Guild Wars 2

Here is a link to my current build. I love the tankyness of the dire armor with rabid weapons and accessories. Damage and utility are sub par, but I never get downed. Input?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBLhZakjmyb7tx4G+bTEMUS2CfQ0NQAcuUuFRBA-TFSEwAIUCCw83I9B4U/pxTAo1+DOOFABV+BA-w

Dire/Rabid with Sigil of Fire and Lich Form?

Condition damage is not as effective in WvW as it is in PvP. A power build is more effective because dps is higher and Spite lengthens your soft CC conditions like chill, vulnerability, and fear. Try a 6/x/x/x/6 build and switch to dagger main. It is very hard to hold a target long enough for scepter to stack enough bleeds with all the movement and condition clears. Your utilities look good enough and you can keep staff.

Seriously though, the build looks fine.
I’m not a fan of Reaper’s Protection, especially in WvW, so if you want more damage and group support you could take Greater Marks instead and maybe change up your utility skills once in a while. For example: Epidemic or Well of Corruption for more aoe pressure, or Spectral Wall for some area control, protection and Chaos Armor combos.

Anchoku.8142:

Condition damage is not as effective in WvW as it is in PvP.

Not generally. Since he said “group” and not zerg I’d assume he shouldn’t have to worry too much about coordinated aoe cleansing.

flow.6043:

Dire/Rabid with Sigil of Fire and Lich Form?

I was told Lich Form is 100% absolutly the only thing to use. Is that wrong?

Conditions on necromancer are actually very weak compared to other classes. If you’re going to be fighting against groups of ten or more I suggest power builds.

Here’s an example of a 62006 power build using all exotics.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBmODZkjmaabphD3E4CF0vZA0CRdBUfGtxzC-TVSBwAUuAAFV+FRJ4N1fIu/AKdDLOIAsN/B4JAQKAx2VB-w

The third utility is optional and left up to personal preference. The warhorn off hand weapon can also be switched to focus or dagger depending on personal preference. Your primary weapon is your staff and you should have your staff equipped when dropping wells and going into death shroud. Condition duration food is still used even when in a power build for chill bombs. Lich can be swapped to plague if you need to get through chokes or play a bit more defensively. Lich is still preferred for its damage over plague form. This build can also be used for smaller group play with different utilities and swapping focused rituals to a different trait.

Necromancer’s aren’t known for their group utility but their AOE damage.

minor trait and utility change for roaming and small group gameplay
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBmODbkjmibrtxvGOcTgLUSNDQ/mBQLQ9Z0GPLA-TVSBwAUuAAFV+FRJ4N1fIu/AKdDLOIAsN/B4JAQKAx2VB-w

Warhorn + Spectral Walk for swiftness
Summon Flesh Wurm + Teleport for mobility
Elite: Plague/Lich/Flesh Golem up to personal preference

If using flesh golem, make sure you don’t charge if your opponent has stability.

Possible rune changes:
Strength
Hoelbrak

Staff Sigils:
Fire
Force
Energy
Battle
Strength

Axe/* (always bloodlust on OH)
Force
Energy
Hydromancy (chill any thief on you before swapping to axe for #2)
Doom (swap from staff to apply poison on any single downs)

In smaller groups you can optionally put your stacking sigil on staff and run dagger main hand over axe.

Condition builds are still viable in small groups if you are going to corrupt boon+spite followed up by burst damage skills from other members of your party. For the most part, power builds are much better and more versatile over conditions.

For the OP’s build: You’d be better off getting rid of those crests of rabid in your trinkets because they are rare quality and not exotic. Replacements can be level 80 exotic coral or chrysocola jewels. Fire sigils should not be used with condition builds since the damage from the sigil scales with the raw damage of the attack it proc’d off of. Try Sigil of Earth or Sigil of Torment instead.

^ that is ALOT to take in, thank you though.

Your builds seem to use berserker’s gear of which I have none and I’m too broke to aquire a new set of gear.

