Guild Wars 2

Alright I have tried this class twice now and deleted it both times. I guess I am used to GW’s necromancer where the minions actually lived long enough to do their job. As the saying goes maybe the third time’s the charm so help me like the necro in GW2.

My version of Necro uses the staff for the aoe traps and I dumped the initial life steal minion for blood well as soon as I could and the ranged attack minion is the best starter companion as opposed to the 2 bone minions . I have quite a bit of fun with that. More of a back line caster and heal type but fun .

Hmm thats definitely different

my necro doesn’t use minions. mostly i use axe-dagger, and in pve that’s been the majority of my time.

for tougher mobs (and multiples) and pvp, i tend to love the staff to start by slapping down a few marks before switching to axe-dagger to finish them off. axe-dagger’s fairly bursty and fun. and i admit to loving the sound of it as much as the graphics of it. it looks nice and painful.

i live a long time in pvp. necro’s pretty robust if you don’t spend too much time trying to run into people’s faces. i admit to being a bit of a cautious pvp’er in wvw, though. there i’ll happily sit on the wall and send marks down, or run behind the zerg and slap marks across the front line.

in spvp, i tend to be more outgoing, though, and still survive quite well on the staff/axe-dagger combo. it’s pretty tasty.

i find a lot of necros having problems have tried to max their lifesteal? lifesteal doesn’t feel to me to be as exciting as it sounds, so i kind of went for power. i admit to being something of a glass cannon, though, with my necro.

That ranged minion pulls aggro like none other and always ends up getting killed for it.

Iv tossed my necro on the back burner only playing it when my main (engi) is starting to out level my friends. My necro was suppose to be my main.

That first mark the staff has, (mark of blood maybe?) gives regen to allies when there hit by it (saddly they cant trigger it) that helps a little.

I too tried swtiching out the life steal pet for the healing well, it helps but the cooldown is kinda long and using it to heal your minions leaves it on cooldown when you need it.
I’m still low level, only just hit 30 and got blood golem and my sylvari race power of root (forget the real name but I spawn lots of seed turrets!) so I dont know how the necro changes when you have more traits to pick from, but looking over them, they dont look too promising.

I really hope its a bug that they dont have a out of combat health regen like the hunters pet has.
Thats another problem with them, even if they manage to survive a fight, there damaged and need to be recycled any way. And the only way to do that out of combat is to equip a new spell then switch back.

My advice; Play somthing else until they improve the way the necromancer works. Trying to force your self to like it is just going to make you hate it even more.

I have a level 80 necromancer, so here is how I played mine (and had a lot of fun):

First of all my build is 30/20/20/0/0 – heavy on marks and signets.
At low lvl, when you do not have a lot of experience with this char I would suggest using minions and a staff – it will help you kite mobs better, and waiting while DoTs will eat them up becomes a lot easier. In my offhand I use axe/warhorn – axe because of the DS and mass slow, warhorn for speed boost and daze.

In most high lvl areas minions become totally useless (except flesh golem) since they get one hitted and die instantly and do not heal themselves out of combat. So i switched my utility skills to: signet of spite, epidemic, spectral armor. The basic tactic I used to the end of my lvling is: choose a target with most hp, throw marks on it, then shoot signet of spite, then epidemic, to throw dots on other mobs surrounding it, then flesh golem mass stun. And then act depending on situation, either kite a bit (since they all are slowed now), pull the second set of weapons, or just turn on DS and mass drain them all. This tactic worked for me from lvl 30 to 80.

Be warned: necromancer is the hardest class to play in spvp that I have tried so far (I have tried: ranger/elementalist/thief/war) – you don’t have any “burst” build in comparison to other classes, you are not as mobile as they are, but learning to play this char and adapt to many drawbacks it has, becomes very rewarding against before mentioned classes : )

Having leveled my own main as a Necro to 80, I can safely say Minions are amazing in PvE. If you’re having problems then you’re doing it wrong, although at low level it might be hard to set it up.

Minions arn’t meant to live. No undead pun intended. They’re expendable, and half of them blow up when you command them to do their ability anyway. Ofcourse it’s better when they live, but hey.

You’re going to want the 20% minion recharge speed as your first 10pt trait box, then at higher levels the minion siphoning health box, the 50% more minion health box and 30% more minion damage box.

Bloodfiend – it steals a small amount of health, more with the siphoning health box. Decent ranged damage, it rarely dies.

