Guild Wars 2

I have so much HP on this class, but it feels so incredibly fragile (and complicated) and frankly doesn’t appear to do much damage by way of compensation. After messing around in pvp for a while I couldn’t really get the life draining abilities to actually contribute to being alive, the entire toughness line (which I really feel like it needs) looks like it got the traits no other line wanted, and when I tried using conditions for damage with a bunch of fancy things like weakness and blind/chill to defend myself I just ended up dying before the conditions began to mean anything. I’m not even entirely sure the chill on blind trait worked at all, at least with the well I was using that pulses blind on people.

On top of that, trying to manage my own conditions such that I have some when I want to heal (as it improves said heal) but don’t have any particularly bad ones the rest of the time, combined with watching what effects enemies have in order to time skills like converting boons to conditions, or spreading conditions to other enemies, while simultaneously needing to remember when it’s appropriate to use death shroud (and for how long)… it’s actually a miracle/accident I was still able to walk more or less in the right direction when fighting.

Yet, I know from playing my warrior (lvl 80, WvW) and guardian (lvl something, PvP) that necros can have survivability, because often I have to smack them around for freaking ages before they finally collapse. This one guy in WvW I had to chase past two forts, through a lake, and beat through his regular health bar and DS about twice each before he finally ran out of things to do and died. And he wasn’t even using any escape skills (is there one?), just very hard to kill.

So how on earth is this sort of thing possible? I notice none of these ones use pets so I’m guessing the toughness line probably didn’t have much to do with it?

XD I’m one of the necros you chase past two forts and kitten on their bodies after you finally finish with them from frustration..

fyi our strengths don’t come from traits alone, they come mostly from gear.

Toughness+Vitality = LIFE!! GLORIOUS UNKILLABLE LIFE!!

edit:
I actually run up to groups of three people in enemy BLs just to /wave at them, jump around in spectral form, and walk away just to kitten them off when they all try to down me.. its so much fun!

Well, I tried one go with pwr/vit/tgh and the other was… tgh/prc/con or prc/tgh/con, I forget which (this was the one using all the weakness/blind/chill stuff and lifesteal). Obviously I couldn’t get as much as in WvW but then that goes for everyone else as well, and I still seemed very fragile and not particularly dangerous either. In both cases the trait line with vitality was full, since it seemed in theory to have more life encouraging stuff like all the siphon traits, but I didn’t really notice them helping, even with two sigils of blood and a mainhand dagger to be sure it would be triggered near constantly.

Can a necromancer just not bother to tank hits, or is that a lost cause? At first glance none of the skills seem very good at escaping anything, so I didn’t go with high damage initially because it seemed like it would have to either kill everything or die.

What about if it does end up survivable, can it actually beat anything? As a warrior I notice they like to just vomit conditions on me, which I promptly remove and pummel them for a few minutes… so, that’s not all they can do, right? Or if I want to win do I have to just live a long time and hope my enemy has poor condition removal?

Oh, and what in the nine hells is with that plague elite? Do I just select what I want it to do, and hang around people? Or do I have to keep pressing it over and over?

One press of whichever skill you want turns it on for each tick. So do yourself a favor and hit “2” once and you can jump and dodge around for 30 seconds. But yeah, thats all you can do in langolier mode.

Rennoko.5731:

One press of whichever skill you want turns it on for each tick. So do yourself a favor and hit “2” once and you can jump and dodge around for 30 seconds. But yeah, thats all you can do in langolier mode.

Oh god, I’m so stupid. I’ve been mashing the buttons for so long now. Thank you.

Life-steal as of December 13 is a waste and should be ignored.

Survivability for Necros is a tricky thing because you have almost no choice except tanking the blows.

Our toughness trait-line is pretty much obligatory, at least 20 points, for the toughness and the Staff (a weapon 90% of necros have available for swap at all times) traits.

Time your Deathshroud for right after you heal or when you get hit with CC,in this case use the 3 after they initiate a combo, such as a hundred blades , that usually guarantees the max amount of damage mitigation.

Always have a way to rebuild Life Force built into your playstyle. DS is paramount for competent Necro play and from my short experience and what my friends tell me, adrenaline isn’t for a warrior, so the F1 button is REALLY important.

