Guild Wars 2

Mainly toward 2.8k-3k power necros running dagger or axe. Where do we stand dmg wise compared to warriors and thieves? Any reason for people to even bother picking us up for 30+ fractals, long dungeon paths such as Arah or hard dps required bosses such as spider tree in TA? I
feel like i’m not bringing anything to my team although my damage feels reasonable. Also the fact that life blast and lich elite does less damage than your auto in dagger is depressing, imo. Any thoughts?

30%~ less total damage in optimal conditions than a thief ele warrior, good middle of the line in case of a zerker build.

Its not that far below the other classes. Necro damage in a fully optimized group is on par with other classes. But its not good enough to take one over a class which provides something useful.

Im guessing you came up with 30% less with terrible builds in your calculations. Necro actually has a very high amount of dps compared to other classes when unbuffed. But obviously thats not ideal (its the lack of damage modifiers which makes it start off so well then scale badly as more buffs are introduced).

In PvE with decent vuln/might at lvl 80 im hitting for ~6.5k ds1. I think thats pretty good. Im happy.

full zerker. axe/focus for stacking 25 vuln. switch to DS and with proper build you can spam piercing lifeblast for 8k in pve. life transfer will full zerker builds melts for about 6k aoe.

The hardest part about power necros is the lack of cleave. Although life blast can hit up to 5 targets, getting them all in a line is really hard to do. You’ll only end up hitting 2 if lucky, while every other melee clakittens 3 enemies reliably. Although in the right circumstances, life blast can lay waste to very closely bunched enemies.

So the thing power necro really has going for it is that they have good mid-range DPS. They’ve got a bit of cleanse, a rez, a bit of boon removal, some weakness, nothing special. If a dungeon group wants a jack of all trades, they’ll go with an Elementalist or an Engineer, because those two classes can do more, do it better, and also hit harder with AoEs.

mistsim.2748:

full zerker. axe/focus for stacking 25 vuln. switch to DS and with proper build you can spam piercing lifeblast for 8k in pve. life transfer will full zerker builds melts for about 6k aoe.

Hello, i suppose “Deathly Perception” trait must be slotted (50% more crit chance while in Death Shroud). I have it slotted but it seems it does not work, crit chance remanins the same. Anyone can cofirm/deny that pls?

Life blast is meh.. the dagger rotation does around 10k everytime but it’s not safe to be close at all

The damage can be quite good in PvE with deathly perception, however if you venture into wvw it is best to replace it with “foot in the grave” for the stability. Hammer warriors and other stun locking classes will just keep you out of the action and getting high numbers becomes almost impossible whilst being used as a pinball.

Also for added stability I use “near to death” giving me tons of stability; I may hit for less damage, but at least I stay in the fight. Axe/focus used primarily for the vuln/lf gain. Depending on gear (i would suggest celestial with zerger trinkets I become quite survivable and can still hit harder than most players expect a necro to.

Foot in the grave is not required nor is near to death. I run a 0/10/30/30/0 full PVT WvW necro frontline tank build, axe/dagger with staff, and get (with food buffs and 25 stacks fo bloodlust) 2700 power over 3700 attack with 2K toughness, near 3K armor and near 30K health and have very little stability issues unless focus-fired. In any case, use Melandru runes and reduced conditions food if you do experience stability issues, saves you having to trait to skirt stability issues.
http://i39.tinypic.com/np5lbp.jpg

Andele.1306:

30%~ less total damage in optimal conditions than a thief ele warrior, good middle of the line in case of a zerker build.

I agree with the thief and warrior,but ele? LOL anyone who says ele has good damage doesnt play the class

Rigel.3092, 3700 attack looks quite impressive, could I get you to post gear/runes/sigils and traits. I am always looking to try new things and although I am more comfortable with ds than with the undead rat, I’ll give it a go, thanks.

Windwalker.2047:

Andele.1306:

30%~ less total damage in optimal conditions than a thief ele warrior, good middle of the line in case of a zerker build.

I agree with the thief and warrior,but ele? LOL anyone who says ele has good damage doesnt play the class

Do you know what air arcane burst is? Let me explain its a build that allows for 7 crits, each that can deal around 9 to 15k damage depending on how deep you go into the rotation/how much reaction time you give to the enemy. The thing can instakill a soldier necro from full shroud with a full cooldown rotation in wvwvw. Yeah mobs melt if played right and during bosses (when burst aint that much of a deal) with just 3 trait swaps and 1 utility you can (thats to the improvements that some genious eles made with it using scepter focus) get a medicore sustained crit boon spammer instead.
If you want ask Nemesis how his meeting went with a arcane ele.

