Guild Wars 2

When I first started playing the game, I took a mesmer. I was a mesmer in GW1, and I started with that here. And lo, it was good. My second class in GW1 was an assassin, so I made a thief. And lo, it was better. THen I made an elementalist, and I hate every moment of it. Sorely underpowered, lacking in defense. Just terrible overall. And I remained that way for a long time, until I sat down and played with the mechanics. And I learned how to play as an ele, and turned into a kitten fine elementalist.

I’ve come to believe that there is a right way and a wrong way to play any class. Certain weapons work, others don’t, at least for solo PVE. However, I tried to make a necro, and I cannot make it work. But people insist that the necro is viable, so I’m asking: How do you play a necro? What weapons do you use? What utilities do you carry? How do you make this class viable? With all the nerfs lately, is it viable at all solo? It has to be, because WvW is meant for level 80s, and you have to, more or less, solo your way up there.

For me, the PvE Necro is all about control. Every weapon has some way of controlling the enemies around you by either, crippling, chilling, blinding, or weakening them. Any weapon can work, but not all weapon combinations make sense (to me).
Consume Conditions is a very important skill that should be on your bar in almost every situation.
Because Necromancers have no access to vigor, it is important to have a good defensive mechanism to rely on. If you’re not built around using Death Shroud skills offensively, Death Shroud can be your defense. Otherwise, you can use Spectral Armor, or wells.
Using Death Shroud appropriately is incredibly important. Depending on your build, DS #1 can be your most valuable damage skill, or completely useless. The same goes for DS #4.

The most important thing is that apart from a few skills (e.g. Epidemic, Consume Conditions) most skills are not incredibly powerful unless you trait them (watch out for traits like Axe Training, Chilling Darkness, Terror, Master of Terror, Hemophilia, Focused Rituals etc.). The Necromancer has quite a few traits that can drastically change the utility you can get out of certain skills, and those traits are very important.

For almost my entire necro’s life, I was a pure conditionmancer. Between scepter/dagger + staff + wells I had all the AoE I ever wanted. I could never settle on traits for it though (besides 30 in Curses obviously)

But recently I gave up on conditionmancer and decided to go powermancer with a focus on DS. I use dagger/focus + staff, 30/10/0/0/30 traits.

30 Spite: Spiteful Talisman, Reaper’s Might, Close to Death
10 Curses: Weakening Shroud
30 Soul Reaping: Path of Midnight, Soul Marks, Deathly Perception.

Between dagger 1, focus 4 and staff 1-5, I have no problem generating LF quickly. That ensures I can use DS more often, which triggers Weakening Shroud and lets me spam Life Blast to stack might, which makes my dagger autos hurt more when I switch back. I also throw in Spectral Armor, Well of Darkness, Well of Suffering and Flesh Golem as the elite.

For solo PvE purposes this gets me by just fine. It kills things faster than conditionmancer and it’s more fun to play too. I sort of agree in that there’s a few “right” ways to play a class; for me that means utilizing your class’s unique mechanic properly. I struggled for a way to get DS to work together with conditions, but unfortunately the design of DS just doesn’t allow for that. So I went power and I’m having a much better time as a result.

Mojoe why a staff tho?

personally i like d/d(w) + a/f
maintaining LF is easier, and you don’t have to take soul marks opening up Near to Death, for even more use of DS.

Hah of course it’s viable, but like any other class, you need to practice. Personally, I use conditions because I’m not a fan of power. When using condition-based weapons, you will find yourself with lots, and lots, and lots of ground targeted skills. Now… when you fight someone and you are feeling the pressure of battle, you have to press the skill, hover over the ground and click, which can be sort of… clunky. A strong suggestion is to use fast-casting, which casts your spell immediately where your mouse is. At first I laughed when I heard people using it, but after trying it, I will never ever ever go back.

But for more necro-stuff. You must utilize Death Shroud a lot. A lot. When you get hit by a stun and expect another big hit, get into DS. When you are retreating and are filled with conditions, hit DS. It takes practice, but DS it quite powerful and in my opinion, it is excellent at mitigating damage. Of course it’s no “endure pain” or “mist form”, but still. It has very many uses and takes time to “master”. You can also use Dark Path on neutral monsters in WvW to widen the gap between you and someone who is chasing. Also, if you use staff, I highly recommend Soul Marks. A way to look at that trait is…it heals you for 3.3% of health per mark.

Different people play it differently, but the way I go about it is to try to keep your enemies controlled. Keep on the move and keep the crowd control on the enemies, be it chills, roots, cripples or fears. (which is why I prefer warhorn, as opposed to off-hand dagger). If a target is melee, like a thief, I tend to kite a lot until they drain. If the target is ranged, I tend to go aggressively at them because I have nothing against range. Unlike melee, which I can kite/slow/CC, I can’t do the same to ranged people (or at least not to the same extent. They can still shoot me while slowed, for example). Try to close the gap with dark path and keep moving, circling around the target and going behind the back where they cant shoot (you can dodge through the target to go behind them). It especially messes with channeled abilities, like rifle Volley, for example. This may not be the kind of advice you were looking for, but I hope it helps.

I play it well..