I like to go 0/25/20/0/25 on my traits because the grandmasters are really sub-par, but this gives me toughness and LF pool as well as the 15 point SoulReaping minor.
The Spectral Arnir on half life is a 7 second protection passively triggered, this will usually tank damage and quickly rebuild Life force for more survival.

A final note, although our damage numbers seem low to you remember, it’s not about being more survivable than your enemies, it’s about out-living them, so DO go into damage. I use a Berserk amulet with a knight Jewel in sPvP.

I’ve actually had good results with the siphon traits. I put 30 into Blood Magic and took all of them.

I either play at range with a staff, so I’m able to avoid most things, or I switch to dagger+horn (usually when some melee guy jumps on me) in which case Locust Swarm + dagger chain siphons a decent amount of health. I also have both damage wells which siphon even more. That also deals high damage so I kinda just kill people who come into melee with me.

Also, I don’t have any vitality on my equipment. It’s mostly Knight’s. I think precision is extremely important for damage output. It also procs more siphons with one of the blood traits. I avoided getting any vitality on gear because it’s not ideal, and there are great options for getting toughness on gear which come with other desirable stats like Knight’s, Cleric’s, Rabid, and Rampager’s.

I really agree with Kiraikulos that you need to have ways to generate Life Force. Personally, I find staff and dagger good enough because they both gain Life Force in a sustained way. Death Shroud is the key to survival.

I really disagree that you need 20 Death Magic though. I don’t care about 20% CD reduction on staff at all. Greater Marks is like mandatory though so I went 10 Death Magic. Also, while Death Magic gives Toughness, it also gives Boon Duration which I think we have very little use for. I would rather have Vitality + Healing Power than Toughness + Boon Duration. Vitality is not ideal, but at least both stats significantly improve survivability.

Also, I really like Spectral Walk for WvW. You get a stun break, mobility, and the return utility which lets you do pretty interesting things.

Survivability for necro’s is entirely based on proper and liberal use of DS. If you see a big hit coming or are being jumped DS should be immediate. If you’re using DS offensively then use the skills you need and get back out. Don’t waste LF if it’s not necessary. Some ways to bolster DS are by increasing the LF pool by putting points into Soul Reaping tree as well as stacking Toughness and Vitality.

Building LF is crucial and should be considered thoughtfully when building your Necro. There are a lot of ways to do it and some weapons will give more than others i.e. Scepter low LF gain, Dagger medium LF gain, Axe high LF gain, Staff + Soul Marks (Soul Reaping X) medium-high LF gain. Spectral Walk and Spectral Armor will allow you to gain LF rapidly when under pressure and taking dmg.

Plague form is typically a “tank mode” elite mostly used by glassy spec’d Necros as an extra source of prolonged life. It won’t due much other than make you hard to kill and a minor annoyance till your teammates arrive but when it’s all you’ve got left to keep you alive a bit longer, it will do the trick.

If you want to increase dmg on a power spec look into Vulnerability and Might stacking. My current build is a 30/0/10/0/30 build with an emphasis on Vuln and might stacking and I melt faces. Amulet is either Berzerker, Knight, Soldier, or Carrion depending on the opposition and my role in the group. I prefer to play glassy and with proper DS management it can be very forgiving.

Eidt: also avoid vampiric and syphon traits as they their scaling is fubar’d currently and won’t net you enough HP to make it worth the points in the current Min/Max meta in PvP. Personally, I haven’t put a single point in that tree since week 1 after release. Huge base HP pool, DS, and lack of decent traits are more than enough reason to warrant never putting a point in that pathetic tree.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Life-steal as of December 13 is a waste and should be ignored.

Survivability for Necros is a tricky thing because you have almost no choice except tanking the blows.

Our toughness trait-line is pretty much obligatory, at least 20 points, for the toughness and the Staff (a weapon 90% of necros have available for swap at all times) traits.

Time your Deathshroud for right after you heal or when you get hit with CC,in this case use the 3 after they initiate a combo, such as a hundred blades , that usually guarantees the max amount of damage mitigation.