I’ll have to stick with the dire / rabid combo I’m using. I’m also informed that scepter is a must of condimancer.

Which I was told is best for WvW in terms of survivability and slight dps

Aeniklast.9283:

^ that is ALOT to take in, thank you though.

Your builds seem to use berserker’s gear of which I have none and I’m too broke to aquire a new set of gear.

I’ll have to stick with the dire / rabid combo I’m using. I’m also informed that scepter is a must of condimancer.

Which I was told is best for WvW in terms of survivability and slight dps

You can just get the gear using badges of honour from a wvw vendor and lower amount of gold. Also I think your getting very mixed signals because you must realise optimal builds differ greatly depending on the scale, that is solo roaming, 5v5 or zergbusting.

There is no one correct build for WvW for all situations. All builds to some extent depend upon the size of the fight. Your build looks fine for fights up to max 10 on each side or so imo. In zerg fights, conditions get cleansed. A power spec using ground targeted wells is what is needed for larger fights.

For smaller scale: Plague or Flesh Golem over Lich. Lich is for power builds.

Think about Spectral Wall. It gives you another fear. You have damage on fear trait. You have extended duration fear trait. Helps get people of your back. You can run through it for protection. It is an ethereal field. Dump Well of Power. If you want another stun break (you have sp. walk, take spect armor or flesh wurm)

You have life stealing runes and sigils. I’m not sure how much they are needed. The life steal does not work in Death Shroud (though you don’t spend much time in Death Shroud), plus you have a very big HP pool, good armor plus DS. I would definitely go for Krait runes for sure to make your bleeds better (scepter 1 and 2 and staff 2 are your main sources of damages plus fear). You could add a torment sigil for an extra AE condition, but earth is likely fine as well for now.

Condi necros aren’t a burst class. Marks are more about control than damage. And condi necros don’t get as much value from death shroud as power ones. But unless you are mainly spamming staff 1 and DS1, you are contributing.

The build the other person suggested is light years from your current build and pretty glassy and very expensive (especially runes so you will have to save for them). Melee dagger with such low armor is tricky as it could get you clobbered by the heavies.

Just add the krait runes for next to zero cost and dump WoP for spectral wall or wurm. Use plague to mess up opposition or flesh golem when in really small group (1-3). Your abilities harm up to 5 players and you have a bunch of them (fear, chills, poison, torment, immob., cripple, daze, more fears – unless you are engaging in large scale fights in which case buy karma armor or wvw armor/weapons (some combination of soldiers, berserker, even some valk, cav/knight) as you should endeavor to respec at some point.

^ thanks that helped a lot!

I’ll switch out the runes and pickup wall and plague.

Where can you buy exotic berserker gear outside of the TP?

Also I only have two fears correct? Staff #5 and DS #3

Also how do the combos work? Picking up wall gives me the combo field “ethereal”?

Aeniklast.9283:

^ thanks that helped a lot!

I’ll switch out the runes and pickup wall and plague.

Where can you buy exotic berserker gear outside of the TP?

Also I only have two fears correct? Staff #5 and DS #3

Also how do the combos work? Picking up wall gives me the combo field “ethereal”?

You need to use finishers on the fields, you might want to google combo finishers (not stomp finishers). For example, you get let you staff 1 go through the spectral wall hitting an enemy on the other side of it to cause the projectile finisher on an ethereal field putting confusion on the enemy (good if youre condi spec). Or you can have blast well of sufferring with staff 4 (blast finisher on dark field) giving aoe blindness.

About fears you can take spectral wall, you also have two corrupt choices (corrupt boon and traited death shroud #2 skill – when you corrupt stability it becomes fear).

Ha, wow. There’s a whole level of combat I had no idea existed.

