Guild Wars 2

My Necro is only level 27, and I really love her.

Right now I´m using staff+Scepter/Focus, although 90% of the time I only use the staff (I may change the Scepter for an axe or dagger for more st damage)

For my skills, I’m using all minions (all of them except the worm), so I can just focus on droping my staff marks and let minions be some extra dots.

But I feel rather squishy, when the mobs are hitting or chasing my minions, is all fine, but if for some chance all of them decide to come chase me, I can go down pretty quick if im not paying 101% attention.

Could you recomend some kind of “Tankish” build? Ive been hearing and reading that Necros are one of the more survivable classes, but I fail to see how. Could you give me some hints? Spec to use? Stats to focus on?

Also, whats the stat that improves my wells and minions damage? Power? (although this is secondary, I prefer to focus on surviving)

Thanks!

Probably not the direction you were looking for, but I found that giving up my minions in my mid-20’s led to a major improvement in survivability. It sounds backwards, but it caused me to focus better on killing skills and strategies. I use Staff mainly and dual-dagger for close quarters. If you are still using Blood Fiend in your healing slot, swap it out for Consume Conditions.

At level 27, I don’t think your trait choices are going to make a huge difference. This is the build I’m working toward, and at 52 it seems to be working quite well for me:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MMVm0Mz0mFMvMmFMvMaf0fxomMoMb

I´m fine with giving up my minions (although I love the comments when they die :P ), or changing my weapons (hopefully I will be able to keep the Staff, loving the looks of it)

thanks for your answer!

I used minions up until I got to level 30 for the flesh golem. The first couple times I tried it, I couldn’t stand how often it would attack non hostile enemies.

Now I’m using Plague, which is great for taking down groups. My weapon setup is axe+dagger and staff. I have two abilities to slow – axe 3 is an aoe cripple, staff 3 is an aoe chill. This makes it great for slowing the enemies down and running sideways spamming aoe attacks.

For utilities, if you insist on using minions, I personally would sacrifice the shadow fiend for Well of Darkness. Its an aoe blind for 5 whole seconds which is a TREMENDOUS help. I also use well of blood for my heal as it is by far the best heal, and well of pain for my other utility. The last one I use spectral walk, just for moving around fast.

I’m specced mostly into healing (blood magic), partially into toughness (death magic) and a little into power (spite)

Using this setup, I have never once had trouble taking on groups of enemies. If you use Death Shroud and your elite, you can very easily take on a group of almost 10 enemies at once.

Erhnam.5732:

My Necro is only level 27, and I really love her.

Right now I´m using staff+Scepter/Focus, although 90% of the time I only use the staff (I may change the Scepter for an axe or dagger for more st damage)

For my skills, I’m using all minions (all of them except the worm), so I can just focus on droping my staff marks and let minions be some extra dots.

But I feel rather squishy, when the mobs are hitting or chasing my minions, is all fine, but if for some chance all of them decide to come chase me, I can go down pretty quick if im not paying 101% attention.

Could you recomend some kind of “Tankish” build? Ive been hearing and reading that Necros are one of the more survivable classes, but I fail to see how. Could you give me some hints? Spec to use? Stats to focus on?

Also, whats the stat that improves my wells and minions damage? Power? (although this is secondary, I prefer to focus on surviving)

Thanks!

Keep the minions. Run staff and scepter/dagger. Learn to kite. Most mobs are melee and only a few are range (depending on area). Necro’s have a ton of slows, so keep aoe’ing and slowing them. In between your slows when they get close, dodge through them, and start it again. Than while your doing that your minions will be killing them along with your aoe’s.

I can’t tell you how often i have killed very very large groups of mobs, by just doing that. Oh and as back up use DS when you have too. Or better yet go in every time 4 is off cd for more aoe’ing.

I run a tank/healing necromancer that has worked pretty well. It does well in PvE and makes for a decent enough point defender in PvP. Here’s my build, take it or leave it:

Weapon: Axe/Dagger
Skills:
Rending Claws – vulnerability makes up for your pathetic damage a little and helps teammates
Ghastly Claws – I only really use this when i am low on life force as vuln is generally better
Unholy Feast – the reason I use axes. AoE cripple, decent damage and 3s retaliation for every foe you hit. When you’re fighting a big group, that retaliation can really add up
Deathly Swarm – Gets those conditions off you, blinds and also chills with the Chilling Darkness trait
Enfeebling Blood – nice little DoT and weakness

Well of Blood – with my traits this gives a big heal, HoT, protection, retaliation, has shorter cooldown, and steals life every tick. Also, a lot of healing runes affect healing skills. For example, Rune of Dwayna gives this regeneration to boot.

