Guild Wars 2

I know it’s long overdue, i wanted to make this video for about 2 weeks now. I had some issues with my account, but as soon as i had the time and those issues got fixed, i’ve done it.

So this is my take on SPvP Necromancer, what you need to know before you actually begin your journey into the PvP world of Guild Wars 2.
I’ve seen countless build threads on these forums yet i have seen close to none topics on SPvP as a whole.

In this tutorial i also included a power build variation with the reasoning behind it and at the end how to counter glass cannon thieves, because many of you seem to have a problem in that match-up.

Guild Wars 2 – SPvP Necromancer POV (tutorial), power build and counter vs glass cannon thieves

ps: feel free to use this thread as a discussion regarding anything i have said, ask questions or offer insight of your own…

I think this build has too little survivability. Thieves are able to kill you before you know it. I find that 30/0/25/15/0 build with Soldier’s Amulet and Fighter runes, with plague signet and blood is power is superior because you survive long enough to dish out all that damage. I use XI in Spite because I mostly use axe, only use dagger for #2 heal and for the warhorn, and I like to have retaliation (axe #3) on a shorter cooldown.

Ackinbal, can you link your build? I ran his build, and was pleased with how it played, just lacked survivability like you said.

I have not figured out yet how to make the links work. But I use util skills Consume Conditions, Plague Signet, Signet of Spite or Corrupt Boon, and Blood Is Power.
Figher runes on armor, Force sigils on weapons, Soldier’s amulet. For Elite skill I mostly use Flesh Golem for the stun and cripple, but Lich is a good choice, too, especially because Golem mostly stands there unless his special ability is off CD.
30- IV, VIII, XI
0
25- I, VII
15- II
0

Axe/focus as the main, note that axe #3 gives retaliation and axe #2 and dagger #2 are channeled, but I mostly stay with the axe active, popping dagger/warhorn as needed.
Dagger/warhorn for heal, speed, and daze
To fight off conditions I use Consume Conditions and Plague Signet
You can use various Utils, wells, minions, etc, I prefer the signet that increases power or the other one that increases movement speed, Blood Is Power, or Corrupt boon.

thank you very much

I saw game play of you getting your back side handed to you! You seen how fast your HP fell!

Look its natural at this stage of a new MMO people spec more into DPS stats, as soon as they start investing more into PvP minded stats this build is over.

@Ackinbal… that means you would have like 0 critical strike chance… how do you even do damage ? The damage of the bursting necromancer is small as it is because it is contextual. Plus you’ve taken a bit of Death Magic, which gives toughness and boon duration. What kind of boons do you use ?
Also no Soul Reaping… no critical damage, for a power build…

You gave up 50% damage for just a bit more survivability… I’m sorry, i just don’t see it…
This is actually one of the reasons i’ve made tutorials, so people won’t fall for this trap.
You also use Blood is Power, which adds bleeding when your condition damage is close to nothing, your condition duration is only at 30%.

I’m sorry but i have to disagree with your build.

Cempa.3645:

I saw game play of you getting your back side handed to you! You seen how fast your HP fell!

Look its natural at this stage of a new MMO people spec more into DPS stats, as soon as they start investing more into PvP minded stats this build is over.

I was countering glass cannon thief with a squishy build just to prove a point. This was made for people that have encountered a glass cannon thief before…

Edit: you need to understand that as soon as you build 20% more tank-ish, you lose 20% of your damage, unless you have found a way to get more then 70 traits. This is… problematic indeed.
My point was that as soon as you survive the initial burst he is yours, because he invested everything into damage. If you invest more into survivability, yes… it’s easier to counter glass cannon thieves, but then you barely scratch a guardian, or another necromancer or an engineer… It’s about what you win and what you lose, you can’t just win…

Ackinbal.2617 – your traits are kinda set up to revive the enemy… since each dead enemy gives the enemy a little dead dredge that bleeds for them to rez of.

Nemesis.8593 – Epic as always, but let me play devil’s advocate for a few points, Mark of evasion proc heals for more than vampiric precision, but why even bother with it if you can take Unyealding Blast on the first trait option and then get either swarm or soul marks on the second, what brings me to the second point.
Overall Staff burst is higher and harder to avoid than Axe burst despite it being a overall introduction into necro weapon with worst pvp auto attacks (but you use it for 2 on enemy and 3-4-5 under your feet when in melee either way) as you show at around 34 min, kinda also making it a must use for any kinda of more defensive but glass cannong build in pvp (not to mention how epic putrid mark is) or youll get even more of the “OMG this build to squishy” whine.< – all that without the banter:
Showing general and always appliable trait setup (like the 20 in spite and Stability in DS) in general give better reactions than build specific and situational traits (especially since vampiric precision heals for 45 on squishies and down to 15 on high toughness targets because it unlike vampiric kinda scales of damage done too).

And last but not least, sadly you didnt go over our stun breaks and in what cases to actually slot one in (for Thief and Ranger focused enemy team/if they are annoying you going SArmor (since they can burst you no matter where), Warriors and Eles SWalk (good positioning screws over their ability combos making them waste way more skills on you to actually do damage thus overall losing out on dps just because you got out of 100 blades/churning earth and then ported back after they spin2win into bullcharge/lightning into backglip into fire into knockdowned to you) and Plague Signet for enemy necros or even 1 more stun break use for mesmers (since they pretty much require you to take the DS stability, Plague and SArmor if they know how the use their phantasam daze chain and are nice to use Time Warp over Moa, since Moa+good mesmer = he got a moa critter kill). < – all that without the banter:
A small section about stun breaks and who they in general counter are really nice in SPvP “tutorial” videos especially on necros since we start with 0 LF (or 35~ if we abuse the Vitality, Walk and Wurm Trick described on another thread).