Bonefiend – it does pull a lot of aggro to itself so ends up dying more than the others, but usually it’s okay. Decent ranged damage, turns into a rooting turret when you hit the button again.

Shadowfiend – a melee tank pet, with damage on par with the above two. Very useful, it will often keep the rest of my minions alive if it can get aggro. Blinds on command.

Bone Minions – low health, low melee damage. Command them to explode for sweet spike damage and finish AoE combos (Blast).

Flesh Worm – high damage ranged turret pet, cannot move. Teleports you to it and explodes in a poison DoT cloud on command.

Flesh Golem – high melee damage, snares, high health, has a large AoE charge that knocks targets down.

You can take the Bloodfiend, the Flesh Golem and then three of the other four. Personally I suggest leaving out either the Flesh Worm or the Bone Minions. I choose the Bone Minions most of the time myself.

Have a staff in one of your weapon slots at all times. Condition removal, fear and regen all helps your babies live. Then take a DPS combo of main hand and offhand. If you stack healing your Life Transfer heal (trait) and staff’s regen will do wonders to keep them up. If you go for DPS your DPS set combined with your minions will really do considerable damage.

I’ve yet to find a better PvE spec than minions, atleast solo. Remember they attack your target, so watch what you click.

Hope this helps.

Karther.7481:

Having leveled my own main as a Necro to 80, I can safely say Minions are amazing in PvE. If you’re having problems then you’re doing it wrong, although at low level it might be hard to set it up.

Minions arn’t meant to live. No undead pun intended. They’re expendable, and half of them blow up when you command them to do their ability anyway. Ofcourse it’s better when they live, but hey.

You’re going to want the 20% minion recharge speed as your first 10pt trait box, then at higher levels the minion siphoning health box, the 50% more minion health box and 30% more minion damage box.

Bloodfiend – it steals a small amount of health, more with the siphoning health box. Decent ranged damage, it rarely dies.

Bonefiend – it does pull a lot of aggro to itself so ends up dying more than the others, but usually it’s okay. Decent ranged damage, turns into a rooting turret when you hit the button again.

Shadowfiend – a melee tank pet, with damage on par with the above two. Very useful, it will often keep the rest of my minions alive if it can get aggro. Blinds on command.

Bone Minions – low health, low melee damage. Command them to explode for sweet spike damage and finish AoE combos (Blast).

Flesh Worm – high damage ranged turret pet, cannot move. Teleports you to it and explodes in a poison DoT cloud on command.

Flesh Golem – high melee damage, snares, high health, has a large AoE charge that knocks targets down.

You can take the Bloodfiend, the Flesh Golem and then three of the other four. Personally I suggest leaving out either the Flesh Worm or the Bone Minions. I choose the Bone Minions most of the time myself.

Have a staff in one of your weapon slots at all times. Condition removal, fear and regen all helps your babies live. Then take a DPS combo of main hand and offhand. If you stack healing your Life Transfer heal (trait) and staff’s regen will do wonders to keep them up. If you go for DPS your DPS set combined with your minions will really do considerable damage.

I’ve yet to find a better PvE spec than minions, atleast solo. Remember they attack your target, so watch what you click.

Hope this helps.

God I hate when people say “You’re doing it wrong because I am at blah blah level”.

I hear you The truth of the matter is … if you are having fun … you’re doing it right. Cookie cutters are for the kitchen not my character build. Have fun sir

If you intend to play necromancer for the minions, there’s little help we can offer you. In almost every respect the minions are terrible choices for utility slots. They do low damage, their on demand abilities are extremely poor (or simply won’t execute without an excessive delay) with comical cooldowns. The cooldowns on resummoning with the minions poor health in mind leave you vulnerable for most fights. And this of course assumes that your pets have decided to actually attack your enemy. Which 60% of the time they’ll just stand around and ignore any threats (or draw aggro from enemies you don’t want to engage). And lets not forget minion health regeneration which is absent, forcing you to resummon minions in the first 2 seconds of a fight because the last encounter left you with pets at 5% health.

I was also drawn to this profession for the pets, but they just don’t work at all. Even as suicide-bombers with death nova, they’re just lacking in combat effectiveness. The only pet that is even considered decent is the flesh golem elite, and only because his knock-back works sometimes. My advice is to spec for conditions, which no other class can do as well as necromancers. It’s extremely boring, but it’s very competitive.

