Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

What you guys suggest to level a Necro in the open world to 80? I mean: weapons, utilities, equips, and trait lines?

Above all else, I’d like to have enough survivability to solo anything.

I wish I could go minion master, but I know minions are way too boring since they simply do not engage when they should, so I’d rather have offensive utilities.

So far I’m considering S/D as main weapons, probably with A/F as secondary. Also considering to focus on wells, due to the easy AoE damage output. Regarding traits I have no idea..

I never played a condition character, so this may be the opportunity. However, I understand power scales faster at lower levels (e.g. 25 stacks from sigil of bloodlust can double my power), so maybe I should focus on power equips..

So, any tips?

hey leasm,
for open world i would always take a warhorn offhand for the swiftness. im using dagger as my main hand which together with early investment into blood magic grants you 25% movement without signet of the locust due to "quickening thirst" and after that increased locust swarm aka swiftness duration with "banshees wail".

for utilitys i prefer wells and spectral walk. wells give u a really nice burst damage and they are also great for tagging stuff. spectral walk can do some cool things with the teleport and also grants swiftness and life force.

well of suffering does a good amount of damage.
well of corruption does damage and grants life force.
well of power removes condis from you.
well of darkness is a great pulsing aoe blind.

choose which you think you need for the encounter. against large groups blinds are always good. against condi (for example burning in all the fire areas) you need condi clears.

as a heal consume condition is always good to clear the last condi of of you after the fight and get your running speed back (after the self applied vuln goes away)

but its also ok to stay with your scepter and go condi if u want but i would advice you to always have a warhorn as speed and the stun (mobs in pve dont move when they get dazed so its practically a stun) are very good in open world pve. some people also recommend a staff for tagging and the fear and condi removal but i personally dont like it for open world.

gear is not really important during leveling. take what you get from your personal story (of u do it) and dont invest money into it.

disclaimer for hater: dagger/warhorn with wells being the meta zerker dungeon build is purely coincedence. this is just my favorite and recommended way of leveling.

have a nice day and have fun leveling. if u need ingame help just message me

Minion master, dagger/whatever, go for it. You can solo two champs at once. Minions tank, you spank.

If you want to know the more technical reason why this is vastly superior to anything else in PvE, its quite simple. You have dagger for the dps and 25% speed. Minions keep any target perma-crippled. Nothing more to it.

My only issue with dagger is the range. I really hate being at melee.

So, is scepter also a good weapon for leveling? (I understand scepter is just getting a buff)

Should I decide staying with the scepter, which trait should I aim for? (Soul Reaping line seems great, specially Dhuumfire)..

sorry that i dont really know how fast u can master the trait lines nowadays. gw2 had a really different leveling system before so i dont know if going for a grandmaster like "dhuumfire" is really worth for leveling. normally i pick utility traits for leveling. damage is not the most important thing you can get from traits during leveling. as you probably have already guessed my no.1 priority for leveling is swiftness as it increases open world pve by a lot.

if u wanna go with scepter because u want the range go for it. its good to try everything atleast once so you know why something is the best when your level 80 in certain situations like eg. dungeon fractals or soon raids. i would even advice to try axe today before it gets buffed to see for yourself how bad it is. its quite ok for open world pve but if u compare it with scepter or dagger its quite lacking.

going into soul reaping is still a good idea as it makes you tankier with things like "last gasp" or "vital persistence". also even without dagger blood magic is still very good for leveling with the added survivability from "blood bond" "vampirirc" and then "vampiric presence" or the swiftness from "banshees wail". this trait setup is aimed for giving you the survivability you wanted to survive while youre learning the class to make your leveling phase more pleasant, not as fast as possible.

try it a bit and when youve played a bit tell me your results, im interested how it went. as always if u need help and im online just ask.