Guild Wars 2

MORE BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD:

Welcome to La Magra my newly turned minion. You must be here because of your insatiable hunger for blood and loot bags. Fear not, the almighty blood god has chosen to share his secrets with you. Drink deep my friend, for the night is still young and there is much to learn.

LA MAGRA:

I call this build “La Magra,” a homage to the blood god in Blade. This build was born out of hours upon hours of creating the ultimate lifesteal necromancer. Many sacrifices of small children and fluffy white creatures were made in pursuit of discovering La Magra’s secrets. This build works in almost all facets of the game, from PvE to WvW. It deals incredible aoe damage, has high survivability, and is incredibly fun to play. First off you will need to setup as follows:

BUILD:

Curses: (20)
V-Reaper’s Precision (1% life steal on crit)
VIII-Banshee’s Wail (Warhorn effects last longer, reduced CD on Warhorn skills)

Death Magic: (20)
IV-Dark Armor (Gain 400 armor while channeling)
I-Protective Rituals (3s Protection on Well cast) *Swappable for Reaper’s Protection (Fear when CC’ed) for PvP

Blood Magic: (30)
II-Blood Thirst (Siphoning is 50% more effective)
v-Vampiric Precision (Siphon on crit)
XII-Vampiric Rituals (Wells siphon on pulse)

GEAR:

Primary Weapons: Knight’s Dagger of Blood (Sigil of Blood) / Knight’s Warhorn of Leeching (Sigil of Leeching)
Secondary Weapons: Rabid Staff of Blood (PvE) or Knight’s Dagger of Blood / Knight’s Focus of Leeching

Armor: Knight’s Armor x6 Runes of the Vampire
Jewelry: Knight’s Jewels

FOOD:

Omnomberry Ghost (Lifesteal on crit, always have Lvl 80 lifesteal food running)

SKILLS:

Healing: Consume Conditions
Slot:
-Well of Suffering
-Well of Power
-Signet of the Locust
Elite: Plague

(cont.)

STRATEGY:

So as you can see, the build operates on leveraging insane life siphoning capabilities. On a single critical strike you have the chance to proc the following:

-Siphon on hit
-Siphon from Sigil of Blood
-Siphon from food
-1% life force

If hit you have a %5 chance to siphon. When dropping wells, each well pulse can siphon health + procs the above when critting. Additionally, the locust swarm has extremely high uptime from the warhorn and will crit 1-2 times a second for even more life steal procs.

When channeling life siphon from the dagger you gain 400 armor and an insane amount of health + procs. In PvE you can pretty much facetank any mob without one shots just using health steal. Dropping well of corruption, using locust swarm, and spamming dagger strikes will do insane amounts of AoE and siphon huge amounts of health.

In addition to siphoning health you also gain life force on crits. You will be critting rapidly with fast dagger attacks, the locust swarm, and dropped wells of corruption. The swarm also grants additional life force, so this build generates life force extremely fast.

This build will devour almost all PvE content. There are certain fights that you can’t melee so just have a staff handy just in case. Anything that allows you to move into melee will be easy. You will be doing massive damage with stacked locusts, dagger stabs, and the wells. On top of that you will be extremely hard to kill and can face tank swarms of mobs.

ZERG BREAKING:

A powerful feature of this build is zerg breaking. La Magra can deal insane amounts of damage when used to spearhead a push into a highly packed zerg. The zerg breaking strat is as follows:

-Push into the enemy zerg with Plague Form, spam mass blinds.
-When Plague form ends immediately drop well of corruption and burn locust swarm
-Drop well of Power
-Wail of Doom to CC everyone in front of you
-When low on health, retreat out of the zerg while using life transfer

You will be siphoning so much health, you will pretty much be a beacon of massive damage right in the center of the enemy group. Additionally your entire team is getting buffed from well of power and nullifying enemy conditions. I’ve seen 30+ loot bags drop for me on just one zerg break, especially when your flanking a group pressed on a tower door.

The build fares decently solo but you never want to be caught alone without a zerg. Without support almost any necro build will have trouble with D/D eles, who have massive amounts of CC and survival power. Thieves are remarkably easy to kill with this. Just pop locust when you know they are going to spike you, DS their spike, immobilze them and drop wells where they stealth. Also, life siphon (dagger 2) will continue to deal damage to stealthed thieves as long as they are within 600m of you. When a shadow refuge goes up, always try to pop life siphon and watch where your necromancer’s hand is pointing. It will peg the thief’s location, so if you have locust swarm up, just run to where your hand is pointing and watch the thief come out of stealth crippled. Then immob them, chain to fear, stab them, chain to warhorn for max CC, and finish them off.

The build will fare well against almost any other class in 1v1 with the exception of D/D eles (requires precision CCs with fear, warhorn, and spinal shivers). Focus is good to use in PvP because spinal shivers is extremely powerful. It will allow you to freeze + boon strip boon factory engineers and D/D eles (you can kill them, as long as you play well).

