) is extremely effective. After level ~30 I found picking up Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption along with Greater Marks ended up being fun and rather effective (Find 5 things, gather them up whack down both wells and a 2-3-4-2 Staff combo and then loot everything – Bonus points for summoning and exploding Bone Minions for nice AoE damage + Blast finishers)

Key Traits I used were:
Death Magic 10 (Greater Marks/Staff Mastery)
Death Magic 20 (Greater Marks/Staff Mastery)
Blood Magic 20 (Ritual Mastery – I didn’t actually use this, but it would help)

Using Power gear to begin with, then Power/Vitality (Power/Precision also works Staff Mastery allows for very easy perma-regen) eventually getting P/V/T stuff (Or zerker gear if going more towards Dagger/Axe Well burst and away from the staff traits)

I did a power build til 80 then changed once I got my full 80; condition set.

So far getting my necro to 35 was about as boring as anything. Around then seemed to pick up. 43 now and I don’t want to bang my face on the desk when I level.

Honestly, all ranged professions are pretty terrible for the first few levels sadly. But! if you stick it out, at around level 30 to 35 it does start to get better.

I personally love ranger and keep coming back to it. To me it seems to be the best dueling profession. But necro does have a bit more depth and excitement. If you manage to stick out the first few painful levels you should enjoy it.

I just use a Dagger/Warhorn + Staff power build and I kill stuff so fast its crazy.

Just roll WoB + 3 minions of choice till 60 and faceroll stuff in general pve (minions do die, but no npc ever touches you and thats even without any traits).

Eh… I’m always confused when people have difficulties in PvE in general… My Thief was, overall, the worse performer in PvE (mostly because I was stubborn and refused to switch to sword, which is superior in PvE… Or get gear even remotely my level for the most part), but even he was relatively easy.

For reference, I leveled a staff and scepter/dagger well and condition hybrid necro to 80. I got to lvl 80 with a random level 40 staff (I didn’t find a single staff for 40 kittening levels) and a level 65-ish scepter. If you’re using conditions, you’ll want a staff, and you’ll want Greater Marks ASAP.

I really don’t know what to tell you since I don’t know what you’re doing wrong… What’s your current build? How do you generally approach enemies? What’s your skill rotation while attacking…? What issues are you having?

Updating your gear is very important to ease the pain of leveling. Slotting minor runes with +10 power in all your armors helps a lot. Also, using a minor sigil of bloodlust on your main weapon and +power/power on kill food provides a nice boost.

Just go with minions, i find that minions are amazing for solo play (sure they have their bugs but everything does) I found playing as a MM soloing champions easy just use scepter/dagger + staff and get the minions to do your work. I sometimes respec to 0/30/20/20 and trait for minion hp siphon, 50% minion hp, minion cdr. Still with this build you can do damage with conditions and are not reliant that much on your minions but they are a great wall of flesh and as one or 2 die you will have no problem resummoning them. Honestly for leveling minions are a breeze.

I rolled a necro from start, didn’t have any major issues with anything below champion level. At low levels I used staff marks almost exclusively. After I got wells then I started to pull mobs, drop wells, drop staff marks, DS#4 and then pick up loot. Before the tag fix to loot drops I had less chance of getting drops during DE’s.

I started in Queensdale and found myself under levelled for Kessex Hills. That’s when I went to Rata Sum, cleared Metrica Province then went to The Grove and cleared Caledon Forest. At that time I was over levelled for Kessex, Brisban and every other map I went to. Kept using the same staff and scepter/dagger with wells and flesh golem all the way to Orr.

This is about the most unintuitive and feeble-feeling of classes I’ve played on here. Put in twice the work to get about 3/4 the general performance.

Call it ‘hardmode’ if it helps you feel like you didn’t make a terrible mistake rolling one. There are ways to do it right, and the advice on this thread’s pretty solid, but until they figure out how to make pets not be stupid as a decorative chandelier…meh.

Damage output until well geared at 80 is lackluster, your AoE options are silly and, if you’re wanting something complex that scales well to skill at playing it, roll a mesmer.

Necro…I just can’t recommend it. Someone’s asleep at the wheel on this one, and while it gets less painful to do it right, it doesn’t really stop being painful.

/2cents

Minions work about 95% of the time, the 5% being the rare occasion (and it happens) that Flesh Golem or Bone Minion gets “stuck” attacking an old target.

Thanks for all the feedback!

I’m currently passed the truly painful levels (onto 23-24 now). I’m running minions, with a 0/10/2/0/0 spec. I run fill minions and usually start off with staff 2>3>4>DS4>(staff)2 on multiple mobs. Single target I roll scepter/whorn for the conditions/cc.

I’ve found it a lot easier, though having to resummon minions is a bit tedious. Think I’ll stay with a crit/conditions build for now.

A btw note, if you want a invite to bas’s all necro guild or just general help with leveling, feel free to send me a message or whisper.

corruption skills and minion skills are very good in PvE (overworld) as they do a lot of damage to multiple enemies with low cooldowns. You could also do a power focused dagger build focused on lifestealing with well utilities or signets.

If you use corruption skills use scepter+dagger/staff.
If minions use Axe+focus/staff.
If life stealing dagger+warhorn/Axe+focus.