Guild Wars 2

I’ve been enjoying my Necro. Coming from previously all Melee classes (war/guard/thief), I found this “clothie” the most fun for my playstyle.

I did have a few questions though, and at least from what I could tell the tutorials at the top were mainly discussing 80 builds and such.

- Is it worth it using minions to level? I seem to enjoy using more spells and laying down fields with my skill points than summoning my Fiends. They seem to die to fast and the cooldown on them makes me detest them just a bit. (But maybe I’ll be able to spec in to things later that fix that?)

- Right now for the most part I’m using Dagger/Dagger, with a swap to Staff if I need to AOE things or generally, get help making distance to get away. I do read a bit about Scepter/Dagger though so wondering when does that become worthwhile. For my lowbie it feels like the damage just isn’t there right now. (I’m not up to the 3 statted Armor yet so perhaps once that opens up this will be a little better)

- For all my other classes i’ve done great leveling doing Precision > Vitality > Power Trait lines (Ignoring the others usually). Does this mentality work well with Necro leveling also?

Tried to keep these simple

Minions are great for soloing in PvE (story mode, world explore, hearts, etc) but for large world events/WvW, imo minions are not as useful. Can’t speak much for PvP as I haven’t played much, but I have read mixed reviews. You can do a bit of both too (have a couple of summons if you want) and I’m sure you’ll still be able to survive if you play it right

“For my lowbie it feels like the damage just isn’t there right now.” You will hear alot of complains that even at level 80 the damage just isn’t there lol — but ignore the naysayers! imo Necros do not have great burst damage, but boy can they destroy groups over time.

From what I know, it really depends on your build. Your condition damage cannot crit, but Wells/other attacks are able to…so use those situations to determine what you need. An example is that some necro skills cause self bleed/poison, so extra vit is helpful, but you can also transfer those conditions or get more from your healing etc.

Ultimately, have fun necros are a great and challenging class to play

1) I dropped my minions in my mid-20s and IMO felt it was much better for my ease of leveling by allowing me to use other skills and avoid the random aggro issues with minions.
2) I switched to Staff + Scepter/Dagger after using Staff + Dagger/Dagger for most of my leveling. Scepter/Dagger is better; although I admit that when I tried Scepter out at lower levels I wasn’t that impressed (then again, I also didn’t really understand the game as well then).
3) So many trait possibilities. I run 0/0/10/30/30, which probably makes me an idiot to some, but I enjoy it (28K+ health, 20% CD decrease on wells & staff skills, large lifeforce pool, etc.)

minions are good , they are very fragile until you get the traits for them but with mark of evasion you can help them survive lot longer (and mark of blood when you use staff. )

when there aren’t many enemies that cause conditions i would suggest focus to off hand, it gives some extra with vulnerability on #4 (and healing) and chills are always nice.

with necro you could also go glass cannon build and still be quite tough thanks to death shroud and good hp. specially if you have minions take some agro. but it is your choice.

if you trait for minion master and vampiric master, you can pretty much never worry about getting in trouble as you level (keep a staff as one of your weapon sets to drop a regen on them from time to time… then nuke with whatever your other weapon set you have specced). easily one of the most faceroll professions to level with.

PS i do agree minions are far less useful in groups (dungeon or DE) since they have horribad ai, tend to randomly pull stuff, dont always attack what you want etc etc.
For those cases I go condition/wellmaster to either aoe tag better or help my group with darkfields.

I have a question what is the best tool for travel with the Necromancer? I’m using Spectral Walk and Signet of the Locust for general travel but I hate that I have to switch these 2 every time I’m going into a fight. And the Warhorn when active it can hit yellow monsters and slow me down. Which is the better combination?

Unless you are explicitly using swiftness for very long periods of travel, spectral walk alone should provide more than enough map mobility. Spectral walk can also be used during combat to generate life force, so there wouldn’t be any need to switch utilities for combat (although I wouldn’t recommend using spectral walk in a dungeon unless you’re doing speed runs).

@Exphryl
It honestly sounds like you have no idea what to do with utilities, weapons, or even stats. There are many, many good guides on these forums (as well as guildwars2guru) that should be able to assist you.

Minions are pretty poor for leveling, they take up utility slots that can be much better used eleswhere(except for bone minions, those are amazing in power builds). Conditions are much better. As a necro you don’t really want to go for vitality, toughness is MUCH better for use due to death shroud effectively giving us 36k base health.

Flesh golem is a great minion for PvE. Better than lich and plague in most situations. Charge does a lot of damage against structures, which is really good if you are a condtion spec

I run with 1 minion just as an extra meat shield while leveling. I drop it for DEs as it’s not useful in any way. I’ve been focusing on conditions so Scepter/Dagger + Staff is the way to go. Make sure your gear has vitality in it because you can have an insance health pool and with abilities that can bleed you or the like, it’s a good idea. Then you can send all those conditions right back to your target. I’ve heard the minion AI is awful so I’ve personally stayed away from any MM builds. Plus, MMs have slots 6-0 full of minions and it means a boring leveling process. But I don’t think we really need them: we have so many ways to slow enemies & blind them, plus we have an extra hp bar (DS) so our survivability is higher than most think.
Some points:
From what I understand, DS is a power-based ability, not precision.
Scepter/Dagger gets more mileage out of +condition than any other stat.
Vulnerability is good…unless you’re dealing condition dmg, which isn’t affected by it.
Play with skill synergy. Skills that self-inflict conditions, then Plague Signet, Staff’s Putrid Mark, Dagger’s Deathly Swarm, Well of Power, or Consume Conditions are amazing.