The highest dps class in pve is a LH ele (thats 0 points in arcane). Using life blast or deathly perception is not how you reach maximum dps on a necro.

I really dig my Necro’s power build. She deals slightly less damage than my Thief (who spikes with higher burst damage) but is far more survivable in PvE. Like for example, when I’m stacking up my sigils in WvW, I can gather up an arbitrarily high number of mobs near the spawn point and just yawn as I take them out on my Necro, whereas my Thief isn’t built to take on that many targets at once and I have to be a bit more careful.

The thing about power Necros is you have to look beyond just their damage. They have a lot of damage, they really do, but it’s not quite at Thief level (I don’t have a Warrior at 80 so I can’t speak to them, though I assume Greatsword 2 outdamages us by a fair margin thanks to cleave). What Power Necros bring to the group is steadier DPS in addition to strong debuffing and more CC. Deathshroud is also a better damage mitigation method for PvE (outside of run sections, of course) because it doesn’t shunt pressure onto your allies. My Necro can stand her ground against most foes whereas my Thief has to scuttle out of the way more often.

In a small fight in WvW, I much prefer to be on my Necro since she can lay down so much hurt, though my Thief is a safer (but not necessarily better) duelist.

The tl;dr is that they’re both good, just in different ways.

Windwalker.2047:

Andele.1306:

30%~ less total damage in optimal conditions than a thief ele warrior, good middle of the line in case of a zerker build.

I agree with the thief and warrior,but ele? LOL anyone who says ele has good damage doesnt play the class

Eles (especially D/D eles) typically spec heavily into defensive stats and only run 10-20 trait points in offensive lines, which gives the illusion that the profession doesn’t have much damage. If you’re suicidal, though, you can run an Ele with full offensive armor, traits, and Utilities and actually bring extremely high burst damage (via Fresh Air) or some of the highest sustained DPS in the game with Conjure Lightning Hammer (whose autoattack is just obscene, truly ridiculous). Oh, and Fiery Greatsword’s whirl is brokenly powerful when used against mobs pinned to a wall.

These Eles can die to bunker Guardians and get literally one-shot by Thieves, though (what with their 11-13k health), so you don’t see them very often. Still, their theoretical damage potential is extremely, extremely high.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

T Although life blast can hit up to 5 targets, getting them all in a line is really hard to do. You’ll only end up hitting 2 if lucky,

No, you’ll hit 4 or 5 if you are lucky

you will hit 2 unless you are ridiculously inept at positioning.

If a 100b warrior is cleaving 3 targets how are you not able to hit 2 for sure and almost always 3?

spoj.9672:

The highest dps class in pve is a LH ele (thats 0 points in arcane). Using life blast or deathly perception is not how you reach maximum dps on a necro.

LH build is still weaker than full build backstab chain thief in terms of dps on any kind of bigger boss. Again DPS- Thief, Burst – Ele, Best of both worlds (but ofc weaker in each a bit) – Warrior.

You not seen fiery rush + lightning flash? Broken burst. But the sustained dps with LH is ridiculous aswell + it stacks might when done in a fire field.

LH ele has monster sustained dps. Backstab thief is situational.

spoj.9672:

You not seen fiery rush + lightning flash?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp3vMEdgccE

LH ele has monster sustained dps. Backstab thief is situational.

Again you show you dont know the meaning of the words you are using.
The LH build isnt a dps build, its just a spread of potential burst for different targets with quite the downtime. Also, burning speed does more with less investment than the FG+LF combo and no BS thief aint situational since all bosses can be flanked, they just aint optimal since you dont do kitten in a actual clear/fractals (still useful for speedruns with reflect and stealth).

As for the video is just more proof of them having to fix the stacking issue of whirlwinds/aoe pulse effects and the generic warrior and mesmer murdering lupi.

LH is sustained dps. You dont ever have downtime on it unless you give the mesmer a LH. Fiery GS is burst.

Fiery rush + LF hits 68 times. Dont think anything can compare to that.

How often can you hit a backstab in perfect conditions? I dont play thief so I dont know. But from what ive seen its not constant.

mistsim.2748:

full zerker. axe/focus for stacking 25 vuln. switch to DS and with proper build you can spam piercing lifeblast for 8k in pve. life transfer will full zerker builds melts for about 6k aoe.

