Guild Wars 2

And I need to be educated on what to and what not to do when gearing and traiting my Necromancer. I’ve never been one for looking up a build and just using that, but I am interested in hearing what the experienced Necromancer community considers to be must-haves trait/weapon/whatever-wise for a commanding Wellomancer.

Primarily I’d like to be able to assist in tearing down enemy turtles and zergs via boon rips and condition stacking, so I assume that Corrupt Boon and Well of Corruption are must-haves. What about the third utility? Another well, Epidemic, or..? Why?

Staff is a given; what about the off-set weapons though? Rabid, Carrion, or Apothecary? How does the community feel about Well of Blood in group situations?

I apologize for all the questions, I really just like to have as wide a base of information and opinions as possible before setting out to create my builds. Any information or resources you may be able to provide will be greatly appreciated. :>

First, it depends on whether you are going into WvW or PvE. In PvE as a well-based necro, you want 30 into Blood magic, for the wells siphon per pulse trait. You also want 20 into Curses for being able to ground target them. After that, if you are aiming mainly for condition damage, then its probably good to go at least another 5 into Curses for that extra % damage per condition. In WvW drop 10 out of Blood Magic, since siphon pulses aren’t as good, and go 10 more into Blood Magic for another staff trait.

If you are wanting to use a staff, I also highly suggest going into death magic to increase the size of marks and make them unblockable, and/or shorter CDs on staff. I’d also suggest looking at getting the ability to chill with blindness.

Skill wise, if you are already aiming for using lots of wells, then go for the healing well, Well of Suffering, the well that gives blindness, and then Blood is Power, unless one of the last wells are needed (situational). Plague form for your ult.

Weapons for conditionmancers are staff and scepter/dagger or warhorn, choose what you like best. Again, its up to you. If you are using the scepter a lot intead of the staff, go 30 into curses and only 10 into death magic.

So as a well-based necro, this is a generic build:
20-30 into Curses
10-20 into Death Magic
30 into Blood Magic
Staff
Scepter + dagger/warhorn
Well of Blood
Well of Suffering
Well of Darkness
Blood is Power/Well of Power/Well of Corruption
Plague Form

And you most likely want Carrion-stats. Play around a bit, listen to what others say, and figure out what works for you.

In WvW I run with +90% Chill duration (possible to go +100% with Sigil), Chilling Darkness, Well of Darkness and Well of Corruption. Well of Suffering is nice damage, but doesn’t provide the support I want during a group fight; roaming, yes, it’s great especially after landing a Dark Pact. The Chill duration also benefits Chillblains, Spinal Shivers (great for Boon removal) and Plague of Darkness.

For my third Utility, I never unslot Spectral Walk now, whether roaming or zerging. Besides the Swiftness and juking, the ability to base jump off impossible-to-survive cliffs with full confidence is invaluable. Enemy got an Arrow Cart or Baliista bothering your Trebs at Garrison or Hills? Jump down, surprise the invaders, break the cart and laugh. Then again, this is in the context of a Power/Well build; for Condition, Epidemic is a must-have.

Well of Blood is good for group fights, both as a heal and a Light Field (Retaliation and Cleansing). However I’ve switched back to Consume Conditions for the last several nights for want of personal Condition Removals. Its effectiveness is unquestionable, though, especially with Apothecary gear and Ritual of Protection.

I tend to unslot my Spectral walk in static defence situations (or against groups that run a lot of con-bombs) to run Well of Power to turn conditions into boons. Mostly I will be running BIP & Epidemic, I don’t run enough wells, that often to flick a trait over to the ranged wells or anything else.

Good stuff. I like Spectral Walk and Grasp a lot, but Corrupt Boon and Epi will likely see a lot of bar time for me. If I want to spend a trait slot on ranged wells, I can see WoC spending a lot of time in my third slot as well, but… I really don’t know yet. Hm.

If you’re going so deep into Corruption, why not consider Corrosive Poison Cloud for its Poison and Weakness?

Corrosive unfortunately doesn’t provide a good debuff, people normally evades it quickly so the full duration is never reached. Scepter and staff provides better AoE poison and Weakness at shorter cooldown (spreading it to even more people with Epidemic) , so you can slot another utility instead.

How do people feel about focus for condition-based builds?

I feel condition based builds benefit more from dagger offhand than focus. It gives you condition transfer, which means less damage to you and any damage conditions transferred will do nice damage, plus you have bleeding/weakness from dagger 5.

That said, if you are more of a condition-support build (using non-damaging conditions for team-based support), then focus 4 for vuln and regen and focus 5 for chill would be an option, but ONLY when you aren’t aiming to go much into condition damage.

wtf. Why would you put 30 points into blood magic to get vamp wells.

In PvE vamp wells can allow you to tank the entire wave of mobs. Its only useful if you are going full wells (which I had assumed here, since the wellomancer title), but if you do, you will have 3-4 wells, each will heal quite a bit per tick. The more mobs, and the weaker they are, the more you get.

To see a good example, go into CoF with a full wells build and vamp wells, and go down the path that has you fighting the warden. When you reach that huge spawn of mobs from the egg sacs, run in the middle of it all, aggro everything you can, throw down every well you have on top of yourself, plus all your marks (minus fear), and you can tank through everything while the wells are up, plus kill off half the entire spawn.

Seriously, vamp wells in PvE is just ridiculous. Outside of PvE it isn’t nearly as good.

While the PvE perspective is appreciated, my sole interest is currently WvW. ^^

Christos de Soufre.3802:

How do people feel about focus for condition-based builds?

I used to carry dagger quite a lot (it is an excellent weapon) but have more recently switched over to focus for a while because of the amount of enemies out there running multiples of buffs.
Ripping those off will give you an advantage enough to ‘even the score’ so to speak, even if its only brief.
Corrupt boon for the same reason, the things I do to Ele’s and Guards with that are ‘unholy’… course, actually getting the mongrel to hit, that’s an entirely different problem.