VendettaDFA.9368:

I hear you The truth of the matter is … if you are having fun … you’re doing it right. Cookie cutters are for the kitchen not my character build. Have fun sir

I am actually going the way you went What did you use once you unlocked weapon swapping?

Personally I love the Necromancer. The play style is a bit harder to grasp at first though because the necromancer’s strategies aren’t as straightforward as the other classes. This is mainly due to the fact that it can be hard to tell exactly how much your helping a fight because necro’s generally rely on applying conditions and removing boons. With some practice, tenacity, and battlefield awareness however, you can definitely make it work.

I’ve used a few builds in PvP and the one I find most enjoyable is going Dagger/Dagger and either Staff or Axe/Focus. While admittedly this lessens your support role, it does allow you to be at the front of battle, which I find more entertaining. You spec into the Curses and Bloodmagic Trait lines and rely heavily on wells. The strategy is rather opposite of what you’d expect from a caster and reminds me of the Disciple of Kain class from Warhammer.

Because Necro’s are one of the toughest classes to take down, in large part because of Death Shroud, you can charge straight in to the center of battle, drop a few wells, and go to work without terrible fear of dying quickly. Now just because your right up front holding two daggers, don’t assume your there to do insane DPS, your job is still support. Harm the enemy and aid your team from a condition/boon perspective is always your main priority.

As for the minions I have to agree with Karther. They are not meant to live. This makes them less viable in PvP because you are constantly in combat and their cooldowns are a bit too long for the frequency of battles. But in PvE I always seem to find they are there when I need them.

Perhaps more carefully pick your trait lines and focus on playing to your build. Remember Necro’s aren’t huge damage dealers so don’t expect to kill everything immediately, if anything they are more of a tank-y class.

Well of blood heals minions as well … just a little tip

Responded to your P.M. as well but in case you havent chk’d I have dual daggers for the rare in your face moments.

What really annoys me with necro is that i have no control to my pets.. there should be an attack,stay,passive/agressive pet control even if it was global linked for all the necro pets.

Karther.7481:

Minions arn’t meant to live. No undead pun intended. They’re expendable, and half of them blow up when you command them to do their ability anyway. Ofcourse it’s better when they live, but hey.

You’re going to want the 20% minion recharge speed as your first 10pt trait box, then at higher levels the minion siphoning health box, the 50% more minion health box and 30% more minion damage box.

This, pretty much.

My Flesh Golem and my Blood Fiend are the only ones that ever really stay alive for any real amount of time, the Golem because he’s bulky and the Blood Fiend because he mostly just balloons next to me in the back.

I run an offensive “minion bomber” build with Staff, and Dagger/Dagger for when something gets in my face. The minions are mostly just there to be hit instead of you, and add to the damage. I will say though that running minions before you can get the traits he’s talking about (particularly the HP boosting one and the reduced cooldown one), they die left and right. I didn’t go back to the minion build until around 50, I think. Early levels I mostly rolled with a more defensive/debuffing wells build with Dagger/Dagger, because I just didn’t enjoy standing in the back constantly recasting my minions.

Here are the ones I use:
Blood Fiend (6) – Steals life, hangs back with me. With the CD reduce trait, I can basically pop him every 16 seconds if I have to, which is pretty nice. If I’m not taking much heat though, I usually don’t pop him.

Bone Minions (7) – These little buggers are the main source of my damage, mostly. Their individual auto-attacks don’t do huge amounts of damage though, so I just cast them, wait for them to run to my target, then blow them up. Trust me, the damage is sick, and the CD is only 16 seconds like the Blood Fiend.

Bone Fiend (8) – This guy usually hangs back with me too, launching his pins for some pretty nice damage. The Bone Fiend is frail, but his auto-attack damage is higher than most of the minions and his toggle ability is an immobilize. It’s super handy.

Flesh Worm (9) – This one is pretty much just a turret, but if I’m not mistaken, his damage is second to only the Flesh Golem. I summon him if I expect a fight to take a decent amount of time, and he increases DPS by a nice amount. I love him.

Flesh Golem (0) – This is the melee minion that will do the most distracting with enemies. He can throw a punch and take one too, and his toggle ability is a knockdown. Pretty incredible when timed right. Another great thing is he regenerates health out of combat, so you don’t have to worry about recasting him all that often.

Other people like different mixes of them, it’s up to you really. Just know that minion builds are certainly viable, just perhaps not so much until later levels. Doing nothing but recasting minions gets annoying, I know.