Well of Suffering – Keeps that vuln up, does some nice damage and steals life (with trait)
Well of Darkness – Blinds every second for 5 secs, nice for tanks. Also chills with traits
Well of Power – I love this skill. “Oh you put 15 stacks of bleed and immobilize on me? That’s vigor and swiftness now!”

Flesh Golem – this one is really up to you. Plague is good too, though I prefer the golem for the knockdown

Traits:
10 curses:
Chilling Darkness
30 Death magic:
Dark Armor (axe2 is channeled)
Ritual of Protection
Spiteful Vigor
30 Blood Magic:
Bloodthirst
Ritual Mastery
Vampiric Rituals

Gearwise, I stack full healing, with vitality on the side when I can. Also, I use DS when I am either running low on health and/or when Well of Blood is still on CD. DS4 is also a nice AoE. For Dungeons, Signet of Undeath is nice for kiting and getting party members back up.

Overall:
Pros:
Tanky, with big heals
Can stack up some vuln to help teammates
AoEs are always good
Lifesteal
Condition removal – Deathly Swarm and Well of Power
High base health

Cons:
Damage, or lack thereof – you are a tank, you grind people/mobs down little by little, no 10k crits here
Escape skills – you can’t stealth and run away like a thief say
Range – Wells are placed around you, so you need to be in the middle of the fight for them to work.

I hate when the quote buttong doesnt show up >_<

@Angry Squirrel, thats exactly what Ive been doing, thats why I said that I will die if Im not paying attention – I have to kite or die. Yes I have killed absurd amounts of mobs AoEing this way But if for any chance I get hit and stunned, or knocked, I’m dead

@Kyski, that sounds like fun and something I will surely try once I hit 80. But I was asking for a levelling build Anyway I will make sure to try a leech-tank spec!

I’m sure there are a lot of ways to make leveling up easy. My character is only level 41, but here is what I did since level 30 and my path from 30 to 40 was an absolute cakewalk.

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/necromancer#5|0|1201|1199|2297|4205|4693|10|1255|0|0|0|0|0|0|10|1566|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|5|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

I mainly use staff, on the odd occasion I’ll switch to sceptar/dagger.
This is a fairly simple playstyle. You run around and collect around a number of mobs that you’re comfortable with using staff 1. Once they’re packed up just drop all your AoEs on them. Make sure your staff 2 also hit you and your minions as much as possible to give a constant regen. Save staff 4 if your opponent gives you a bunch of conditions. Between staff 4, dagger 4, and heal you have 3 ways to get rid of conditions so it’s really not a big deal.

Always kill ranged mobs first, use your minion blind and knockdown to give yourself breathing room. Don’t be afraid to go DS to soak up some damage, and switch out of it as soon as it’s beneficial instead of running the lifeforce dry for no reason. Remember to keep moving when you do DS 4.

Pets are dumb and kitten So you might have to use their ability (blind/charge) before they’ll do anything. Still blind/charge to KD are good regardless, so I don’t mind. If you are fighting something with a large HP pool, bait/fear it to a wall and have your golem charge at it against the wall. Instead of charging through it and do damage once, it’ll repeatedly charge the monster into the wall for the entire duration of the charge. It does a lot of damage when you can get it working.

Kiting with staff against melee monster is easy. Just put marks in front of you, run over them. Don’t even have to bother with strafing or looking back.

Anyways hope this helps you like it did for me.

Oh shoot, I forgot some important things to consider in my build above.
- Well of Suffering is a Dark combo field and Staff 3 is a Poison combo field.
- Staff 1 is a projectile finisher, and staff 4 is a blast finisher.

So basically just randomly spamming stuff you will be doing combos of: lifesteal, area blindness, poison, and area weakness. They help when you’re standing in the middle of things doing AoE.

Here this build is pretty straightforward:
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/necromancer#5|0|1200|1194|1151|2297|4693|10|1255|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|2243|698|722|30|686|692|2322|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

As long as you keep your minions up and attacking they will siphon hp back to you like crazy, hence the staff + life transfer healing in the traits… it’s worked out for me so far…

The best tanking spec you can do while PvE questing is updated gear. From 30 onwards buy new gear every 10 levels so 40, 50, 60, 70 then when you hit 80!

Cempa, do you have a favorite few kinds of gear? By descriptor I mean, like Rampager for example.

When you are leveling it does not really matter but since I play Condition -every other build is inferior- I stack condition damage on gear on other items.

I found that since mobs die so quickly it really does not matter as long as youre gear is updated every 10 levels.

Thanks everyone for your answers Its been rather helpful!

TBH just keep playing, you’ll nail down your mechanical skill, timing your CC’s, managing life force better and timing Death Shroud better to absorb dmg, as well as just general kiting/dodging.

It’d pretty silly how much abuse I can take in a glass cannon build w/ no pets or aoe blinds, just my standard CC, Death Shroud, kiting, LOS, etc.