Guild Wars 2

Title says it all

It seems to me that a D/D spec would be just as boring as a Ranger SB spec seeing the Dagger auto does the most damage (if I am wrong please let me know).

Staff seems decent but only for AOE pulls (and Warrior/Guardian do it better)

So where does that leave me?

Scepter/Dagger is really good for leveling. I had easier time then with my engineer, who was really good at pve too.

Scepter/Dagger, stack conditions then epidemic.

Necromancer are actually pretty good in PvE. Minions master can be really good too, as long as they don’t stand there doing nothing during fight.

Well if you’re running a power build you’re going to be forced to spam Life Blasts atleast 50% of the time, so get used to it.

Other than that you’ll rely on well cooldowns for bursts of actual good dmg, or minions for extra dmg, then once you dip below 50% life force go back to underwhelming staff auto’s, or dagger auto’s + mark spam, then back to life blast spamming.

Or you can go condition and auto attack stuff down even slower, although stacking your bleeds then popping epi is nice, I found power to just be better overall for leveling, same if not better dps, more versatile, burst basic mobs down faster, etc.

The most fun you’ll get with necro is weaving in and out of DS for dmg and CC, kiting stuff, interupting stuff, tanking stuff with DS. You can take on some giant groups of mobs and come out alive pretty well. Just don’t expect huge variety in skill/trait choices while leveling.

Also, although minion builds are pretty boring, you can really kill things fast and have even crazier survivability between chaining the cc’s and having pets constantly tanking stuff for you.

I’m leveling with a power/crit build using dagger/warhorn and axe/focus (or staff) with emphasis on quick aoe burst using bone minions as bombs on top of wells and it destroys things fast. I took the 30% minion damage because it works on the bombs and I use the flesh golem as my elite to run around like a goon and aggro things and knockdown mobs inside my well explosion area. On top of this, I can also pop locust swarm and jump into DS and use the life leech for even more aoe. It’s a pretty crazy setup actually and I never see other necro’s use anything besides all minions, full conditions or all wells plus staff, but it works rather tremendously for me.