In pvp the meta snobs will all point you towards the cele signet build. Its a good build, but all you can really do with it is 1v1 eles and condi spam classes. It basically relies on boon corruption and weakness spam to get the job done, but the basic version can’t disengage very well from fights that get outnumbered.
After writing this, I realized I went a tad overboard with my advice so skip to the end to read my specific build suggestions, although they are kinda vague, but please reply here or message me in game if you ever have any questions or want to be spoon fed specific builds!
I’m a huge proponent of making your own builds, as long as you know what traits/skills/weapons are good, and which ones aren’kittens a pretty easy build to learn necro with though.
In particular, some things I find helpful when building a necro are some traits and skills (many that have been added since you last played this game).
Good Utilities:
Flesh Wurm is one of the best necromancer skills in my opinion. Yes its a minion, but its true strength is the teleport. This breaks stuns and can get you out of bad situations (which is huge in pvp). Yes thieves will still be able to close gaps, but besides that, its likely to save your life from focus fire or 1v2s most of time. You just have to have the foresight to place it beforehand.
Spectral Armor is what you should use if you don’t use wurm, but if your build isn’t too utility centric, you could easily take both. Its a stunbreak, protection, and can quickly fill up shroud.
In general though, it helps to design a build with utilities in mind and trait to make the most of those utilities and then take either or both of flesh wurm and spectral armor to round out your utilities.
Heal Skills:
Signet of Vampirism is an offensive heal skill that can do a lot of damage if used on a target being focused in a fight. However, unlike warrior/ele heal signets, the passive effect sucks, so you really need to use the active effect. I do not recommend taking this heal without traiting for signets, since the 35 second cooldown would simply be too high.
Consume Conditions- It used to be the best heal for necromancers, but it was reworked into a corruption skill so it applys self vulnerability for a few seconds. Its still a really great heal since it clears all condis on you, so I’d say this heal is the best heal to use if you don’t go for a signet based build.
Well of blood is niche, but okay if you trait wells, and the minion heal is just bad.
Elite Skills:
Lich is strong in a pure power build (but those builds are hard to play without thieves bursting you) but its fragile and basically puts a huge, “please kill me”, sign on you, so I don’t suggest using it even though its damage is high.
Flesh Golem is a decent skill with a good active, I generally only take it in a minion build
Plague is your go to elite otherwise. It turns you into a super tanky plague cloud and you can use it to secure stomps and rezzes if you time it during a cast. Spam the 2 skill to spam blind each second.
Weapons that work:
Dagger/Warhorn is our best weapon set. The dagger auto attack is really high, and the other skills provide extra healing and control, while warhorn gives you life force/swiftness/damage with the locust swarm and a good unblockable CC skill. Overall the weaponset is good because its LF generation is high.
Staff is okay for a ranged utility weapon on any build but can function as a damage weapon on condi builds. In pwoer builds it does no damage, but the AoE fear and condi transfer are good. If you take it, take the soul marks traits.
Off-hand dagger is a good weapon too, with two defensive skills (blind and condi transfer and weakness in AoE).
Other than that.. the necro weapons suck.
Axe is an odd ranged pwoer weapon with a horrible autoattack and an easy to dodge burst skill, but its last skill converts a boon to ao condition in AoE, so its not a bad choice overall in a power build as long as you don’t camp the auto attack. The necro dev at anet plans to change or even rework the axe in the near future to make it better.
Scepter (and usually OH dagger as a pair) is what you take for a condi build, however condi necro isn’t very good right now because the scepter sucks. It can’t stack condis very fast and its life force generation is among the poorest of any weapon.
Finally OH focus, is a clunky “burst weapon” that has no niche but odd synergy with axe, but as a full package, axe/focus fails. The 4 skill is a buggy hard to land burst skill and the 5 skill rips boons and does high damage, but has such a long cast time that its very dificult to land.
Death shroud:
Our class mechanic is so important to playing this class well. You have to learn how to manage your life force and cooldowns to play necro effectively. In general, the autoattack is slow but often hits very hard in power builds, the second skill (arguably our best skill) is a gap close that inflicts 5 seconds of chill and bleed, which is hard for your opponents to deal with. The 3 skill is an instant cast fear, so use it to interrupt important things like stomps/rezzes. The 4 skill is AoE damage and can be traited to revive and heal allies, while the 5 skill applies torment to help condi burst if you go that way.
Traits:
In general this is up to you but some general things to keep in mind are:
-Soul reaping is generally mandatory unless you run minions and even then many minion builds take it. The improvements to death shroud are very powerful. In particular, vital persitance and death perception (or foot in the grave for defensive builds) are great traits.
-Spite is really good for damage. A lot of the traits give you an easy way to self-stack might without thinking and corrupt or remove boons. In general you’ll always want to take chill of death in spite, while signets of suffering is amazing for a signet build and close to death is powerful for a damage oriented build.
-Blood Magic is our only form of support. It lets your attacks steal a small amount of health for extra sustain that scales with healing power. Transfusion lets shroud skill 4 teleport downed allies to you so you can revive them. With the skill flesh wurm, this trait is amazing since you can teleport your dead friend up cliffs where most attackers won’t be able to get you! (its really fun doing this). Other stand out traits let your allies siphon life a little bit, improve the warhorn, wells, or give more healing to allies. Its good for minion builds to help keep them alive.
-Death Magic is a traitline I only recommend if you’re building a minion necromancer, since flesh of the master and necromantic corruption are needed to make minions work well. The grandmaster trait though is a tossup, but I like corrupter’s fervor to make you tankier.
-Curses is a good line for debuffing and works best on hybrid or condition focused builds. The best traits in this line are weakening shroud to spam weakness (a powerful debuff), plague sending is good, and then either path of corruption or master of corruption can work, but master of corruption is only good if you are making a corruption build (in which case you take 2 or 3 of consume conditions, plague, and corrupt boon, the other corruptions SUCK).
Anyways I think this is a good introduction to building a necro in pvp. For a beginner, I recommend playing the “meta” celestial signet build, a soldier’s tanky power build (you can use signets, wells, or anything really as long as you take spite and soul reaping), or a cleric’s minion build (let the recently fixed minion AI do all the work while you heal them!)
