Guild Wars 2

I"m just curious to see what you better informed Necros think of this build:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|8.1k.h2.8.1k.h4|6.1k.h4|1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.7f.1k.7f|1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.8c.68|k69.0.k3a.u679.0|2m.1|3s.3y.3z.41.4g|e

The idea is to keep the minions alive.

Also, I’m sure some won’t like the dagger/dagger, but I really like them. I think they’d pair well with the Vampiric trait.

What I’m not sure about is if Clerics is worth it for this type of trait build. As a vet to Guardian and from a Guardian perspective, you either do a lot of Heal Power, or none at all (with some exceptioms), and both professions have bad heal scaling, thus the need for such high Healing Power.

On the other hand, am I gimping myself doing this? What’s the alternative for this trait build? All Soldiers? Knights? Zerker? Mixed?

Lastly, I’m not sure about the Blood Magic traits. As stated, I wanted to keep the minions alive as long as possible, but does that translate well once I hit level 80. Transfusion works pretty good at level 50.

Anyways, what do you think about this for a PvE/WvW build?

Thanks for you input.

Just to let you know, Minion ain’t really worth it except our op golem.

Now i run a healing build with the cleric and for your weapon, Dagger/focus + staff is the must. With your focus you can rip 3 boon + chill and you can give yourself some regeneration + some life force the off hand dagger is for condition.

Your staff got some awesome survival utility so you must upgrade it in your trait.
The heal when you leave death shroud dont really worth your trait point, even if your healing.

Towelie.4637:

Just to let you know, Minion ain’t really worth it except our op golem.

Now i run a healing build with the cleric and for your weapon, Dagger/focus + staff is the must. With your focus you can rip 3 boon + chill and you can give yourself some regeneration + some life force the off hand dagger is for condition.

Your staff got some awesome survival utility so you must upgrade it in your trait.
The heal when you leave death shroud dont really worth your trait point, even if your healing.

I mostly like it for aesthetic reasons, but I also like it for the condi remove on 4.

I’m also not removing the minions. That’s one of the main reasons I even picked up the necro.

Thx for the reply though.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

I"m just curious to see what you better informed Necros think of this build:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|8.1k.h2.8.1k.h4|6.1k.h4|1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.7f.1k.7f|1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.8c.68|k69.0.k3a.u679.0|2m.1|3s.3y.3z.41.4g|e

The idea is to keep the minions alive.

Also, I’m sure some won’t like the dagger/dagger, but I really like them. I think they’d pair well with the Vampiric trait.

What I’m not sure about is if Clerics is worth it for this type of trait build. As a vet to Guardian and from a Guardian perspective, you either do a lot of Heal Power, or none at all (with some exceptioms), and both professions have bad heal scaling, thus the need for such high Healing Power.

On the other hand, am I gimping myself doing this? What’s the alternative for this trait build? All Soldiers? Knights? Zerker? Mixed?

Lastly, I’m not sure about the Blood Magic traits. As stated, I wanted to keep the minions alive as long as possible, but does that translate well once I hit level 80. Transfusion works pretty good at level 50.

Anyways, what do you think about this for a PvE/WvW build?

Thanks for you input.

I’d recommend dropping Blood Fiend. It’s too much of a liability and doesn’t heal as well or offer the utility of Consume Conditions, even when you consider supporting traits.

I’m not sure about dagger/dagger. Though I’m sure the healing is better from the faster attack, there are 2 liabilities:
1) you and your minions are in a nice compact area, so AoE attacks will maximize damage to you.
2) You are in melee range, but have not taken any utilities or traits to increase your run speed. With 2 condition cleanses and no stability, you could easily find yourself kited by chill/cripple/knockbacks/etc.

Speaking for open-world PVE….

Full cleric is amazing for the regen (see build in my sig) and really boosts your survivability. But you do “kitten ” yourself in the sense that you aren’t the primary damage dealer – your minions are. You’d likely be better off trading out your daggers for axe/focus….just to apply weakness and vulnerability to the enemies; i.e, to be better support to your minions.