@Andele.1306 Thank you for the kind words, and your feedback. I agree with most of the things you’ve said. I didn’t go over a lot of things, i was trying to get the mindset of SPvP out to people before going into details.

In my opinion what good is there to start telling people a million details if they don’t know the reasoning behind them. It was already a 35 minute long video… more details will come in later videos… the next one will be about condition build and a few choices people need to take into consideration when making a condition build.

After that the basic of playing support necromancer…
Then i will go into particularities…

Although stun breakers are good in general, because the fact that they are situational or high CD or stack too many conditions on you, i don’t personally like many of them, especially since each time someone stuns you he tries to burst you down, and i counter that just by going in DS.

If he is a glass cannon he will eat my DS and then i kite him and he can do nothing, if he isn’t a glass cannon i can let him waste his hits on me, since necromancers are more durable by default.

In my opinion stun breakers are not worth it at their current state, not everyone will try to stun you… but many will try to use conditions on you, many will try to zerg you, many will try to overpower you by buffing themselves and removing your buffs… it’s a more common scenario in SPvP atm then getting stunned…

Immobilized however… like 10 times more frequent, which can be countered so easily with DS fear…

Thank you for everything you said here, will include all of it and more in due time…
I don’t just want to say “do this to escape stun, to achieve something”, for me it’s more like a… “we need to understand in what scenario you might find yourself in… and see what can we do about it”. Trying to build from the ground up, that’s why i didn’t even spend a lot of time “reading” the skills i had in my build.

That build i’ve made a bit more to counter bunker guardians, they so hate me
Actually with that build in 1v1 only mesmers give me trouble, or if i am foolish enough to chase down a bunker engineer.

Thank you again for your input.

@Andele – My traits are set up to revive the enemy? What are you talking about? Care to explain? If you mean that the enemies don’t die as much, how about me dying a lot and not letting my teammates to rez fast or not even living long enough to kill?
@Nemesis – I traded crit for toughness and some vit/healing. I did not mean to criticize your build, it’s a high-damage full burst build that should work very well in a good team. Any new build has a learning curve. But I used my build and then tried yours, and while in mine I can live long enough to react to a thief or warrior jumping on me, or harass 1-2 bunker guardians (probably bad ones) and eventually kill if it’s 1v1, while in your build I was lucky if no one was attacking me, but if yes, I was dead in seconds. They killed me through the death shroud etc very fast.
Death shroud as a defensive mechanic has the downside of not showing your debuffs, so after leaving it you may find out that you had a ton of bleeds or ranger’s roots etc. I still use it, but primarily for the fear and gap closing.

Necromancer in it’s current state has a major issue, and it’s not what most people think…
I will explain the issue in detail, not in my next video, but in the one after that…
The build i recommended kind of doesn’t suffer from that issue, but it wasn’t so much about the build, it was more about the mindset…
That is what will make you great in the long run…

@Ackinbal, i thought you were criticizing my build so i almost retaliated. Your build may fall in the support category if you are good at harassing with it. I still recommend you drop blood is power at least, because it’s not worth to fill one precious utility slot with something that is not 100% beneficial for your chosen path.

Ackinbal.2617 – Nothing against the mindset of Survive>Damage, but I mean the Reanimator Trait (5 points into Death Magic) lets enemies smart enough to target the horror rally, unlike killing a mesmer illusion or ele summon, Horrors (both the trait and mark of horrors) ones rally enemies upon death.

Learend that the hard way in the tower, went in, pew pewed with Claws, used horrors, omg the mesmer and theif are for some reason up again, i die in half a second from moa and pistolwhip.

Good to know. Then that whole trait line is spoiled because of this. Why do we need that little minion to spawn in the first place? Not very helpful, and lets enemies rez…

@Ackinbal.2617 – Sadly it is and in general its always good to check up the necro bugs thread, you might just learn that you are somehow helping your enemy, the Horrors thing is there under problems if im not mistaken.

@Nemesis – Utils are about even at this point depending on playstyle, but I would argue that Blood is Power with about a 50% uptime of 10 stacks of might is hardly inferior to a well that has a 4-5 second duration on a 45 sec CD and can be walked out of.

@Ackinbal, if a well is placed right, used at the right time, it will have maximum effectiveness. If you use Blood is Power without condition damage and condition duration (since it has condition damage), you will never have 100% effectiveness out of that skill… so you filled a precious skill slot with something that you can’t get 100% out of…

See what i mean ?
All skills are usefull somewhere, as long as you know when, where… and have a build that favors them…

Counter… remeber this word.

Thanks Nemesis, I always enjoy your videos, you offer solid advice and your explanations are clear and logical.

I wanted to bump this thread and say thanks for the vid. I’ve been running this build lately and it’s pretty fun.

The only change I made was I changed to 20% faster focus skill recharge instead of spinal shivers at 25%.

Crypto.9637:

I wanted to bump this thread and say thanks for the vid. I’ve been running this build lately and it’s pretty fun.

The only change I made was I changed to 20% faster focus skill recharge instead of spinal shivers at 25%.

Thank you mate, new SPvP tutorial coming up tomorrow… i’ve tried to condense so much information into the next one, but it’s simply too much…
We’ll go through everything eventually…

Thank you all for your constant support and appreciation…

Ackinbal.2617:

Good to know. Then that whole trait line is spoiled because of this. Why do we need that little minion to spawn in the first place? Not very helpful, and lets enemies rez…

Sucks for PvE as well since it will often run off and aggro a pack of NPCs right after you kill a different pack.

It’s kind of bad when you would rather have NOTHING in a slot than have what they give you, isn’t it? I’m avoiding the whole trait line for that minor trait alone.