Before I buy the gear I though I’d ask on this one. I currently run a Soldier well build 10/0/30/30/0. Dagger/X + Staff – Force Sigil on MH w/ Battle Sigil on OH/Staff. Works pretty well, but effectiveness against players is limited in WvW in particular.
I was looking into the alternative of Knight gear (maybe splashed with a few valk pieces?) with Spectral utilities and on-crit weapon procs. Something along the lines of 10/0/10/20/30. Reaper’s Might, Greater Marks, Bloodthirst, Vampiric Precision, Path of Midnight, Spectral Mastery, Deathly Perception. Essentially, heavy on the lifesteal with the heavy dmg in DS. What are your thoughts on this?
Personally I still find lifestealing very weak post-patch
Try a 30/x/x/x/30 valk build in the mists and see if it fits you, at least it will give you access to spike damage. Running the 10/0/10/20/30 build, you will be spending all of your traits/gear/utilities just to achieve being a generic melee DD with poorer gap-closing/snaring than a 30spite build, with barely any more survivability. Running energy/energy sigils will probly shave off more hp than lifestealing would save
Vampiric is just not worth it. In WvW you’ll be better off with maybe Soldiers,Valk, or Berserker Armour and Weapons with Cavalier/Knight accessories and use a 30/x/x/x/30 or x/20/x/x/30 build as a Powermancer (Just drop the last 10 or 20 points wherever you desire).
Use Spectral Walk and Spectral Armour for LF Regeneration.
I went ahead and gave 30/0/10/0/30 a try… definitel does more damage but I feel squishy. I went back to 10/0/30/30/0. I suppose I’ll just stick with the tanky/power hybrid well build. It suits me. I’ll let others kill the players =O
30/x/x/x/30 seems most reliable at the moment. I just use full berserker gear in pvp but in wvw i have switched from full zerk to pvt/earth runes + ascended zerk jewelry.
Vampiric doesn’t really work so well you’d notice big difference.
Scrap staff and run with d/w + a/f you’ll lose staff fear but nothing what you should be focusing on. If you want extra fear you can slot like for example: spectral wall, spectral armor, spectral walk it gives you nice survivability as long as you can keep up your life force.
full pvt gear works really well if you focus on being really tanky with wells and such but it’s not good for solo, not enough damage to kill single or more targets at same time i.e. 1v2 or 1v3.
Only sad thing is limited stability necros get so you can probably pwnzor anything except eles which have imba access to like everything very annoying to you. i.e. remove boon = lol i put on new one, fear = lol i has stability, dps = lol i has heals
For wvw go for knights/zerker armor and ruby orbs with soldier/knights trinkets and 0/20/20/0/30 or 10/20/10/0/30
Dont ever scrap staff, dagger is absolutely useless in wvw and so is scepter. S + A/W is the way to go. Staff for those condis, pressure and damage, axe for the perma retal etc.
That build leaves me with ~2.1k power, 2.6k armor, 40% crit chance and 57% crit damage, 21k hp without food or buffs.
Utilities are well of corruption, well of suffering and spectral walk for the swiftness + life force + stun breaker, can be switched for well of darkness or spectral wall depending on the situation. And plague.
Try and not build into a bunker necro, you become useless and you are not supposed to get damaged anyway as ranged. If you need to go through a chokepoint full of 54966 enemies just double roll/DS for stability or in some cases, plague and you got stun breaker + life force generator to help you as well. Rest of the time just stay to the sides spread out and support the melee train, simple really.
Jalmari idea of pvt/earth runes + ascended zerk jewelry is a good idea maybe go with knights or zerk weapons.
@Aphix at lower tiers the fights are more 5-20 man so dagger does have a role so does a semi-tanky build for necro. This is because if you are in a typical 10-15 man ‘zerg’ thieves will pick you out and if you are glass its insta gib.
For the massive zergs in higher tier yes I agree with you.
dagger is absolutely useless in wvw and so is scepter
How to lose all credibility in 10 words or less.
Oh please explain to me how they are useful. Id LOVE to hear this.
Dagger in wvw is useless, im not talking about roaming, that is NOT wvw, I mean running with a 20+ group, its a melee single target weapon – definition of useless. Scepter again single target and only good for the cripple but axe is 100x better for the retal and boon stripping.
