Guild Wars 2

Necromancers, or the equivalent, are always some of my favorite classes in games. I love the DoT type classes and I like having pets. I have been playing my Guardian and have enjoyed being the guy that pretty much doesn’t die because of Blinds, Blocks, and having good Defense. Now I want to try the guy that throws out a plague and leeches from the enemy.

Now, my highest guy is like level 52. I have been playing about a week so I could really use some advice on what is the best way to go about slaughtering dudes and leveling. I started one and noticed that pets were an utter joke. If I had to describe what they were like in a single word, that word would be “weenies.”

Cheers.
-Azernak0

No advice on leveling builds?
Gear choices for leveling?
Bueller? Bueller?

Minions suffer greatly from ai problems, that have yet to be fixed (in fact, the ai got worse after release). Conditions are still powerful, although less so against champions. And speccing towards fear works rather well in my experience.

Necromancers that invest in Death Shroud benefit from better survivability. Mix this with a bit of vitality and toughness, and you can hold your own in a battle. Plague is an excellent elite for spamming blind on large mobs, although for bosses Lich Form is better due to the damage.

For leveling, I would stick to the staff, due to its ability to quickly tag lots of enemies (which is great for large group events). Switch it out occasionally for something like the scepter or dagger, if you’re facing single foes. There’s various runes that are useful for the necromancer. Runes of Torment and Runes of Nightmare are very helpful. But there are some other less standard runes out there that can also come in handy. Such as Rune of the Vampire and Rune of the Centaur.

If you’re trying to be tanky, then with blind spam (plague) and cripple spam (from the scepter) you can keep enemies at bay. Throw in some traited increased fear durations, and you can keep enemies at bay with ease.

daggers+wells on leveling = giant signle target and aoe damage.

I think that MM is a God XD
’m a MM ( in both gw1 and gw2 ).
I got 5 80es characters ( MM necro , trapper ranger , demolisher engineer , cleric guardian , signet/shout/banner warrior ).
I think that MM is the best one and I’m the last man standing in dungeons.
In PvP , I can kill any one ( I killed 4 players at once while camping ).
You just need to know how to control them and keep them alive.
My build >> http://tinyurl.com/opjsdrw
Soldier armor will grant you much Toughness and some Vitality so you won’t worry if they killed ur minions.
begin the fight with staff ( land all marks ) then switch to dagger/focus ( you will get might when switching ) , use 4th and 5th skills , 3rd to immobilize your foe , transform to DS and use 5th skills and 3rd ( to increase 5th skill damage by 200% ) , after that use 4th skill to heal your minions , 2nd to tele to your foe , return to your normal form and spam dagger chain attack , then switch to staff …… and so on.. ( This is how I play )

I still think that MM is better than conditions .

I think minions are not nearly as good as they could be. Flesh Golem often stand around, doing nothing, or it charges the wrong target (and of course it dies underwater). Jagged Horrors often run away from the target, and the other minions often are very slow to attack an enemy. In a one on one battle, minions might give you the upper hand. But in general PVE and dungeons, I think they are rubbish.

I’m leveling a necro currently (lvl 64) and am using a power based Axe+Focus/Dagger DS & minion build. I deal awesome damage with my axe and in DS, but also have my minions to deal damage and soak it up. Open world leveling is a joke this way and I can take on mobs of enemies without much trouble.

With 30/x/x/x/30 I can easily drop my minions and use BiP and wells for dungeons without having to respec. At 80, I’ll reevaluate.

Thanks for all the advice. I was just playing around with a Necromancer and just felt that minions were turds.

So the best bet is using Wells and such? What about traits for leveling? If you would be so kind, explain what each trait means. 9 days total played does not an expert make.

Be well.

When leveling going for power is always a safe bet. So wells and the spite line should be good choices. Dont worry about builds too much until you reach 80 though. Just try things out and have fun with the class.

Leveling my third necro to 80 now… (yea, yea, I’m nuts).

For the initial levels……..

Using minions is almost a must due to the skill point layout. Make use of the minions secondary skills: the Haunt skill on Shadow Fiend is very effective, immobilize on Bone Fiend is helpful to stop charging critters, and blow up your Bone Minions with gusto!

I use scepter/warhorn or scepter/dagger. Make extensive use of the blind on dagger, and warhorn daze. Locust swarm for getting around…at least until I got the Locust Signet.

I put points first into Blood to reach Bloodthirst. Then the next 10 into Death.

Gear is vitality/power mix.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Minions suffer greatly from ai problems, that have yet to be fixed (in fact, the ai got worse after release).

Completely false. Minion AI at launch was very similar to GW1, except your own skills could override their aggro (to a degree, it was a complex aggro mechanic), then they removed the aggressiveness (because it was annoying as hell to try to do anything when Flesh Golem was 5000 units away murdering bunnies), which caused them to have a lot of aggro problems. They also removed the non-requirement to actually hit a target, and thus in a way reduced their aggro radius to your longest range ability that could cause aggro; they relied on some pretty wonky mechanics to acquire aggro.

