Guild Wars 2

Other necromancers, what builds are you using in dungeons? I am specifically looking for something that uses axe/dagger or axe/warhorn, and the staff. I would also like decent survivability and targetable wells. I was thinking of going 30 into Spite for the axe talents, then at least 20 into Curses for targetable wells. Not sure where I want to allocate the rest of my points right now, so I’m looking for suggestions. What are your thoughts?

To me the Wells are key skills to bring to a dungeon.
Therefore 20 points in Blood Magic is a must to reduce the cooldown by 20%

Fooz.5087:

To me the Wells are key skills to bring to a dungeon.
Therefore 20 points in Blood Magic is a must to reduce the cooldown by 20%

Makes sense. Do you think this would be a good spec, given the use of the axe/dagger or axe/warhorn? I’d also use the staff. I always use the staff, that weapon is non-negotiable to me.

Hmm, well I enjoy sporting a scepter/dagger-build mainly, so I chose the 15% reduced dagger cooldown as the first passiv in the Blood line, but Transfussion or Vampiric Precision seems decent for any build

I was scepter/dagger, but I was finding scepter to be a bit underwhelming, honestly. I kill a lot faster with the axe. Well, switching between the axe and staff, I can kill almost anything in no time. Maybe I’ll give scepter another try later, once I get a better one. Right now, my axe is better damage, and I’m too cheap to buy a scepter from the Trading Post…haha.

I like to focus more on damage, so I plan to go full 30 spite, 30 curses, and the rest in blood magic. (I choose dleeding duration, targetable wells, greater marks, and eventually marks +10%) I also use signet that improves Power. I use mainly Scepeter/Dagger and switch it up w Staff.

Reason is, at least you can hope, that your group is pretty good so you don’t really need to take too much damage. You can focus on dealing condition and after condition.

Pure AoE: staff with greater marks trait and ground targeted wells for all utilities, with plague or lich as elite.

Personally Ive found success using 15 spite, 25 death, 30 blood. Mainly because most ppl in pugs go full dps and dont have alot of tank or heals. ive found this to be kinda the best of both worlds. Either minions or wells, you can easily tank most dungeon champions and bosses, and easily change specs by adjusting skills and major traits out of combat.

Stat wise this works with both well and mm builds just by making adjustments to your major traits and utility skills out of combat. Minor traits synergize very well, e.g. +20 toughness per minion, 5% toughness added to power, 5% power added to healing. This is great with cleric gear, as it gives bonus to power, toughness, and healing.

- weapon sets -
Staff: great, great support. regardless of spec, take the staff cooldowns. between death and blood the regen applied and reapplied with MoB is fantastic, great for healing party member and minions alike. Also, transfers conditions, blast finsher combos with self for area weakness or WoB for area retailiation, etc.

Axe (mainhand): builds LF for additional tank, armor debuff for inc dmg of players and minions, AoE cripple, and decent DPS. Also, the addition 15% con duration from spite makes this pretty nice.

For the off hand i prefer the focus, mainly because it has 9 stacks of vuln and extra cc during boss fights. It also applies regen. Dagger offhand is a decent choice as well due to the AoE weakness and con transfer.

- major traits -
Spite: I usually take the reduced focus cooldown

Death:
for MM, I usually take staff cd / minion cd and +50% to minion HP
for wells, i take staff cd and ‘wells apply protection’

Blood:
for MM, life transfer heals, leaving DS heals, and minions absorb hp
for Wells, WoB on revive, Well cooldowns, and wells siphon hp (great for tanking large groups.)

Just a minor note, i dont usually take ground targeted wells because most of the time you’re going to be close range with this build. With this i have been able to tank most dungeon bosses for the entire boss fights as wells as swarming trash.

I find it very useful to at least have one ranged set and one melee set of weapons, or just two ranged sets. Since sometimes being in melee range is just not viable, so you pretty much have to range things down.

Just out of curiousity; why not love for the axe? It seems everyone goes scepter/dagger, which I did for a while, too, but I found it to be “meh” right now. Maybe the scepters I was using were crap, I don’t know. I do know that I love using Wells, so targetable Well is a must, along with the staff as one of my weapon swaps.

I do use an Axe/focus-combi in addition to using the scepter/dagger. However, I only use the Axe/focus-combi to apply vulnerability as the damage simply isn’t as good as that of scepter/dagger as far as I can tell.

Scepter/dagger along with Wells just provide such a massive amount of AoE-dmg as well as some serious bleeding dmg on single targets if you go for +condition dmg that axes seems ‘meh’ – atleast to me…

Is anyone using warhorns for pve at all? :p

I’m not really building for condition, I want to use an axe/dagger and staff, and use a ton of Wells. Sound like a good build?

Wells alone can get you through a dungeon, but I’d run with primarily the staff. Axe works just fine for the tougher mobs after you’ve thrown down your staff AoEs. Just make sure to rotate your wells properly so you always have them up when you need them.

In general you should be rolling Scepter/Dagger with either a Staff or an Axe/Focus backup. Key skills to take are Plague Signet and Plague Form. Staff will not get you through the dungeon as even traited, it’s cooldowns are abysmal. You run the Scepter/Dagger for groups of enemies, popping your staff cooldowns to pull generally then swapping back after 25 or so seconds to blow everything again. The Axe/Focus is used for single large enemies where the Vulnerability and higher DPS does wonders. Plague Signet is absolutely amazing for keeping your team safe while breaking stuns if you get focused. Plague Form is 20 seconds of perma-blind on the enemies.