Forget minions…

Get wells, with ground targetting, 20% reduced CD, and life siphoning with pulse.

Then lay waste with AoE wells of death, use death shroud for the AoE drain attack and extra life bar, and use plague or lich form as elite so you have 3 different forms all with kickkitten AoE attacks and life siphon.

Minions are bad, sad but true, but I love my necro for the pure AoE destruction.

Well with the well of blood, I can keep the bone fiend alive longer now unless of course it gets surrounded then its pretty much toast. I am doing the duel dagger/staff combination which seems to be working.

BCDragon.5614:

Well with the well of blood, I can keep the bone fiend alive longer now unless of course it gets surrounded then its pretty much toast. I am doing the duel dagger/staff combination which seems to be working.

I like the WoB for group events, but I’ve found Consume Conditions much more helpful for soloing my necro. It has a 20s CD vs 45s for WoB, and I get an immediate heal (almost half my health at level 27) rather than a heal-over-time.

I too use Staff & dual daggers, and enjoy it very much. I like the flexibility of having a mix of tools: pets, melee, AoE, tanking cannon (DeathShroud), and support abilities. Of course, that means I’m always going to be weaker in part than some other class (e.g., pets for Rangers vs. pets for necros).

In a big solo fight I’ll often start w/Staff and Bone Fiend…blow all my CDs until Bone Fiend get killed…switch to daggers and melee…blow all those CDs….resummon Bone Fiend…go Death Shroud or back to Staff…etc.

For traits I’m going with Soul Reaping as primary (better Death Shrouding) and Death Magic as secondary (for Toughness mostly).

The Necromancer is far more enjoyable after you stop fighting the class mechanic. Once I started using my weapon skills and switching and realizing the power/benefits of my Staff Skills especially in group activities -it became a lot more fun. Minions at first seemed lack luster but after some toughness gains and in conjunction with the Staff abilities, an army of minions started to feel more effective (although I don’t use them in PvP atm).

I go conditions too, though theres not much love for it… tougher mobs (champions etc) of course are a problem but not sure any class is supposed to solo those… but regular mobs (of your equivalent level) tend to be manageable even in larger numbers, I actually go out of my way to over aggro 3 -6 mobs just to killed them all toguether with spamming conditions. I play as an asura so I get radiation field as an extra “conditions aoe” so maybe that just gives me an edge?

Anyway basic deal is agro mobs lay wells and C.field, lay marks switch to satff + dagger lay e.blood + blindness then spam scepter skills by the time the wells end most mobs are either dead or an inch from dying so I just finish them off and move to the next group. for veterans I usually change back to staff to spam marks again, then wells then scepter again.

I try to go for gear that gives +toughness and +condition damage. Traits are 30 curses + 20 death magic + 20 blood magic (those last two mainly for -20% recharge rate on wells and staff skills) Spite was of course another obvious choice given the +conditon duration but I´d rather be able to spam the wells and marks a lot faster than conditions lasting longer.

I’m sure in time more mainstream builds will come and changes will be made so for now I’m having fun playing with this setup but have no qualms about changing at some point in the future.

BTW does anyone know how to get something called “rabid jewels” it would go really well with my build but have no idea if they exist or how to get them (found the info on a GW2 skill calculators from beta…)

I’m hoping there are more people, but i do not think of minions in the way they were in gw1 (where you focused on keeping them alive / resummoning them) but more as an extension of your own damage output.

I am using a 20/0/20/20/10 build for both pve (non dungeons) and pvp (wvw / spvp)
wvw utilities: well of blood / summon flesh wurm / summon shadow fiend / spectral grasp / summon flesh golem.
spvp utilities: Consume conditions / summon flesh wurm / summon shadow fiend / spectral armor / summon flesh golem
pve: well of blood / summon bone fiend / summon bone minions / summon shadow fiend / summon flesh golem

So far i’ve seen my flesh golem hitting for 700-800 damage per hit, crits 1.2k-1.5k+.
Flesh wurm hits for 1k-1.3k (havent seen crits from it yet)
Bone minions hit for 200-250, dont forget to multiply by 2 as its 2 minions(no idea on crits as of yet)
Shadow fiend hits for 400-500 (no idea on crits as of yet)
Bone fiend hits for about 200 damage, dont forget to multiply by 2 as it shoots 2 shots per time, and 300+ on crit

If my minions hit all at the same time they will add 2.1k+ damage, which is a nice addition to my own damage. Minions could be viable, just need arenanet to fix the bug where they randomly dont attack your target or attack random targets.