Now I definitely feel super noob

It looks like my build only has a combo field no finisher. So that mechanic wouldn’t apply to my build or am I mistaken?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBLhZakjmyb7tx4G+bTEMUS2CfQ0NQAcuUmERBA-TlyAABWoEEw9Hk4EAAg5vJOEAxoPYjjAgRq/UxDA4JlfAA-w

Aeniklast.9283:

Ha, wow. There’s a whole level of combat I had no idea existed.

Now I definitely feel super noob

What scale of combat are you going looking for? It will help people give you much better advice. Solo-roaming, 5v5, zerg-busting etc.

Zetsumei.4975:

Aeniklast.9283:

Ha, wow. There’s a whole level of combat I had no idea existed.

Now I definitely feel super noob

What scale of combat are you going looking for? It will help people give you much better advice. Solo-roaming, 5v5, zerg-busting etc.

Quite honestly I do everything on a daily basis depending on wvw population throughout the day.

I like the tankyness of the dire armor so I’d like a build that revolves around that. Just looking for more utility I suppose.

I’m also lost on the combo finishers

Aeniklast.9283:

Zetsumei.4975:

Aeniklast.9283:

Ha, wow. There’s a whole level of combat I had no idea existed.

Now I definitely feel super noob

What scale of combat are you going looking for? It will help people give you much better advice. Solo-roaming, 5v5, zerg-busting etc.

Quite honestly I do everything on a daily basis depending on wvw population throughout the day.

I like the tankyness of the dire armor so I’d like a build that revolves around that. Just looking for more utility I suppose.

I’m also lost on the combo finishers

Conditions will be useful for solo roaming and 5v5, just bare in mind (no matter how hard you try sadly :P) it will be close to useless for zerg-busting (15-25 on your side killing ~double your numbers).

About finishers, conditions on necro is mostly a solo effort and there arent many conbo finisher options. On my solo roaming build for example i think pretty much the only combo I get off is making sure to place staff 3 and 4 ontop of each other to blast the poision field for aoe weakness. Another major tip for my intentions with my build is to only use corrupt boon to corrupt stability and not to get tempted when I see a lot of boons lol.

When it comes to zerg-busting on power combo’s become more important but you wont really be the one using the finishers, you’ll mainly look into getting the melee train to blast your wells for blindness and blasting your poison cloud if you take that for aoe weakness.

But yeah all in all, I’m someone who solo roams and is involved in zergbusting, have my condi build for roaming and power build (wells and life blast focussed) for zerg-busting and theyre completely different.

Also make sure you study the effects of certain conditions closely, for example some people will still be unaware of the secondary effect of chill “skill cooldown increased by 66%; stacks duration” its pretty devastating in itself and weakness is pretty strong too.

Aeniklast.9283:

Ha, wow. There’s a whole level of combat I had no idea existed.

Now I definitely feel super noob

It looks like my build only has a combo field no finisher. So that mechanic wouldn’t apply to my build or am I mistaken?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBLhZakjmyb7tx4G+bTEMUS2CfQ0NQAcuUmERBA-TlyAABWoEEw9Hk4EAAg5vJOEAxoPYjjAgRq/UxDA4JlfAA-w

Oh just saw the edit, yeah basically you only combo will be staff 3 then 4. About the build i would definitely change the runes (stealing health i generally dont associate with condi builds), maybe look at torment, nightmare, balthazar, perplexity something like that. Also i would change sigil of blood and fire, they are power based sigils, dont be afraid to use the same sigils as long as they are on different SETS, for example i run hydromancy and geomancy on each set.

Thank you for the explanation. There are clearly several depths of combat mechanics I had no idea existed.

I’m going to change runes to krait runes as suggested above. Still looking into correct sigils.

I think I have combos figured out. But I’m not sure how staff #3 and #4 are a combo?

I had to Google stability I was unaware how important that is. I was also unaware that corruption boon fears. I usually use it when I see tons of boons on someone.

I was also unaware of the secondary on chill.

Aeniklast.9283:

Thank you for the explanation. There are clearly several depths of combat mechanics I had no idea existed.