As for your healing skill, take either Consume Conditions or Well of Blood. Generally the latter is best if you’re not against any sort of conditions and/or you’ve got heavy healing power. If you’re not against any conditions at all you can swap out Plague Signet as well.

Signet of Undeath is very solid as an anti-**** up button; your team fails to dodge Lt. Scorpion? Res them all. You can also run Signet of Spite, as it’s decent but not amazing. Against larger mobs Epidemic is spectacular, while Corrupt Boon works well if they’re buffing themselves. In terms of other wells, Well of Darkness is great in dungeons and the Well of Power works well if you need even more condition removal. Generally avoid minions as they simply die too fast other than the Flesh Wurm (which you can place out of harm’s way). Corrosive Poison Cloud is also solid if you can immediately transfer that weakness off of you.

If you’re using a mainhand Dagger, offhand Warhorn, or autoattacking with the staff when Weapon Swap is off CD you’re doing dungeons wrong as of this build. Only other minion you should really consider are the Bone Minions for the Blast Finisher + solid damage; Flesh Golem gets one charge off a fight tops.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQQQNBmWDbESrdvTTUjfTBIVA7JFdPekiiHmSh7vD;TYAqeM9I6x2jrHZPA

I’ve been using a Wells build that utilizes Shaman gear (Healing, Condition, Vitality in PvE) for dungeons and such. It’s a more defensive role and you’re going to be taking on both the “tanking” and “healing” role. You also have to take the initiative to take point and call targets. This is the easiest way to efficiently use Epidemic.

With ~900 Healing Power stacked, Well of Blood becomes an immensely powerful team heal, mine ticks for 530 every second and I’m still in masterwork greens. Transfusion also hits close to the 300 mark per tick. While you may not heal very frequently, you’ve got two fat team heals that you can rotate helping people stay up in between their heal CDs. Popping both also tops anyone off should the situation call for it.

I understand the huge appeal in Dagger off-hand but as my focus is more defensive, I opted for the Warhorn so you can completely stop incoming damage for some poor sap. The 600 AoE cone also can hit a surprisingly large area (the animation indicates a smaller area than it really is). The swiftness is just icing really and helps you get move from melee-mid range faster, you will need to jump between the front and backlines a lot if some people are struggling.

I feel the traits speak pretty much for themselves. Wells grant protection for 3s is great if your build is less offensive like mine and not packing a high crit %. Otherwise Withering Precision is a great trait (Grandmaster Curses) to decrease the overall damage your party takes. I feel Well of Darkness is mandatory, I’d argue it’s our best well. I usually bring Well of Power as sitting from a Necro PoV, most classes simply suck at dealing with conditions. However, if your group composition does not need it, sub it out for something else like Suffering or something.

Ive been running a Scepter/Warhorn setup for a bit thats working well.

I prefer use axe/focus over axe/warhorn. warhorn more for PvP I think

This is the build Im using right now. Full power and berserker
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjMaV6ZaibM8JgJFcPO0jd1t2IFHPMA;TwAg0ynEOJdS9kyJKuMcJ4yyljLJXA

EDIT: How do u post a link without get bad link?
well just copy n paste it :P

chaosgrimm.5837:

… by making adjustments to your major traits and utility skills out of combat.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Is this literally true? Can you change your major traits at any time?

I never even thought to try this, though I guess this could make sense since you’re not reallocating any trait points. I won’t be able jump into the game any time soon to try it. Can anyone confirm that it works this way?

It would really cause me to rethink what a build means if it’s true!

Druitt.7629:

chaosgrimm.5837:

… by making adjustments to your major traits and utility skills out of combat.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Is this literally true? Can you change your major traits at any time?

I never even thought to try this, though I guess this could make sense since you’re not reallocating any trait points. I won’t be able jump into the game any time soon to try it. Can anyone confirm that it works this way?

It would really cause me to rethink what a build means if it’s true!

Yes, u can.

Thion.3718:

Druitt.7629:

chaosgrimm.5837:

… by making adjustments to your major traits and utility skills out of combat.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Is this literally true? Can you change your major traits at any time?

Yes, u can.

The sound you just heard was my mind boggling. Very good news, which pretty much means 50% of my thinking on builds has been inadequate!

Thanks for the incredible tip @chaosgrimm and the confirmation @Thion.

Actually, I typically run Zintair’s critmancer (power/condition) hybrid build, but I drop the Soul Reaping trait line and add in Death Magic for added toughness and greater marks or I run blood magic to get well cooldowns and quicker dagger skill refresh. I find that conditions do a much better job than a power build in dungeons, but you need the added toughness or vitality. I really love being a necro in dungeons.

so I run a 20/30/20/0/0 or a 20/30/0/20/0. In arah I try to avoid death magic kitten stupid reanimator) and I enjoy the enhanced cooldown for wells. Keep condition dmg to about 1350, and power at about 1900, with a 40% crit, 30-40% crit dmg.

Power builds just can’t keep up the DPS that great, but condition damage is condition damage and since no mob removes your conditions, it really helps.

^ critmancer or PTV geared necro with any traits w/ axe/x works fine for dungeons.

im personally biased, but since your OP stated you liked using axe and spite line, try my juggermancer.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Update-28k-HP-3k-Armor-3-4k-Attack-Necro/first#post856503