@OP as to getting you to like the necro, thats all up to you and nothing we can do about. All we can do is tell you different ways of trying to play a necro and maybe one of those ways you can / will enjoy.

One thing to remember is your minions only get stronger from your level not gear, ye you read that right, they don’t scale from your gear in any way, so if you do some trouble with your gear and “twink” yourself at all just dump the minions and play him like a area control / nuke caster, cause atm… your pet is a waste of space. Don’t feel alone, this same FAIL system also counts for the Elementalist pets, Guardian Spirit Weapons, Engineer Turrets and even the Delux Edition Ele Skill Mistfire Wolf.

Personally I find nothing more annoying than adding gems, adding +power and seeing a skills numbers do absolutely nothing.

imo minions are not usable in high level area, they die too fast and aggro everything. Literally flesh golem attacks on it’s on everything in sight and high level areas are pretty full of mobs. In pvp, because of all the aoe they die too, well instantly. Only the flesh worm stays alive longer, if you summon it outside of zerg and I think it hits hardest (?).

imo unique minion build isn’t usable atm, and if DS, bigger health pool and support role (playing w/ conditions) doesn’t appeal, try something else. I’m going to try engineer.

Sounds like Necromancers have a pet build, a direct damage build, and an AOE condition build, and any mix of those.

Kinda beats just having Heartseeker spam huh?

Necromancers are now showing in WvW to be very powerful. Not many people use condition removal yet. So pretty sure my assumption of them being the most powerful is correct. Just gotta learn to micro everything and you’ll be fine.

My build based on death shroud and conditions something like 20/0/0/20/30. scepter+focus and dagger+dagger. As for utility I do prefer corruptions (Blood is Power is the key one) and other life force generation skills. And I’m quite happy with this.

Minions are useless, dunno why almost all necros I have seen use them. (In gw1 never liked MM builds – they are boring)

I’m only level 25 on my necro, and I rarely ever use the pets. I primarily use a scepter/focus and swap to dual daggers. (love dual daggers for melee range.) The only pet I have equip’d is the healing one, and I only pull it out if I need healing. My other 3 traits are the +power, +run speed, and +life force in combat.

I don’t use the minions at all, really. I’ve found things are better without them, there are more interesting abilities that are so much more viable. At the lower levels, I did use the shadow fiend to help “tank”, but once I hit about level 40, I dumped him for a Well spell (which one I use depends on the situation). Once you get Lich Form, too, it’s so easy to just use that coupled with Death Shroud and Wells to kill multiple enemies at once.

I use a staff with my minions for PVE…And then Staff with an assortment of Wells for PvP.

The PvE works really well as one of the traps (Can’t remember it off the top my head) heals your allies by bleeds foes so your minions get healed…I don’t often find myself without minions.

The PvP side works in that the wells strip coniditions and boons and basically swap them round…A kick in the teeth to the likes of “Save Yourself!” ;-)

Equally one of the Signets gives a foe all the coniditions possible, stack that with Epidemic and you have a group of lepers :P

Stevoli.8795:

I’m only level 25 on my necro, and I rarely ever use the pets. I primarily use a scepter/focus and swap to dual daggers. (love dual daggers for melee range.) The only pet I have equip’d is the healing one, and I only pull it out if I need healing. My other 3 traits are the +power, +run speed, and +life force in combat.

Suggestion; dump the healing pet and use Consume Conditions. It’s sooo much better.

SallyStitches.4096:

Stevoli.8795:

I’m only level 25 on my necro, and I rarely ever use the pets. I primarily use a scepter/focus and swap to dual daggers. (love dual daggers for melee range.) The only pet I have equip’d is the healing one, and I only pull it out if I need healing. My other 3 traits are the +power, +run speed, and +life force in combat.

Suggestion; dump the healing pet and use Consume Conditions. It’s sooo much better.

I saw that skill, but from what I gathered it only heals you when you have conditions going (I’ll admit I didn’t really look closely at it). Does it give you a base heal as well?

Dragon if your going minions exforcegamer on youtube has a very good guide for a MM build i would check it out!