Always have a way to rebuild Life Force built into your playstyle. DS is paramount for competent Necro play and from my short experience and what my friends tell me, adrenaline isn’t for a warrior, so the F1 button is REALLY important.

I like to go 0/25/20/0/25 on my traits because the grandmasters are really sub-par, but this gives me toughness and LF pool as well as the 15 point SoulReaping minor.
The Spectral Arnir on half life is a 7 second protection passively triggered, this will usually tank damage and quickly rebuild Life force for more survival.

A final note, although our damage numbers seem low to you remember, it’s not about being more survivable than your enemies, it’s about out-living them, so DO go into damage. I use a Berserk amulet with a knight Jewel in sPvP.

????

0/20/0/20/30 all day every day. You will never beat me in a duel, ever. I hit easy 7,000’s with axe slot 2, life siphon gives me 317 per pulse + 38 for regular siphon + 58 for critting x 8 pulses bro. Utilities = spectral walk, spectral wall, spectral armor. When you use spectral walk and armor, you gain 3% life force for EVERY HIT you take. So if you are getting hit by anything, you basically get full life force, go into deathshroud, hit enemies for 2k-3k with life blast while giving them 2 stacks of vulnerability at the same time. pop your other spectral you have left when you get down to 0 life force, use your heal, bam back at full life force use it all again. if you are not playing this way as a necro, or using wells to give tons of protection, you are for sure doing it wrong and will always die.

hackks.3687:

Survivability for necro’s is entirely based on proper and liberal use of DS. If you see a big hit coming or are being jumped DS should be immediate. If you’re using DS offensively then use the skills you need and get back out. Don’t waste LF if it’s not necessary. Some ways to bolster DS are by increasing the LF pool by putting points into Soul Reaping tree as well as stacking Toughness and Vitality.

Building LF is crucial and should be considered thoughtfully when building your Necro. There are a lot of ways to do it and some weapons will give more than others i.e. Scepter low LF gain, Dagger medium LF gain, Axe high LF gain, Staff + Soul Marks (Soul Reaping X) medium-high LF gain. Spectral Walk and Spectral Armor will allow you to gain LF rapidly when under pressure and taking dmg.

Plague form is typically a “tank mode” elite mostly used by glassy spec’d Necros as an extra source of prolonged life. It won’t due much other than make you hard to kill and a minor annoyance till your teammates arrive but when it’s all you’ve got left to keep you alive a bit longer, it will do the trick.

If you want to increase dmg on a power spec look into Vulnerability and Might stacking. My current build is a 30/0/10/0/30 build with an emphasis on Vuln and might stacking and I melt faces. Amulet is either Berzerker, Knight, Soldier, or Carrion depending on the opposition and my role in the group. I prefer to play glassy and with proper DS management it can be very forgiving.

Eidt: also avoid vampiric and syphon traits as they their scaling is fubar’d currently and won’t net you enough HP to make it worth the points in the current Min/Max meta in PvP. Personally, I haven’t put a single point in that tree since week 1 after release. Huge base HP pool, DS, and lack of decent traits are more than enough reason to warrant never putting a point in that pathetic tree.

you are completely wrong on siphon not being worth it. the 50% better siphoning works on all attacks now.

Jason Segel.2908:

hackks.3687:

Survivability for necro’s is entirely based on proper and liberal use of DS. If you see a big hit coming or are being jumped DS should be immediate. If you’re using DS offensively then use the skills you need and get back out. Don’t waste LF if it’s not necessary. Some ways to bolster DS are by increasing the LF pool by putting points into Soul Reaping tree as well as stacking Toughness and Vitality.

Building LF is crucial and should be considered thoughtfully when building your Necro. There are a lot of ways to do it and some weapons will give more than others i.e. Scepter low LF gain, Dagger medium LF gain, Axe high LF gain, Staff + Soul Marks (Soul Reaping X) medium-high LF gain. Spectral Walk and Spectral Armor will allow you to gain LF rapidly when under pressure and taking dmg.

Plague form is typically a “tank mode” elite mostly used by glassy spec’d Necros as an extra source of prolonged life. It won’t due much other than make you hard to kill and a minor annoyance till your teammates arrive but when it’s all you’ve got left to keep you alive a bit longer, it will do the trick.