The 10% HP Mist Form from the Vampire Rune can help you escape from fights, along with DS. The necro class is not the best at escaping, which is why it is better to run with the zerg. You can gain 10-20 loot bags per rush just pressing into enemy teams and obliterating them with locust swarm + wells.

La Magra necros are also excellent chasers and you can lock down an enemy for a long time with fear + warhorn. You also have multiple movement restrictors including the locust aura, spinal shivers (5s chill), and the dagger immobilize.

Anyone within 900m of you who doesn’t dodge can easily be trapped to be picked off by your teammates and the zerg. The build is also great for chasing down retreating zergs and picking off people scattering at the tail end.

Another thing to note about the 10% mist form is that it will proc on your DS lifebar. At low DS you can proc mist form from the vampiric rune to get away from encounters.

Anyhow, enjoy and be sure to make offerings to the blood god if you discover ways to improve his ways.

Awesome opening. Looks fun! I’ve always been a fan of life siphon. Now I just need to test this.

This is nearly identical to my first hybrid build, but you focus more on the raw power and I like it been wanting to try something new so I’ll give it a whirl.

lordhelmos.7623:

It deals incredible aoe damage, has high survivability, and is incredibly fun to play.
(cont.)

High survivability – i’ll give you that but there’s no access to vigor and stability – If you can’t hit them your lifesteal no work. (which is why necros are most useful defending keeps and manning walls with staff )

Incredibly fun to play – yes of course.

Incredible aoe damage – (look at the knights and rabid, without crit damage, also no traiting into spite) sure, 5 seconds every 45 seconds and providing those idiots stand in the kitten well for the whole duration.

high survivability and incredibly fun to play yes. But don’t even start on the incredible damage.

I’ve never tried it, but I didnt know that the 10% HP mistform on the Vampirism Runes could proc when in DS! If it really is so, this could be a game changer for Necros, since we can get to 10% DS repeatedly at low risk without jeopardizing our HP.

Couple comments about the build:
1. Does seem like a really fun build (I havent tried it), but it makes me feel like a one trick pony, especially with the long CD on Wells and Plague.
2. If you’re rolling just daggers and focus+WH, you can leave the MH Secondary slot empty, although I think having an axe as secondary is better. Axe #2 was just buffed, it can proc lifesteal quite a bit (and in shorter time), and helps in DS generation too.
3. For WvW, it’d be useless in a castle siege, but good for running with the zerg.
4. Particularly for this build, the human elite “Reaper of Grenth” could be useful in proccing lifesteal too, plus poison and chill.

abelooi.9156:

lordhelmos.7623:

It deals incredible aoe damage, has high survivability, and is incredibly fun to play.
(cont.)

High survivability – i’ll give you that but there’s no access to vigor and stability – If you can’t hit them your lifesteal no work. (which is why necros are most useful defending keeps and manning walls with staff )

Incredibly fun to play – yes of course.

Incredible aoe damage – (look at the knights and rabid, without crit damage, also no traiting into spite) sure, 5 seconds every 45 seconds and providing those idiots stand in the kitten well for the whole duration.

high survivability and incredibly fun to play yes. But don’t even start on the incredible damage.

Most of these problems are inherit to the necro class itself. There is no reliable way to get stability. There is no reliable short CD stunbreak (spectral walk being the shortest and usable in this build).

Wells are also made for team support. Necro was not made to be played without support or to roam. While you can still try, you will always be at a disadvantage alone due to innate class design.

For castle sieges, I carry a staff around. With points in death, you can swap to greater marks for your 20pt to defend.

I disagree that manning walls with a staff is all you can do. With fear, chill, WH shutdown, and so many snares you can shut down people reliably running this.

I’ve dropped off walls into the middle of zergs multiple times to push entire teams off doors. Plague can be incredibly strong in a siege scenario and creates windows for your team to push back or flank.

Interesting, gonna try this out later. I’ve been all conditions (lopez-build) until now, gonna be nice to mix it up a little with some direct damage and siphoning.

Excited!

Reaper’s precision does not give 1% life steal on crit. It has a 33% chance on crit, of adding 1% LF.

And as always, the steal that carry the build is not the traits but the food…

Honestly ANet…

So when you’re running this build, what’s your crit rate before/after Fury?

are you sure mist form procs on DS?

i’ve been mucking around in the mists with this build a bit and i haven’t been able to get that to happen. works fine on HP though.

edit: looking the necro bug thread it seems that these types of runes have been addressed and no longer work with DS %

digiowl.9620:

And as always, the steal that carry the build is not the traits but the food…

Honestly ANet…

Not even this anymore, the food is nerfed now lol, so not only do you only have a % chance to steal on crit, once you do, it goes on a cooldown.

This is pretty close to the build I’ve been running forever (and have mentioned various times on the forums). You can switch out Curses and Spite points depending upon what combination of dagger, axe, focus, and warhorn you want to run and everything will still work. I covered my latest modifications in Nemesis’ thread at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-Abomination-necromancer-tank-build/first#post1621070

(And the fact that there are numerous things you can swap out in the build given personal preference without breaking it is why I think necros aren’t lacking in flexibility, though there are a few key areas that I think necros are missing things)