I’ve played to level 50 so far with a build roughly resembling this:
http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/necromancer#3.2.1.0-1.9.11.20.2-20.20.0.0.0-6.10.3.6

I’ve been focusing on +condition damage and power for my gear stats, with a slighter weight on vitality and precision.

I don’t use any pets at all, the build can take out packs of 4-6 mobs in PVE, I’ve been pretty happy with it thus far.

I open with the scepter, run in Grasping Dead, then Well of Corruption, switch to death shroud and AOE drain, pop out, go to plague form, spam plague until end, if anything is still alive, you should be able to pop into shroud again and AOE drain once more. In PvE I drop the Plague Signet and use my owl that stacks bleeds (I think it’s a Norn ability)

For PvP I use Axe/Warhorn and Staff and just spam marks and switch to axe if I get someone in my face.

The End.

Stevoli.8795:

SallyStitches.4096:

Stevoli.8795:

I’m only level 25 on my necro, and I rarely ever use the pets. I primarily use a scepter/focus and swap to dual daggers. (love dual daggers for melee range.) The only pet I have equip’d is the healing one, and I only pull it out if I need healing. My other 3 traits are the +power, +run speed, and +life force in combat.

Suggestion; dump the healing pet and use Consume Conditions. It’s sooo much better.

I saw that skill, but from what I gathered it only heals you when you have conditions going (I’ll admit I didn’t really look closely at it). Does it give you a base heal as well?

No, it heals you for a set amount (same one as well of blood) + heals you extra for each condition you have on you and takes the conditions away …. seriously good for soloing

I tend to use Staff and Scepter+Dagger for PvE.
The stack of Bleeds that the Scepter Auto-Attack makes plus any bleeding duration buff (gear or traits) can make a you DoT monster + Scepter 3 that makes damage based on amount of conditions and syphon health is pretty useful.
My skill selection is Consume Condition+Well of Suffering+Corrosive Poison Cloud+Plague.
When doing Dynamics what I do is I try to focus on the mobs with the most conditions and cast Epidemic to spread them around and just see the XP come to me. With the CD reduce I can cast it every 15 secs.
Plus WoS and CPP cause conditions on me, so I use Consume Conditions for an extra puff of air.
I am pretty much an AoE killing machine.

Stevoli.8795:

SallyStitches.4096:

Stevoli.8795:

I’m only level 25 on my necro, and I rarely ever use the pets. I primarily use a scepter/focus and swap to dual daggers. (love dual daggers for melee range.) The only pet I have equip’d is the healing one, and I only pull it out if I need healing. My other 3 traits are the +power, +run speed, and +life force in combat.

Suggestion; dump the healing pet and use Consume Conditions. It’s sooo much better.

I saw that skill, but from what I gathered it only heals you when you have conditions going (I’ll admit I didn’t really look closely at it). Does it give you a base heal as well?

It heals you even if you don’t have conditions, yes, it just heals for more if you do have conditions on you.

I am leveling and i have no problems with my minions. Just pull aggro first.

Jneim.6328:

Dragon if your going minions exforcegamer on youtube has a very good guide for a MM build i would check it out!

really? thanks I’ll check that out

If you’re a necromancer with the Signet of Locust, a dagger/horn combo, and the trait to let you run faster with a dagger, prepare to have your fellow casters break their keyboards in PvP.

Shelledfade.6435:

BCDragon.5614:

Alright I have tried this class twice now and deleted it both times. I guess I am used to GW’s necromancer where the minions actually lived long enough to do their job. As the saying goes maybe the third time’s the charm so help me like the necro in GW2.

roll a different class, necro’s suck.

could say that about all the classes but I don’t so please don’t post things like that here. If you don’t like it, that’s fine but others do

What stats would I focus on if I am doing a MM build?

Go power/precision and use melee range weapons like dagger MH and dagger or focus OH.

HyDraLiNsK.2470:

Forget minions…

Get wells, with ground targetting, 20% reduced CD, and life siphoning with pulse.

Then lay waste with AoE wells of death, use death shroud for the AoE drain attack and extra life bar, and use plague or lich form as elite so you have 3 different forms all with kickkitten AoE attacks and life siphon.

Minions are bad, sad but true, but I love my necro for the pure AoE destruction.

is there any way to increase the well duration with gear or traits? because a 3-5sec well every 45sec is kinda short :/

XxCoOkyxX.8042:

is there any way to increase the well duration with gear or traits? because a 3-5sec well every 45sec is kinda short :/

Increased “condition duration”, maybe?