I’m going to change runes to krait runes as suggested above. Still looking into correct sigils.

I think I have combos figured out. But I’m not sure how staff #3 and #4 are a combo?

I had to Google stability I was unaware how important that is. I was also unaware that corruption boon fears. I usually use it when I see tons of boons on someone.

I was also unaware of the secondary on chill.

Staff 3 places a poison field (note the mark must hit and enemy or an enemy must walk into the mark to activate the field effects, this is unique to necro staff marks) and staff 4 is a blast finisher, this will cause aoe weakness.

Also just to clarify its not the corrupt boon that fears per say, its when one of the boons corrupted is stability, check this out: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrupt_Boon. Certain boons will corrupt into certain conditions. There also seems to be a priority list, so although well of corruption corrupts one boon per pulse it is not a reliable way of corrupting stability because stability is pretty low on the priority list of boon corruptions, unless your enemy is being a kitten and hasnt got enough cover boons on (boons that are not so important and will be removed/corrupted before important boons). http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1fyebd/boon_removal_priority/

Eat food. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Koi_Cake will help out alot with conditions, and I think it is still pretty much dirt cheap to boot. (Buy it from the vendor with z-taffy)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo
You only have 1 blast finisher, staff 4, and it only triggers if someone is inside the mark area, quite annoying.

Try out vital persistence, (II in soul reaping) it’s over powered to heck.
Good luck and have fun!

Aeniklast.9283:

^ thanks that helped a lot!

I’ll switch out the runes and pickup wall and plague.

Where can you buy exotic berserker gear outside of the TP?

Also I only have two fears correct? Staff #5 and DS #3

Also how do the combos work? Picking up wall gives me the combo field “ethereal”?

Since people skipped over one of your questions. You can buy Zerker gear (Or any gear) for the armor & weapons vendor at the entrance to EBG. The full armor set is only maybe 4 or 5G + 1200 badges of honor? you can get your weapons their too for some silver & badges. The only other way would be dungeon tokens. Couple dungeons have zerker gear. Fastest way to obtain that would be PvP reward track for the dungeon + 1 daily dungeon speed run.

Awesome! Appreciate the replies.

I need to pickup a set of berserker gear for pve. too broke to obtain though. 1400 badges i only have 600~

But I really think I’m going to stick with the dire armor / rabid weapons and accesories. I absolutly love feeling like a tank.

Here is what I’ve currently adjusted too. Any more input?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBLhZakjmyb7tx4G+bTEMUS2CfQ0NQAcuUuFRBA-TFSEwAIUCCw83I9B4U/pxTAo1+DOOFABV+BA-w

Aeniklast.9283:

Awesome! Appreciate the replies.

I need to pickup a set of berserker gear for pve. too broke to obtain though. 1400 badges i only have 600~

But I really think I’m going to stick with the dire armor / rabid weapons and accesories. I absolutly love feeling like a tank.

Here is what I’ve currently adjusted too. Any more input?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBLhZakjmyb7tx4G+bTEMUS2CfQ0NQAcuUuFRBA-TFSEwAIUCCw83I9B4U/pxTAo1+DOOFABV+BA-w

Yep that’s looking a lot better.

A little something to make you feel awesome when roaming; necros unlike other professions lack the utility for safe stomps (activating stability or an invulnerability for example) to get a secured stomp when in outnumbered situations like a 1v2. If you don’t know this already there’s a trick we call the plague stomp, press F to stomp someone THEN activate plague and don’t press anything until the stomp finishes. It will transform you into plague but continue the stomp. This basically gives you stability so you don’t get stunned or knocked away trying to stomp and the tankiness so you don’t get bursted while stomping it also makes you look a little bad*ss.

if you are running Path of corruption and corrupt boon, a boon corrupting terrormancer, I would take Path of Midnight to reduce CD on dark path. Vital persistence isn’t really helping your condis. If you were power and were life blasting like mad then sure.

just my two cents, but the ability to use death shroud skills 2, 3, and 5 more frequently is >>> being able to hang out in DS longer doing minimal damage with 1, and 4 skill.