However they have reverted that middle stage, while retaining the passiveness out of aggro. Essentially what they did was brought back the way minions originally acquired aggro from you (on beginning of any target-based spell cast, up to their max range), and kept the change that reverted their over aggressiveness.

Currently minions will actually already be on your target and attacking depending on the cast/travel time/distance of the skill you used.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think minions are not nearly as good as they could be. Flesh Golem often stand around, doing nothing, or it charges the wrong target (and of course it dies underwater). Jagged Horrors often run away from the target, and the other minions often are very slow to attack an enemy. In a one on one battle, minions might give you the upper hand. But in general PVE and dungeons, I think they are rubbish.

If Flesh Golem charges the wrong target, it was 100% your fault. Without a target he charges in the direction he is facing, with a target he starts moving towards them as it casts, then at the finish of the cast he runs in a straight line at them. In other words, its an l2p issue.

Bhawb.7408:

However they have reverted that middle stage, while retaining the passiveness out of aggro. Essentially what they did was brought back the way minions originally acquired aggro from you (on beginning of any target-based spell cast, up to their max range), and kept the change that reverted their over aggressiveness.

And it still works terribly. They didn’t fix anything. Minions are still unreliable as hell.

Bhawb.7408:

Currently minions will actually already be on your target and attacking depending on the cast/travel time/distance of the skill you used.

Or they will be busy running away, as visible in the screenshot I provided above. You can’t really get around an actual in-game screenshot. Those minions are definitely running away from the target, while I’m actively targeting and attacking the enemy. And it’s a flat surface as well! There is no excuse for those minions to be running back and forth. There is a clear road to the enemy, I’m close to the enemy, I’m targeting it, AND I’m attacking it. THIS is why I dislike minions. You can’t rely on their ai.

Bhawb.7408:

If Flesh Golem charges the wrong target, it was 100% your fault. Without a target he charges in the direction he is facing, with a target he starts moving towards them as it casts, then at the finish of the cast he runs in a straight line at them. In other words, its an l2p issue.

Yeah, except for the various times in wvw, where I selected a target, and it charged straight into the raptor next to him, thus aggroing more enemies on top of me. And on a second attempt, charged into a moa bird that wasn’t even hostile… well until the Flesh Golem charged into it of course.

No, a single in game screenshot doesn’t prove anything, all I know from that is the direction your minions are facing; you can’t determine anything else except that.

Bhawb.7408:

No, a single in game screenshot doesn’t prove anything, all I know from that is the direction your minions are facing; you can’t determine anything else except that.

Oh come on, be serious for a moment. You’ve got a screenshot of the minions facing away from the enemy while I’m attacking (that already tells you something is wrong), and you’ve got my description of the behavior of them running back and forth between the enemy and the player repeatedly.

I am being reasonable. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying I can’t tell for sure anything from that picture. I’ve played with minions extensively, I’ve done a lot of actual testing to figure them out (probably too much). I know how minions act, and I know that right now their AI is working incredibly well.

Does it still flub every once in a while? Yes, especially due to pathing. Can I know what happened in your situation? No. All I have is you saying what you saw, which no offense, I can’t trust, and a picture that can’t really show me anything. If you can recreate that with a video or tell me how to I’d love to see it.

The point is that they might be much better now but they are still unreliable. Just like all ai pets and minions.

I am doing the rude thing and bumping:

I understand (I think) that leveling Conditional Damage is not the best as you don’t do as much damage as quickly with the necessary ramp up time compared to pure Power. As such, what kind of weapons should I try to use?

Still staff. For single-target weapons, axe or dagger and focus or horn.

For a condition build, scepter/dagger with epidemic and staff.

for trash mobs and dynamic events, condition is fine. Thieves level in record time with blossom/cluster bomb +caltrops. It’s just in dungeons that you’ll hear tantrums.

datawais.7209:

Still staff. For single-target weapons, axe or dagger and focus or horn.

For a condition build, scepter/dagger with epidemic and staff.

for trash mobs and dynamic events, condition is fine. Thieves level in record time with blossom/cluster bomb +caltrops. It’s just in dungeons that you’ll hear tantrums.

Thanks for that. I highly doubt I will be doing dungeons. I started two weeks ago (today I believe) and my highest is just level 60. I didn’t want to do dungeons until I got a real sense of the game because I hate disappointing people. I would hate to be “that guy” that just gets the group killed because they are so clueless. I mostly intend to just level up, learn the game, and then bum dungeons from my guild so I can learn that aspect.

Hey, it is better to frustrate the people you know than the people that don’t know you, simply because death threats from friends are so much more cuddly :-)

Cheers.
-Azernak0