If you want to increase dmg on a power spec look into Vulnerability and Might stacking. My current build is a 30/0/10/0/30 build with an emphasis on Vuln and might stacking and I melt faces. Amulet is either Berzerker, Knight, Soldier, or Carrion depending on the opposition and my role in the group. I prefer to play glassy and with proper DS management it can be very forgiving.

Eidt: also avoid vampiric and syphon traits as they their scaling is fubar’d currently and won’t net you enough HP to make it worth the points in the current Min/Max meta in PvP. Personally, I haven’t put a single point in that tree since week 1 after release. Huge base HP pool, DS, and lack of decent traits are more than enough reason to warrant never putting a point in that pathetic tree.

you are completely wrong on siphon not being worth it. the 50% better siphoning works on all attacks now.

Still bugged on the well siphons.

But yes it works on the other ones.

The effect of regen and other small continuous heals tends to be underestimated in our community because we tend to think in terms of things like heartseeker thresholds. Barring those, regen and small continuous heals like our siphon traits can function like a second regen, and that can be very good. Siphon skills could probably use a (small coefficient) +healing component, but even now they can add up.

Think about Guardians, who have pretty small base health pools but perma-regen, and good armor and tend to have good toughness. You can read a lot about this (and the logic behind choosing vitality vs. toughness in this thread at gw2guru. High health leech necromancers just need some tuning up, but sometimes the stars will align and you’ll live a freakishly long time and it’ll feel a bit strange, and that’s what playing a Guardian is like all the time.

Jason Segel.2908:

hackks.3687:

Eidt: also avoid vampiric and syphon traits as they their scaling is fubar’d currently and won’t net you enough HP to make it worth the points in the current Min/Max meta in PvP. Personally, I haven’t put a single point in that tree since week 1 after release. Huge base HP pool, DS, and lack of decent traits are more than enough reason to warrant never putting a point in that pathetic tree.

you are completely wrong on siphon not being worth it. the 50% better siphoning works on all attacks now.

Jason Segel.2908:

life siphon gives me 317 per pulse + 38 for regular siphon + 58 for critting x 8 pulses bro.

if this is your idea of an effective source of healing then, no, I’m not “completely wrong”. Unless you’re going fullbunkertard the heals from siphoning will never keep up with maxed burst dmg builds in PvP. The fact that you had to drop a well (45-60sec cd) to get more than a two digit value on your siphon is indication enough that it’s not worth the points.

if you want to see what effective healing is I suggest you try Ele, Engi, or Guardian and then think about whether or not you want to waste your trait points on more HP and inconsequential siphons.

LOL, so I was using that skill properly after all. My god, that thing is the most awkward ability ever. One moment it’s all mashing buttons and focusing on a million things at the same time, then activate elite and kind of… loiter around people… for 20 seconds. I feel like I should stop and type ‘hi’ or something.

Okay, so I think I might try staff and axe/something with spectral skills, ‘cause I don’t think I’ve really used those much yet, and with a dagger I felt like it was kinda wasted by not often being in range of its high dmg auto attack.

check out the build thread. page 2. top post. merch’s spectral build is pretty fun.

edit: warning – it’s pretty squishy

0/20/15/30/5 – (carry multiple amulets – zerker’s, valk, knight, conditions…I want to say its Rampage or something like that, also carry Staff, Dagger x2, Focus, Axe)

I call this build Neener Neener. This is every tool Necro has on proMode. I use Lyssa runes for the additional condition save in healing support mode. People tend to watch Necro to catch them between cooldowns with conditions. I like to pee in their wheaties with an extra cooldown.

It has enough killing power running dagger/focus, axe/dagger, and zerker’s to pop full bunkers fast 1v1, and 30k hp using knights. Valk throws in some healing, but you can switch to conditions and get bleeds ticking with BiP and Epidemic over 100 on everything in range when you run the condition damage amulet.

Enjoy godmode in WvW.

0/20/30/20/0

Use Shaman Amulet, Undead Runes, Corruption skills and staff. I use a rotation of BiP, staff 2,3,4; DS 2, DS 3, dodge MoE, Staff 2, Staff 5. Epidemic if there is more then one person, corrupt boon on people with 4 or more boons up. Plague form when I’m stalling for my team.