If you were going to mix in anything, it’d probably be rampager. Your crit chance is low and rampager armor brings it up some (4% to 19%), without sacrificing the entire concept.

Thanks for the replies. Some good food for thought.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I’d recommend dropping Blood Fiend. It’s too much of a liability and doesn’t heal as well or offer the utility of Consume Conditions, even when you consider supporting traits.

I’m not sure about dagger/dagger. Though I’m sure the healing is better from the faster attack, there are 2 liabilities:
1) you and your minions are in a nice compact area, so AoE attacks will maximize damage to you.
2) You are in melee range, but have not taken any utilities or traits to increase your run speed. With 2 condition cleanses and no stability, you could easily find yourself kited by chill/cripple/knockbacks/etc.

Wait wait… you are saying highest sustained healing in the whole game is bad because it doesn’t heal enough? You even played necro at all? Can I just dismiss you as a troll now? Why do you need condition removal in general pve again? You have staff…
And reading comprehension definitely goes out of the window with you. OP asked specifically about minions and later again specified that he wants minions. Engrish much?
kitten if you have no idea what your talking about don’t come out and make an argument about something completely unrelated that nobody asked for.

To op:

Minions are terrible for dungeons/wvw because aoe 1 shots them. No amount of healing you take will change that simple fact. There is a total of 1… ONE… instance where aoe from dungeon boss, and frankly a lot of silver npcs, doesn’t 1 shot minions and that’s AR last boss bombardment phase. To clarify more specifically not first mates big aoe the actual aoe barrage. Golem is plainly immune to it. But that is one and only boss aoe where minions don’t get 1 shot. Bringing them into any content aside from general pve or spvp is masochism and you hurt your team more then you help.
Cleric gear will not even allow you to keep them alive reliably in higher level maps. Cursed shores… simply don’t even try. SSC karkas damage and same as CS poison galore will kill your minions too fast. None of healing skills available to you will be able to heal through that damage(Hell… even having a pocket guardian/ele would be a stretch). You don’t need 80 maps even… some lower level maps will not allow you to maintain pets. Most flame legion npcs are fully capable of demolishing pets pretty fast if they aren’t position well. Anyway list goes on.

Some pets should not be healed to begin with. Bone minions for instance… jagged horrors. In most cases its best to try to maximize your damage so you can kill your targets before they kill your minions.. Unfortunately that would imply throwing away both of your daggers. They don’t really beef your total dmg output. Offhand is fine for more survivability. But main hand drops a lot of total dmg in favor of a mediocre self dmg boost. Axes don’t fit spell casters but thats not the point maybe its another one of those asian things i just don’t get like the fascinations with wings. Never seen an asian game w/o plethora of wings for everyone.
In perfect scenario if your minions aren’t dying you won’t die either. MMs healing is a bit absurd in that department. Unless you have a thief spamming 7k hits but hey there is no cure for that(replacing anet and ncsoft is probably the only way that could ever change… and it would still be a statistically impossible because too many people play that and the amount of tears would be catastrophic).
Anyway atm its best for your to max your damage and facetank yourself hoping your minions don’t get touched and die. Minions generate a lot of healing but only if they are actually alive to do so. There are champs that you can facetank simply because they have no aoe and minions outheal champions dmg. But again… don’t bother trying to heal them not as MM… in most cases its a waste of time or plainly not possible to do as MM solo.

With that conservative a build you will be using your minions as bait. AgedGnome has the right of it, I think. Minions are created to die so let them and respawn when their timer is up. That may sound harsh but they are not meant to be beloved pets. I used to hate them with a passion back when they had behavioral problems and could be one-shotted so I admit to being biased.

Anyway, Blood Fiend and Shadow Fiend are still not my favorites. There is no reason why you cannot mix a few other utilities into your hot bar. Well of Suffering is a great way to welcome any mob that approaches and will do plenty more damage than Shadow Fiend with your Spite. I have tried running all minions but there are other skills that are better in some situations. Feel free to moderate your choices as the situation merits. Necromancer is fairly forgiving that way.

If you put too much effort into keeping your minions alive, you are not playing them as Arenanet intended. They have to die and deserve it.

