Guild Wars 2

Dear fellow necromancers,

A short introduction to myself, I am newly inducted into the Asuran Necromantic Society and have started roaming the lands for barely 3 months. I hail from the land of Crystal Desert and have come to share and learn with all of you.

I would like to put forth here a build that has worked wonders for me and hopefully through discussions with you all, can be fine-tuned and made even better.

This build is centered around the concept of attrition-based fighting style and I have named it Spectral Shroud Skills (SSS). It is a rotation of Death Shroud skills to Spectral skills which refills your life force fast enough for you to rotate back to Death Shroud skill again, while loading your opponent/s with condition damage (bleed). It is for WvW use.

Weapon mainhand : Scepter (Sigil of Agony)increase bleed
Weapon offhand : Focus (Sigil of Bursting)increase condi dmg
Weapon swap : Staff (Sigil of Corruption & Fragility)condi dmg stack & vulnerability

Healing : Consume Conditions
Utility 1 : Spectral Armor
Utility 2 : Spectral Grasp
Utility 3 : Spectral Walk
Elite : Summon Flesh Golem

Item stats focus : Condition Damage (main) Toughness (sub) Vitality (sub)
Full Dire Armor Set with Dolyak Runes Set
Max buff : 3k~ Armor, 30k~ HP, 20k~ Life Force, 1.5k~ Condition Damage

Skill Traits :
6 to Curses : II – increase bleed duration, X – spectral skills increase duration and grant lifeforce, XI – conditions by scepter increased duration.
2 to Death Magic : II – gain retaliation heal skill used.
6 to Soul Reaping : III – reduce recharge on deathshroud skill, IV – reduces recharge on spectral skills, XI – gain stability when deathshroud entered.

Concept behind the build:
Having Life Force is like having an extra HP bar and that gives a necromancer immense survivability, allowing him/her to engage in an attrition-based fighting style where you have time to load your opponents with bleed damage and out-last him in a fight.

Imagine this, how about having two Life Force bars? or three? or more? the potential is mind boggling. How do we go about doing this? Spectral skills does a great job refilling your Life Force. Not to mention their very useful utility effects in WvW. Protection, speed boost, catching, ‘teleporting’, you have it all in these three skills to use offensively or defensively. Very flexible.

With frequent use of Death Shroud, you will want faster cooldowns on your shroud skills which is where the traits come in. you also want the stability buff because you don’t want any of your shroud skills to get interrupted as they have a really long cooldown.

This build does not have many options removing conditions from yourself, which is where the healing consume conditions come in. Flesh Golem was chosen for the elite skill despite the minions mechanics having a bit of trouble as there was no better alternative. When the golem does attack, he cripples, and charges.

Engaging in zerg vs zerg fights, you have great tankiness to survive and the staff provides you with great aoe tagging options apart from your Deathshroud skills which you can rotate to very often with this build.

If you do find yourself in small party fights or even 1vs1 situations, you can handle yourself very well. Even if you do end up losing, know that you held up the enemy for a long while =D you don’t die to burst damage.

Using bleed as your main damage dealer which is your scepter’s Auto Attack! 20% bleed duration from sigil, another 20% + 33% from your traits, gives you a very long bleed duration that just eats and eats into your opponents while they try in vain to take you down =D

Using your Focus’ skills to stack vulnerability on your foes and to chill and debuff them, perfect for keeping them weak and far away from you!

I’ve only been running with this build for 3 days and I can already feel its potential. I have found myself in three 1vs1 fights so far, surprisely all against thieves. Maybe because their class tend to roam more alone? I’ve not gone 1vs1 against any other class though so I can’t say that this build will work against others. But thieves…or at least the three I met…don’t have an easy time against this build XD

I have won two and drew one. Drew as in the thief cloaked and ran off after we traded blows for a long while. I believe I would have won in the end if he continued to stay though. As I did against the other two thieves who stayed…and died =D

For those who love tankiness and attrition-condi dmg fighting like I do, please give my build a try and let me know how it goes for you in WvW!

Also looking forward to critical responses so that the build can be better tuned =D

Lastly, see you guys on the battlefield.

dont even know why focus instead of dagger, youre condy damage, so vulnerability of the focus WONT increase your condy, but with agger con yca increase the bleeds + weaken the foe(s) attack, and as you sayd you dont have ra realiable way to handle condictions apart form CC, so dagger will help with that.

BTW i think this is kind of werid beacause, on a regular base spectral skills + DS usually does better with soldier stats and axe or dagger mainnhand, because even if youre in DS in your courrent build you aply conditions, only whne youre normar, in ds yo appy only strenght damage (oh.. DS 5 torment, but wi a LOOOOOOOOOONG CD), im playing a build linke this in spvp, but with axe or dagger mh and WH offhand, a can be in points for AGES or will the help comes (sometimes tanking 2-3 guys in that cases if theyre not range i sjut pop plage and blind them, then DS again then CC, staff ratation, DS again and they just get kittened, and somentines the fing help desnt come because the noobs are just fignting outside points when the enemy has papped them allready -.-) but the build works wonders too, i think ill thy this one and see how it goes XDD

thx for pointing out the point on vulnerability. i’m still new, only 3 mths in the game so i had no idea vulnerability doesnt work for condi dmg!

I’ll have to see how to change it now XD

and let me know how the build works for you! =)

What runes – Krait or Earth/Dolyak?

full 6 dolyak runes. will combination with earth be better?

I would have gone with Earth for the protection duration if you want a tanky build. focus on extending protect if you are running a spectral tank. On the other hand, Krait should help your bleed damage.

My suggestion would be to use the trait that generates 3% Life Force from Marks which after hitting five targets with each mark (which you will be doing anyways) will generate more Life Force and it doesn’t take up three slots on your ability bar. This way your ability to generate Life Force is never on cooldown and not reliant on killing enemies.

Now if you use condi duration food (rare veggie pizza) in conjunction with what I said above you can save yourself 4 points in Curses. I would put 2 into Spite for Spiteful Spirit (retal when entering DS) and two into Death Magic, picking up Death Mastery (reduc on staff skills)

Lastly, I know many will disagree with me but I would not use the reduc on Death Shroud. None of your skills refresh before 10 seconds anyways let alone the 6 it would be cut down to with that trait so the only thing you gain is retal and stability which to some players is enough but I don’t ever find it that necessary. I would switch that to the trait Soul Marks which I mentioned earlier generates 3% life force from marks. It has better synergy in my opinion and opens up three spots on your ability bar.

Quells.2498:

My suggestion would be to use the trait that generates 3% Life Force from Marks which after hitting five targets with each mark (which you will be doing anyways) will generate more Life Force and it doesn’t take up three slots on your ability bar.

Sadly, Soul Marks doesn’t give you 3% per target but per mark. It’s not that great really.