Look at the Spite trait line: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_necromancer_traits#Spite

Yep any pet build is broken until our pets use some of our stats, till then they are pointless. Sad for a iconic pet class -_-

Necro makes for some epic support.

The sheer amount of fields you can throw up at just insane. Throw up a field, let people support themselves.

This has been great fun for both Solo PVE, Group PVE, and WvW so far.

I’m only level 40, so sure this may change, but thusfar it has been great.

When I hit 40 though, everything changed when the fire nation attacked.

Being able to place Wells at range is just… just… FANTASTIC. I mean, less useful for Solo PVE, but still useful. Especially when you end up working with others, which happens fairly often.

I’ve been running a Staff in my main hand, and Scepter/Dagger in my second slots. Staff is for wards, because they are really useful (plus you have a ward which you can combo with any of your fields). Being able to grant regen to anyone near your Ward of Blood can help keep people alive. It isn’t much if you have no healing power, but feh. Health is health.

Scepter/Dagger is for bleeding like mad and bouncing blind (focus is also useful though). If I want to roam around, I’ll change dagger for Warhorn as movement speed is really useful.

I run Well of Blood (ranged heals? Yes please. Plus if you throw it out to assist allies, you still get the initial heal), the two wells which deal damage, and then the third slot is really up to the situation. I’ll run either one of my poison fields (I’m Asura so I have radiation too), the Etherial Wall (it gives enemies vulnerability if they go through it, and allies instead get a defensive boon for -33% damage received if they do the same), the Well which converts conditions to boons for allies, or the Wurm for setting up a quick escape if I need it (such as in dungeons)

When playing with groups, you need to decide whether to slap both damage wells down at once, or place them one at a time to get the most out of the fields.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

As a Necro, we are capable of:

Poison (5 second as Mark, two 15 second utility skills)
Ethereal (9 second wall. Sizeable cooldown, but it’s another field and a ‘confusing’ one >D)
Dark (4 possible wells, each with dark. Each lasts 5 seconds a piece)
Light (5 seconds. This is on your Well of Blood, and is also another way of removing conditions due to the combo effect from whirl and physical)

To finish it all off, I run the Flesh Golem, as the knock down can be supremely useful no matter where you happen to be fighting.

The one thing you DO need to watch out for though, is the support Necro is very VERY capable of drawing aggro. You may end up with bosses on your back quite often. However, you can make very good use of this by kiting the enemy and letting others get free and easy shots off/take a breather.

As for Well duration… no. But you CAN get a well cooldown reduction trait. The big deal with Wells is when you can place them from range. It may not seem like much, but 5 seconds of a field is very useful if you have others with you.

Well so far so good, I have reached level 8…yes its not a big accomplishment…but I think it is considering some people posted in here that necros suck.

XxCoOkyxX.8042:

is there any way to increase the well duration with gear or traits? because a 3-5sec well every 45sec is kinda short :/

You can reduce the cool down by 20 seconds. If you get the cond duration perk the effects will last longer but you can’t get the wells to pulse more than 5 times to my understanding. But don’t look at it like that, look at it like this:

If you could drop two wells, and pulse any number of enemies in that field 5×2 times (2 wells 5 pulses each) for huge damage, with a 30ish second cool down, isn’t that worth it?

Normally if you lay two good wells everything in it is normally already dead or at least weakened, and you still have 1-5 + your third slot skill + an elite skill to finish them off. ATM my necro uses the bleed one (the one that bleeds you and the enemy) for elites or vets etc. It is an awesome 1v1 move that allows me to save my wells during 1v1 fights.

Get to lvl 30 (if you aren’t already) and put 30 in curses 30 in blood magic and 10 in the bottom one (for death shroud) and use plague as your elite.

With the +cond damage and +cond time and the ground targetting of wells (letting you put them where you want not just surrounding you) you will destroy most that comes after you.

Necros aren’t meant for 1v1 IMO, or at least not this build. This build is meant to kill several enemies quickly. Even in PvP it’s awesome. Granted, people can just run out of the wells and avoid, but 1v1s in PvP are rare, and most times it’s group battles. Watch how fast people fall when you run up to a group fight and drop both wells in the middle of the fighting field!

I’m only lvl 45 so I’m not a know it all by any means, but I’ve made a thief, mesmer, and necro and when it comes to multiple target damage out put necro is the best hands down.