Life transfer should be closer to 8.5k+ in my experience if you have some might stacked. Jumping into a clump of twenty people in WvW and dropping half of their life bars seems a bit much.. but god it’s fun. Got my 50 kill monthly in record time last night diving into a poorly led zerg and dumping a bunch of aoe skills.

Also, if you want to really burst, stacking your wells, maybe a few bleeds for good measure and then dumping LB will get you some really high damage numbers. Even better if you have a pet or two out. Somewhere in the area of 10-12k per second, petering down to ~7-8k/s after about five seconds.

Its always fun hopping into wvw and recieving maximum lootbags for minimal effort in full beserker while staying alive for longer than pretty much everyone else.

spoj.9672:

Its always fun hopping into wvw and recieving maximum lootbags for minimal effort in full beserker while staying alive for longer than pretty much everyone else.

Then popping Plague and straight-up tanking a full Zerg for 20 seconds after everyone else is dead.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Rigel.3092, 3700 attack looks quite impressive, could I get you to post gear/runes/sigils and traits. I am always looking to try new things and although I am more comfortable with ds than with the undead rat, I’ll give it a go, thanks.

All PVT gear, weapons, accessories.
Soldier crests in everything
Sigils are bloodlust on axe, dagger, and staff.

Trait layout is as indicated previously: 0/10/30/30/0 but I have also run this as a 0/0/30/30/10
0
10 = III
30 = V, IV or VII, VIII
30 = II, VIII, VI
0/10 = (IV or whatever you feel you want to utilize)

Food buffs in screenshot were:
Plate of Orrian Steak Frittes (but you can use any power adding food you desire)
Superior Sharpening Stones.

I have this same build using the same as above EXCEPT it uses Melandru Runes in place of the Soldier crests in the armor and buffs with lemongrass and sup. sharpening stones which gives me about a 200 power reduction overall – instead of 2700+ its 2500+ but still is quite effective despite the power reduction. The Melandru runes and lemongrass give the build a bit more effectiveness in a Guardian and Warrior hammer spike and necro mark-heavy WvW environment (like running against IRON, FEAR, ACO, TW, etc. since I play on BG and play mainly in a guild zerg + pugs environment – not roaming or small group).

I use the build to lead a zerg into combat using Plague and spamming blind, blind, and blind (and the chills traited) while the frontliners do the spiking and killing. It nets me copious amounts of bags…simply love the build – fits my playstyle a lot.

Thank you, I will give it a try later on today Rigel.

Rigel, this sounds like just what I’m looking for. Seems like it would work in dungeons, too. What do you run for skills besides well of corruption, well of suffering and spectral walk — or are you always using those?

epandrsn.5126:

mistsim.2748:

full zerker. axe/focus for stacking 25 vuln. switch to DS and with proper build you can spam piercing lifeblast for 8k in pve. life transfer will full zerker builds melts for about 6k aoe.

Life transfer should be closer to 8.5k+ in my experience if you have some might stacked. Jumping into a clump of twenty people in WvW and dropping half of their life bars seems a bit much.. but god it’s fun. Got my 50 kill monthly in record time last night diving into a poorly led zerg and dumping a bunch of aoe skills.

Also, if you want to really burst, stacking your wells, maybe a few bleeds for good measure and then dumping LB will get you some really high damage numbers. Even better if you have a pet or two out. Somewhere in the area of 10-12k per second, petering down to ~7-8k/s after about five seconds.

Cant do this kind of stuff with full zerker, not in tier 1 anyway. Some thief will 2 shot u or ull get singled out and melted.

I use combo of valkyrie and zerker. Does pretty much the same dps with 100% crit dmg, except u have 25-27k hp.

Full zerker is very fun for small skirms but even then I wear combo of knights and zerker.

How do you guys fare in dungeons?

CoF and HotW are dead-easy as Necros, especially the first paths of each. I mean, they’re easy paths anyway but they’re especially easy as a Necro.

For CoF, you can pretty easily stand your ground and just keep outputting damage for basically the whole dungeon with little need to dodge around much. When I’m running power, I usually ask to take gate in p1; I’m fine holding a brazier but the controller melts like butter under my knives while my Flesh Golem distracts the mob.

