Guild Wars 2

My necro is getting to level 80 soon and I am deciding whether to build it as a fearmancer or a chillmancer for general PvE content. I am also thinking of have a spare set of healing gear ready for WWW.

So does any one have any experience with the above 3 builds? How do they perform in PvE and WWW?

Many thanks!

Chill has no place as a full-build in PvE/WvW. Its not that chill can’t be helpful in some situations, but there is no need to make a full build for it, your incidental chills are more than enough.

Condition is also subpar in general in PvE, due to our heavy concentration on bleed stacks (and not particularly an amazing job at that) to deal damage, unlike others who can stack confusion, bleeds, poison, and burning at once.

Using Chillblains n Dark Path (and if you dont trait em, hydro sigil which also gives like a auto attack worth of damage in a aoe) with your other condi cc (tshackles, dark pact or ufeast) will keep enemies in permanent kite situation.

I have tried all 3 builds and to be honest ive that many armour sets ive probably tried most builds at this point.

Healmancer was one that I ran for a long time which was Cleric with Well’s and in WvW it was great for large scale combat. It didn’t hit hard but what it lacked in power it made up for with survivability and I was normally one of the last few remaining when the zerg wiped. The problem being is the fact you can’t hit for anything and when inside a zerg it may not matter as much but if you get caught on your lonesome either running to a camp to get supplies etc then you’re more than likely going to be dead. It doesn’t have the ooommphh to scare the enemy away it is basically about survivability. But it is a fun build but not one I run anymore just because I prefer to have more damage. You could spec to gain more damage but then you lose out on your heals and the way siphons scale at the moment in order to make them sort of viable you need to get the healing power up quite alot.

Chillmancer is one of those niche builds that came along and passed just as quickly. Not really viable for anything and personally not one I would recommend going a full spec into. I tried it and altho it seems fun on paper, in practice it really isnt that good compared to other builds that the class has.

Fearmancer is another build I liked and to get the most out of it you’re looking to go into Curses for Terror and have condition gear. The problem with this build is its mostly suited for small scale combat in WvW. The larger you go I find the less conditions have as an impact, the problem is that Power can give you more bang for your buck than conditions can in a large scale environment. It is a fun control build and with spectral wall you can have some fun, just don’t blow the wall on the initial pass as the enemy tend to have stability up then and it gets wasted. If you plan running in EOTM this can be a really fun build as that map has the ideal setup for it. Dont get me wrong it can be run in large scale combat, I just don’t find it as effective as a proper power build.

But it all depends what you plan doing when in WvW for those 3 builds. I dont do alot of dungeons or PVE as I find them boring but normally its all about the damage in PVE content and none of those builds excel at that, so dont expect to get into any “l33t” speed runs if you select one of those builds.

For PvE, find a power build you like. I think the options are lifeblast or dagger. Conditions are just not very good because of stacking and synergy problems; while you can deal a lot of damage, it’s entirely likely that you won’t compete, because you don’t benefit from the high vulnerability stacks that power groups use- and on the other end of the scale, in a high condition run, your stacks will just be plain eaten by other people.

For WvW, healmancer is not really very viable. Most healy support classes in large WvW groups don’t heal directly through their abilities, but by providing their allies with a Water field to blast- And we don’t have any water fields. Using your own Well of Blood to try to heal people can actually be counterproductive as you’ll turn your friends’ Water blasts into Light blasts.

I’m pretty sure that necro’s role in WvW is as an aoe spammer; between wells and marks, you have a lot of options for applying some great control with conditions, and you have an almost-unique role in turning enemy zergs’ boons into conditions. You haven’t played WvW necro until you’ve eaten Stability off ten people with a single Well of Corruption!