Apologies I haven’t been able to login on forums for a few days.

Appreciate the replies!

I’m trying to be as tanky as possible focusing on CC over damage. She’s a tanky little beast. Vital persistence is OP as all get out. I usually DS to absorb damage not dish it out. I’ll give path of midnight a shot though!

Any other advice is much appreciated!

I am not sure about the warhorn on a condi build. Indeed, you can get permaswiftness but it does hurt to not use a dagger offhand for condi transfers and blinds.

Very true. I have staff #4 and consume conditions though.

I want to focus on being the most absolute tank possible followed by having the most CC possible. After that I’ll see what adjustments I can make to up the damage.

But I think I’m pretty close if not already there as far as tank / CC is concerned

Aeniklast.9283:

Apologies I haven’t been able to login on forums for a few days.

Appreciate the replies!

I’m trying to be as tanky as possible focusing on CC over damage. She’s a tanky little beast. Vital persistence is OP as all get out. I usually DS to absorb damage not dish it out. I’ll give path of midnight a shot though!

Any other advice is much appreciated!

Vital persistence is for elongating how long you can sit in shroud it won’t reduce damage taken while in shroud. Also personally I’d suggest not using shroud for damage absorption in Condi because life force is in short supply for Condi necros unlike power necros and Condi necros need the shroud skills to output heavy Condi burst within their rotation.

Yeah but it’s a WvW build and so much stuff is dying all the time that you don’t need to worry about life force even in Condi.

Well… Vital Persistence really does make you tanky. If you take damage in Deathshroud, it’s not only enemy damage that brings your life force down, it’s its natural degeneration as well. Vital Persistance makes your DS depletion a lot slower. If DS is drained slower naturally, it means you can take more hits from actual damage… so in other you are tankier. Different traits have different flip-sides. This tankyness is made even stronger if you use warhorn’s Locust Swarm. You’d be able to tank for days. If you are Spectral Walking on top of that, and your aim is to be super tanky… you will indeed be. Spectral Walk is another good option because lower CD on SWalk and SWall is always welcome… and SWall is almost like Spectral Armor if you are attacked by a bunch of melee (each time they run into it, your Lifeforce charges up). I’d say to test it out and see which (Path of Midnight, Vital Persistence, Spectral Mastery) suits you.

Yep but firstly as a Condi build he will be involved in solo or very small group activity so there won’t be many deaths around him. Also as he’s in Condi he doesn’t really have any business sitting in shroud for long periods of time as you would do in power while pumping out the life blasts so there isn’t room for vital persistence to take effect. Fair point though that because of warhorn and spectral walk he doesn’t have to worry about wasting shroud for tanking out damage.

^ what do you mean?

With vital persistence I can sit in DS forever. Granted I’m only auto-attacking and getting two rotations of skills off each time. I’m absoring TONS of damage.

Aeniklast.9283:

^ what do you mean?

With vital persistence I can sit in DS forever. Granted I’m only auto-attacking and getting two rotations of skills off each time. I’m absoring TONS of damage.

I mean on Condi if you’re going on the attack, a burst rotation involving both weapon sets and shroud skills is going to bring you a lot more damage than waiting in shroud for the shroud cooldowns to come off. Unlike in power where it’s very effective to sit there lifeblasting until wells come off cool down (when it comes to power I only know about zergbusting, never used it for roaming yet :P).

Also when it comes to mitigating with shroud you don’t really stay in shroud n just let them hit you at their own leisure, it will typically be that you get hit by a stun for example and then flick you on shroud when he comes over to lay out the damage.

Build doesn’t matter; you will die to pretty much everyone and everyone will want to kill you first…

Skyline.1283:

Build doesn’t matter; you will die to pretty much everyone and everyone will want to kill you first…

Well thanks for that extremely helpful post. How about you GTFO. kitten.