Guild Wars 2

Considering the early stage of the game, I do enjoy how necromancer feels in every aspect of the game so far. I am a level 80 Asura necromancer, and I have theorycrafted for hours with what little the trait tree had to offer.

I knew what I wanted at the start of the game and it was to have a vampiric necromancer that would be able to dish out an insane amount of DoT whilst being as “tankish” as possible. After realizing that purely stacking toughness isn’t that effective, I mixed up my gear to have around 2.2k armor, I could probably get away with 2.1k armor, and as high of a life pool as possible.

I found out that a vampiric build is also useless considering how weak minions are and how little health you siphon. I decided to go with a insane amount of bleeding duration and condition damage while trying to utilize death shroud as much as possible considering that you can get a ton of life force if you play it right.

I am able to do well in PvE solo, I can survive dungeons considerably well, sPvP and WvW is also good, but I excel when I play with classes that have great DPS, such as a ranger, warrior or engineer.

So far I have built a “one size fits all” build that works everywhere I go, but build diversity on this class seems extremely low and I’m hoping the first buff or improvement for necromancers will be focused on the AI of the minions. I find that ranger/mesmer pet/illusions are extremely intelligent in PvP/PvE and for necromancers to get short changed on the minion AI is really painful to digest.

Although I understand that the minions are undead and just maybe they are supposed to be brain-dead, but since the risen in cursed shore are so intelligent, why can’t I have minions at least half as intelligent? But that’s just my two cents.

I too love the necromancer and will stick with mine. However I’ve been disillusioned so far as the best build and only truly viable (in my opinion) is what I would have chosen as my last choice for the theme.

First Choice: I tried MM and was very underwhelmed by a plethora of issues
Second Choice: Vampire build was appealing, but the reality was pathetic
Third Choice: Death Shroud focus sounded cool. Do everything I could to maximize the potential, damage, longevity, and survivability of DS. Unfortunately this was a flop as well because of the slow auto-attack and quickness that DS was drained from me even fully spec’ed
Last Choice: Master of conditions. This is the most viable and has been what has allowed me to advance my necro.

Invictus I do agree with you, the ideas for other spec options are good just not viable. Conditions right now is the only real viable spec. Power can be good only if you have lich form off cooldown. But over all the class does need help as far as giving you more options that are actually usable.

I will never leave my necro but if you like where we are then you haven’t experienced more polished professions and don’t realize how bad we have it.

We need a stability, but other than that we just need to be better at predicting when to bail.

Yeah, even though I want to try other builds etc I always end up going back to my scepter. The condition scepter/dagger feels way much stronger then the other builds at the moment – which is a shame.

I tried some power build and it was almost ok (very good with lich form) but it just wasnt worth it in the end.

I’m getting tired of the scepter casting animation and I havent found any cool looking scepters yet

I’m having success with Dagger/Dagger and Staff. The 3 skill lockdown with MH Dagger is perfect. I took the Chill on Blind Trait and the traits that add life syphon and protection to wells. I can lock someone down, drop a well at their feel to blind, chill, life syphon, and give me protection, then stab them in the face. I crit stacked so the quick dagger attacks hit crits often and haven’t lost 1v1 in PvP yet. I also took the 15% movement bonus for dual daggers so I chase down fleeing people with ease.

Staff I use mainly for groups and hit 2,3,4,5 almost always as quickly as possible. Get the bleed, then chill+poison, then Weakness Combo with 4 then Fear to make them scatter. Switch to daggers, lock down with 3, hit them with 4 bouncing blind, maybe drop a well or two and get to stabbing.

cerulean moth.2743:

I also took the 15% movement bonus for dual daggers so I chase down fleeing people with ease.

From a post that has been floating around here it seems that that trait does not stack with itself. If you have a dagger in MH you get 10% speed, and if you have it in the OH you get 5% speed. But together you only get 10% speed and it does not stack with other speed buffs such as SoL or the warhorn’s 5 skill.

Thanks for the info! I still like the trait, but wish I got the full 15%…

Really want to continue my necro but no point until minions are 100% fixed because thats the way I want to play. Oh well at least theres no sub fee so i can go do something else and wait for them to get buffed then come back.

Monarch.4026:

I will never leave my necro but if you like where we are then you haven’t experienced more polished professions and don’t realize how bad we have it.

Nope, I do realize how bad we have it.

Scape.2581:

Monarch.4026:

I will never leave my necro but if you like where we are then you haven’t experienced more polished professions and don’t realize how bad we have it.

Nope, I do realize how bad we have it.

Than don’t create threads like this!

ArenaNet employee scrolls through forums and find your thread “Oh look, he’s happy with it. Hey guys, get back to fix Guardians, Necro’s are happy as it is”

Seriously….

It’s the opposite from RL work where you can do 100things good, but if you screw up once everyone will remember how you screwed up but not how you did 100 other things good.

I personally chose the Necro because the DoT/condition control build really appealed to me, but I don’t like that that is basically the only build that I feel does well. I wish they would bring the axe back up closer to its BWE1 power. Ever since they’ve nerfed it, I’ve been underwhelmed by it’s damage. I’m personally not a big fan of minions, but they could be so much better with just a few tweaks. There’s a lot of stuff about the Necro that I would like to see changed.

sharky.5860:

Scape.2581:

Monarch.4026:

I will never leave my necro but if you like where we are then you haven’t experienced more polished professions and don’t realize how bad we have it.

Nope, I do realize how bad we have it.

Than don’t create threads like this!

ArenaNet employee scrolls through forums and find your thread “Oh look, he’s happy with it. Hey guys, get back to fix Guardians, Necro’s are happy as it is”

Seriously….

It’s the opposite from RL work where you can do 100things good, but if you screw up once everyone will remember how you screwed up but not how you did 100 other things good.

Right, but apart from the hundreds of other threads that are filled with displeasure, simply telling them what to fix and not necessarily what they like. I’m hoping on the off-chance one of them actually reads this and says, “Hey, at least the class was heading in the right direction, now all we need to do is polish it.”

I feel that if we keep asking for straight buffs, it’s a possibility that they might nerf something to re balance the class that we actually liked in the first place, which I want to avoid. All this class needs is minor tweaks to put it on par with the other classes.

Scape.2581:

Right, but apart from the hundreds of other threads that are filled with displeasure, simply telling them what to fix and not necessarily what they like. I’m hoping on the off-chance one of them actually reads this and says, “Hey, at least the class was heading in the right direction, now all we need to do is polish it.”

Agreed. This forum has enough complaining (in fact maybe too much complaining) a bit of positivity isn’t going to hurt.

is good to say what is well for they change the right things

Thank you so much for this
As weak as the necromancer may be, I found it to be extremely survivable – and that was something even my group was quite happy about when we were in AC.
Also, I just like the feel of the class, and going with a MM made PvE rather easy for the most part, even as broken as they are. Just imagine what we would be capable of if they merely repaired the broken traits and tweaked our damage output or ability to stack and maintain conditions
(Yes, I would be most happy about a redesign of the trait lines, but that’s secondary, really)

I plan to try to figure something out in the way of a viable build that isn’t based on condition spam, but I have serious doubts. It would be nice if I could do so knowing that several dozen of our traits and skills didn’t have some bug associated with them.