Guild Wars 2

I am thinking of making an asuran necromancer, but I wasn’t sure how well we soloed. I heard necromancers do it quite well, but if we don’t have our minions how well do we do? I was going to go for a life drainer type of necromancer, so that would solo quite well, but I’m a bit sceptical since we are a scholar and they aren’t meant to be strong. Also if I go for a life stealer/dd role, what weapons should I have?

If you mean solo questing/exploring then we are among the best. Minion builds or Deathshroud tanky builds both survive easily and can deal good damage.

Life stealing really isn’t an option right now, as the only siphon traits are pathetic(except for the trait that allows minions to siphon health), so as for a weapon choice, I would go with Dagger mainhand with either focus or warhorn offhand, and a staff on weapon swap.

If we are stuck without our minions, how well would we do. Also is a dual dagger build not a good one or could I use that instead of a focus/warhorn.

Dual Daggers “works”. Focus is just better damage, while Warhorn offers superior control and mobility. All-in-all, you won’t feel a big loss if you decide to go D/D, the Condi transfer can be especially helpful in certain situations and having an AoE weakness is somewhat helpful as well. But the way you can rack up Vulnerability while stacking Regen with Focus is kinda unmatched.

As for wether you need minions or not… you don’t. They will be a boon early on because Necros lack a good cleave, meaning that you’ll often have to take enemies out 1 by 1 Until you unlock your 4th DS skill and/or 3rd Axe skill, at which point you’re just going to wreck whatever comes your way in general PvE solo-content. Getting Well of Suffering early on will help as well.

Just build for Power/Prec/Crit damage (You generally don’t have to worry about HP since you have 2 health bars with DS) and use Dagger/x + Axe/x til you reach 80, then you can start worrying about your build for reals.

Ok, thanks for the help

I gave up on minions pretty early on, due to the unreliable ai. There’s also various things in the game that instantly rob you of all your minions, such as…. ahem… water… And life stealing isn’t as good as it should be either, and it never will be. Because in order to make it good, they would have to make it overpowered for pvp. So that basically would require a split between pvp and pve. And as we all know, when it comes to splitting or leaving a mechanic to be broken, they usually leave it broken (because it’s probably just a huge hassle to fix it).

I stuck with staff and wells early on. Staff is great for tagging lot of enemies (which gets you more loot during large group events), and wells are great for aoe damage (especially when you trait for focused rituals). If you invest a bit in Death Shroud, and improve your hitpoints or toughness, than a necro can solo in PVE quite well. Later on I started experimenting more with daggers and scepter for higher damage. I eventually settled on a scepter + focus combination, which has high damage, and allows you to stay at medium range.