Blood fiend at 80 heals for 926 health every ~2 seconds. In 25 seconds (span of 1 consume conditions) it translates into 11575 healing.
Shadow fiend at 80 attacks every ~2seconds for 525 base. For the most part around 430. So in a span of 1 Well of suffering that translates to 7525 dmg. Thats w/o MM traits and on a target in heavy armor. Well of suffering 35 second cooldown 4k damage total BASE.

Where do you guys get your “facts”? I really wanna know. Please do remember those numbers are w/o actual spec to support MM… which would give blood fiend more healing… ~1k. And shadow fiends damage getting a 30% dmg buff. Even if its small blood fiend also does dmg. Then theres poison nova damage if they die. And a base heal for blood fiend when in dire need.

Consume Conditions, Well of Power, Deathly Swarm, and Putrid Mark are our main condition removal skills. Consume Conditions heals more for each condition and gives 5240 in 1 second where Blood Fiend can do a bit more than double that in 25 seconds, which does not include Blood Fiend’s 90 second CD if it dies or its lack of condition removal whereas CC will change conditions into health every 25 seconds. The minion was buffed in its heal during a recent patch but is still difficult for me to justify its lack of condition clearing.

Well of Suffering only does 7525 base damage but that damage scales rapidly with Power where minions do not and that damage is applied within 6 seconds in a large AoE able to hit several mobs at once if they are kind enough to just stand there without dodging just like minions. Trash mobs can be eliminated more rapidly with AoE so the Necromancer will have fewer enemies to worry about taking damage from.

Being able to do spike heals that reward condi-removal and rapid AoE damage is more valuable to me than carrying the maximum number of minions. When playing in a group, being able to do support heals with Well of Blood and raise downed players with Signet of Undeath may detract from my damage output but it pays back in helping to keep the group dps up. I have no qualms about changing my play style and skill set as needed. I use minions as distractions, meat shields, explosive bait, fire-and-forget weapons, and as knock-downs but I do not love them overly much.

When it comes to crowd control, minions are only expendable bait. AoE damage is my trump card. When playing 1v1, minions are great but I would still only carry enough healing to keep me alive and devote the rest to dealing damage. I do not want minions to die too early but also will not limit my own damage just to keep them alive longer.

The OP’s build has so much healing that damage output suffers. There is no additional precision beyond what you get without any armor or trait points. I would only run that on a group support/heal build but that is just my opinion. Like AgedGnome said, without enough damage from the player, the OP will be dependent on the minions and they could easily be in cool-down leaving the Necromancer with only staff, focus, and dagger for minor heals and condition management.

Your facts are correct.

While… I agree that well of suffering in general is worth more then all utility filled with minions, IN GENERAL. It neither does more damage on single target nor does it provide anything in general pve. Question was posed about MM and again specified as MM. Neither consume conditions nor wos provide much in general pve where MM is actually viable. And yeah like I said healing minions is a waste of time.
You base your whole argument more on pvp/wvw dungeon scenarios where its aoe fest and minions arent viable period.
Single condition clear is more then enough for general pve. Heck I hardly bother clearing anything to begin with. Also that… CC trait in blood is counterproductive in all situations where you can actually use MM. So another moot point.

Saying something scales only applies when you take into consideration traits+stats. If you look at his traits and stats, your wos damage would be a pitiful joke with mm traits and cleric gear. It would be inferior to even bone minions w/o mm spec and death nova. With both MM and DN damage would put WOS to shame in any scenario where mm is usable.
And… umm… 90 sec cd? On blood fiend… what? Blood fiends base cd is 20 seconds. And it heals for 4026 base. Scales at 1.0 ratio with healing. Not sure what blood fiend your talking about lol.
Again in pve outside dungeons condition removal is so situational that in general you won’t be using it to begin with. You can use staff to clear it from everyone in aoe and applies to enemies therefore reducing time you waste on killing something. Even with increased healing from having conditions, consume doesn’t provide as much as blood fiend. Spike heal(with only 1k more healing) with full condition clear is great in pvp/wvw and dungeons but has next to no use in regular pve.