Guild Wars 2

So I’m a fairly new necromancer, but not a complete noob. I play power necro, but find it hard to keep up life force in fights, which usually means I’m dead. Any suggestions?
(I run 62006 with dagger/warhorn & staff)

There’s only few skills that grant a good amount of Life Force. You can try to use Spectral Armor (every hit you recive is 8% LF) or Spectral Grasp (15% LF).
If you have problems to hiw the enemy with your dagger in melee and then to recharge your LF you can try to use the Axe, that every 6 sec grant you 12% LF when you attack the enemy with that skill. Isn’t the best dps weapon but with that build your dps come from wells and DS, not only from dagger. And a mediom range weapon is always good in spvp.
Warhorn skill 5 is good to recharge LF, but you need to stay melee.

Necromancer have some good way to build up life force in pve, but in spvp sometimes it’s hard, expecially against good or ranged enemies.

Best way for a dagger necro to build up lifeforce in one sitting is to go into Melee range with spec armor on, with warhorn 5 up, and smack some things with a dagger. Swarm plus dagger plus spec armor will generate a lot of lf quickly.

Clarify what you mean by spec’ armor, Gryph.

Oscuro, if you can do without staff, you can build LF faster. Also, there are a number of LF building traits should you feel like a compromise on your build is in order.

As Silv said, Spectral skills help build LF, too.

Spec tral armour

Focus 4, builds a good bit of life force if it doesn’t screw up, axe 2 will sort of help but I’m not a big fan of it. Staff’s AA is great for life force generation, but I’d only recommend it for something like a MM build, I’m not a big fan of staff on my power necro. Soul marks makes it so each mark gives you 3% LF. Dagger is great for building Life force IF. You can trade with someone. And warhorn 5 is amazing as well.

Spectral skills are the way to go though for quick life force generation. Spectral grasp will give you 15%, spectral armor gives you 8% per hit plus protection. Spectral walk gives 2% per hit and swiftness, and a teleport for if you need it. Not a big fan of it though honestly, requires set up and most classes can still catch you I find even after you teled.

Flesh wurm and shadow fiend give 10% life force on their respective skill usage, though flesh wurm will die….hm might have to experiment with this myself, for a possible life force build.

Also keep in mind your life force scales with your health pool, so the more health you have the more life force you’ll have. There is also a trait in the precision line that increase the length of spectral skills by 50% in addition to giving you 5% life force on spectral skill activation.

Oh! Another thing, well of corruption will also give you life force, 1% per enemy hit, it’s strange, yes, might be a bug so don’t tell anet!

yeah spectral armor/walk are the best, which is likely why devs make the comment (albeit dumb comment) that we want to be hit…

yeah, cause i like my health dropping so fast, to switch into DS and watch my “second health bar” drop just as fast, to return 3 seconds to early before my heal refreshes and die.

That ‘Want to be hit’ comment was a Freudian slip. Just ignore it as a n00b thing.

Now, if Necromancer gained a bit of health whenever hit in DS, the comment would make sense.

Don’t use axe or focus. They are both very bad in pvp. Same for shadow fiend and spectral grasp. Same for that trait that gives 5% life force on spectral use. See a pattern here? Don’t listen to casuals.

Power necro has pretty strong life force generation compared to condi.
You can trait soul marks but in my opinion it’s not worth it. It is however a perfectly viable choice if you so wish to.

You generate life force by autoattacking with either staff or dagger. Locust swarm is also insane generation. Just drop it and run through a group of enemies and it can potentially fill it from 0 to full.

The ability to manage your life force is considered a part of knowing to play the class. It’s both your offensive and defensive mechanic. I know it’s cool to see those big life blast crits but if you burn it all on that you will be very ineffective.

Thank you to everyone who commented. Getting a bit better at it with some duels and unranked games