It plays like a pseudo Guard, with 20k hp, 3k+ armor and 1K in healing. Perma regen + DS siphon heals, life siphons, and of course consume win. The final trait in death magic is a toss up. I like retaliation on heal to make our awesome heal more awesome.

hackks.3687:

Jason Segel.2908:

hackks.3687:

Eidt: also avoid vampiric and syphon traits as they their scaling is fubar’d currently and won’t net you enough HP to make it worth the points in the current Min/Max meta in PvP. Personally, I haven’t put a single point in that tree since week 1 after release. Huge base HP pool, DS, and lack of decent traits are more than enough reason to warrant never putting a point in that pathetic tree.

you are completely wrong on siphon not being worth it. the 50% better siphoning works on all attacks now.

Jason Segel.2908:

life siphon gives me 317 per pulse + 38 for regular siphon + 58 for critting x 8 pulses bro.

if this is your idea of an effective source of healing then, no, I’m not “completely wrong”. Unless you’re going fullbunkertard the heals from siphoning will never keep up with maxed burst dmg builds in PvP. The fact that you had to drop a well (45-60sec cd) to get more than a two digit value on your siphon is indication enough that it’s not worth the points.

if you want to see what effective healing is I suggest you try Ele, Engi, or Guardian and then think about whether or not you want to waste your trait points on more HP and inconsequential siphons.

I almost never lose even to full glass cannon thieves, warriors, elementalists you name it. I can make a fight last forever with how I play in a 1 vs 1.

hackks.3687:

check out the build thread. page 2. top post. merch’s spectral build is pretty fun.

edit: warning – it’s pretty squishy

Spectral utilities are only usefull for running a toughness necromancer. here is why.
Every time you take damage ytou get life force . Toughness = less damage. Use spectral walk, flesh wurm, and spectral wall. always cast spectral wall as soon as it’s back, make enemies run through it to give them max stacks of vulnerability, use your heal slot 6 and life siphon before you use spectral walk, trait for spectral skills last longer and gain life force when cast. you have a 12 ish second long life force generating ability now(spectral walk is usually 8 seconds). You cn easily have protection, give enemies fumble/weakness(reduces all their normal attacks by 50% aka non-critical attacks), while having almost permanent retalition + high toughness = you getting hit for next to nothing while sky rocketting from 0% life force to 100% because you can literally run in and you want to get hit by attacks when you pop all of this stuff to charge up life force bar.

Not to mention if you trait bottom tree you get spectral armor every 60 seconds which super charges ur life force + gives protection + 10% life force on the passive cast.

Also, using spectral walk you can run away for like 12 seconds and use spectral recall and totally get out of a fight + 33 ish seconds of swiftness on a 48 second cooldown is pretty boss(traited)

Hey Jason, what’s your gear setup? I was running full exotic Knight’s armor for about a month, so max toughness but I never got above 3k on my axe or dagger 2. I recently replaced all my trinkets with Berserker’s and the channels have gone up to about 3.5 – 4k. I use a lot of siphoning stuff (bloodthirst, vampiric precision, omnomberry bars, sigils of blood, Vampire runes), am using spectral skills, and also rarely lose 1v1’s, but I haven’t been able to get the numbers you are. Just wondering what the difference between us is.

In my current PvE build I have a little bit of everything. Mostly condition specced, but still a lot of toughness (1,8k) with about 20k hp. I almost never go down, and I still haven’t got any exotic gear on my 80. All my utilities are offensive spells, mostly corruptions and sometimes a well depending on the situation.

Got 4 conditions on me? Don’t worry, clear those in a jiffy with my scepter 4 or staff 4. These are on CD? Just pop into DS until CD is over, maybe even the AOE DS heal if there are a lot of enemies. In dungeons I’m almost always the last guy to go down if things get nasty.

I think many people underestimate the necro’s tanking abilities, I’ve been able to survive things with my necro that even my warrior couldn’t handle (even in PvP!!). Just cycle between DS until your healing skill (consume conditions is the best, unless you’re wellspecced) is done with its CD.