HotW is pretty much the same thing except Necros have a few secret weapons for fighting the Butcher in p1: the non-projectile ranged weapon that is the Axe, and piercing Life Blast. Position correctly and you can use Life Blast to simultaneously damage the Butcher while also taking out one of his pillars, then switch to Axe when he does his seizure thing to keep up the DPS. Focus is great for this fight, too, since he constantly has 3 boons on him (my #5 crits for like 3.5-4k there routinely).

I don’t habitually do the other dungeons much but I did run through Arah p3 a bunch with my Necro while her a set of Arah armor + a Gift of Zhaitan for my eventual Bifrost. Arah isn’t that bad for power Necros once you know what you’re doing (make sure to slot Foot in the Grave for fights with Lupi!) but we don’t have the easiest time there either. You have to be a bit more careful and manage your DS well or you’ll fall flat. I was either doing really well or dropping based mostly around how tired I was for a given run. That said, I was still dishing out a lot of damage.

I ran the Aetherblades dungeon when it was out on my Necro and did pretty well there, though. My group was pretty bad and we wiped on the last boss a lot before finally getting it, but I was usually either the last one standing or the second-to-last one standing.

Hopefully we’ll see some changes to warhorn so it is more usable in PvE

Dagger warhorn is our best weapon set in PvE…..

Heartlust.6140:

Hopefully we’ll see some changes to warhorn so it is more usable in PvE

I don’t personally like the Warhorn much, but it IS pretty good in PvE. I don’t think I’d go so far as spoj to say it’s out best off-hand PvE weapon, but it’s not a bad choice at all for power builds.

A lot of mobs have only one big attack you really need to be worried about, and the tells are usually pretty obvious. This makes interrupting it both really useful and pretty easy. Granted, it’s often useless against bosses because of the sloppy game design that is Defiant.

Locust Swarm is actually really good AoE damage for power specs. The individual hits don’t show the biggest numbers but there are 10 of them per target. It adds up. And of course, for Life Siphoning builds this skill is godmode.

Necro are not really ‘best’ of anything. But we do lots of things at once.
If they fix current bugs, like poison not reducing heals, putrid mark not removing condi’s from Allie’s. We’d be more useful.
Meele cleave, would go along way to helping damage wise in dungy runs, particularly in a way that a war can understand.

I can recommend, Soul Reaping [VI]. And pew pew things in lines that an’t stacked up. Letting the meele cleave class’s melt a spot & you help clear the area.
Also other class’s get lots more combo finishers. So staff/marks become lots more helpful to others than you notice in solo play.

hotfreak.5907:

Rigel, this sounds like just what I’m looking for. Seems like it would work in dungeons, too. What do you run for skills besides well of corruption, well of suffering and spectral walk — or are you always using those?

I admit, I run mainly those but there are other fine choices to use depending on what the user wants and the WvW situations you may run into. Those three work very nicely for me so far.

As for how this build would fair in a dungeon, dunno, I designed this necro to solely do WvW along with my Guardian main – in other words, when I run with the guild I belong to, I primarily use my Guardian and when I run with other guilds, like MERC, etc., I typically run my necro. That being said, I have used my necro for PvE content and have had no difficulties thus far, so I would imagine, once you got used to the build in say a dungeon environment, the build should be pretty solid.

I’ve been running my powermancer since (pre)release. Used to go with dualdagger and staff, now dualdagger and axefocus. Running zerker with 30/10/0/0/30, with Close To Death and Deathly Perception. I swap utilities as needed and I’ve been trying to use this build in various content.

PvE (including dungeons) is quite easy. Death Shroud means I can take some punishment (though limited), but the overflow fix does limit its use. Lack of vigor/increased endurance gain is quite frustrating from time to time, but can be beaten by positioning.

WvWvW is questionable. I’ve been doing it casually from time-to-time and usually roam with a guildie or two (hate blobbing). I go full zerker there as I have limited mobility and being PVT or something similar would still mean getting steamrolled by the zerg, if it were to happen. Since the average opponent in WvW has no idea what PvP means, it’s quite fun picking off baddies.

PvP is the latest area I’ve been trying to focus in. Powermancer is PvP is a bit questionable, but can dish out serious damage if played correctly. There are some professions you should avoid (cc warrior, I’m looking at you!) as the lack of stability and stunbreaks (in my approach) make it a pretty one-sided fight.

What I like in power approach is the condition duration from spite, providing long weakness/poison/chill, etc. These help soften up and control the enemy quite nicely.

On a more negative note, I don’t think DS (as it currently is) is a valid replacement for stability/blocks/invuln or even vigor. And that the design philosophy of necromancers is lacking a bit.