Bet you have never played wvw or necro for that matter tbh. I find it hard to post on the forums because of trolls like you, I just know they exist and jump out talking out of their kitten
Scepter is good because it has good damage and range (most 900 range weapons are projectiles, scepter has no travel time for any skills and ignores projectile-hate) and still has decent AoE presence. It is equally effective at any range you choose (or are forced to) to engage at.
Off-hand dagger is also excellent. One can never have too many condition transfers and AoE Weakness is always good. Main-hand is only any help for roamers, but that is still WvW.
When I mentioned dagger I clearly meant mainhand thought that was obvious since I was comparing it to axe and scepter, offhand dagger is decent.
I really dont get what you are trying to say about scepter, decent damage ?? AoE presence ?? It does not have place in zergs simple as that.
dagger is absolutely useless in wvw and so is scepter
How to lose all credibility in 10 words or less.
im not talking about roaming, that is NOT wvw, I mean running with a 20+ group
Slow your roll there champ, I clearly said its useful under 20 in small group play. Its great in roaming but you dont think that roaming is WvW so really no point in arguing about it.
Why are zergers so defensive when someone mentions small group fights Ill never know.
I run a 20/20/0/0/30 Spectral build with full Valks that is a flippin’ tank in PvE. Haven’t tested it out in WvW yet, but it re-specs for the staff and wells decently. Even without Zerker, I still have ~40% crit chance outside of DS, which in turn makes DS rather powerful.
If you didn’t want to run Axe, but trait instead for Staff for WvW, 0/20/20/0/30 would do just fine.
dagger is absolutely useless in wvw and so is scepter
How to lose all credibility in 10 words or less.
im not talking about roaming, that is NOT wvw, I mean running with a 20+ group
Slow your roll there champ, I clearly said its useful under 20 in small group play. Its great in roaming but you dont think that roaming is WvW so really no point in arguing about it.
Why are zergers so defensive when someone mentions small group fights Ill never know.
Comical is it not Dredlord?
Was I even talking to you ? Dredlord clearly thinks that a mainhand dagger is useful in GvG/zerg fights and that is so wrong.
Pretty sure this is wvw section, go bring that small group (~10) talk to sPvp where mh dagger may be viable.
this is where you lost all credibility, stick with your zerg and keep your mouth shut next time you obviously are as thick as the stack you run with.
if you can’t see the benefits of dagger and scepter then you just aren’t a learner…
There are no benefits of a mainhand dagger or scepter in proper wvw and guild groups roaming, you want decent roaming/small scale build go into the spvp section. Seriously, Id love to run up to your guild with a bunch of MH dagger necros, would be brilliant.
Running an organized guild group of about 25-30 players is not zerging.
95% of the fights we as a guild group have (in a rank 7 server) are other ~30 man guild groups and up to 60+ man blobs, good luck with your dagger or scepter (lol..)
Talk about losing credibility, well done.
It really does seem you have never been to wvw, have mixed wvw with spvp or are in a T9 server where the fights are mostly 3v3, but please keep us up to date with How not to play a necromancer in WvW.
And when I asked you to explain why is a mh dagger and scepter useful in WVW you ignored it, good job bro. Im done.
Try and not build into a bunker necro, you become useless …
This is what I think Arenanet needs to look at real hard instead of buffing dps. Make the bunker-Necromancer useful.
I would disagree with you guys having made a very support oriented necro bunker myself. see my vampire bunker thread for details if you’re interested.
I can out heal incoming DPS (to a degree) convert my team mates conditions to boons while applying protection and also converting enemy boons. and the AoE heal on well of blood is very helpful in pvp when holding a point with team mates.
Grandad Fester / Unruly Pigeon – Necromancer by trade
I run a 0/20/0/20/30 vampire spectral WvW build. Full knights but I have some ascended trinkets that are berserker or cavalier. It works very well in duels and roaming around but it’s difficult to do much in huge zerg fights due to the short range of our power weapons.
Depends on what you want to be doing in wvw tbh. If roaming around and duels is your thing then knight’s armor will serve you very well.
