Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone i’m approaching level 80 on my necromancer and I was having trouble between which type of necromancer I would like to build. Could you give me the pro’s and con’s of both or maybe why one would be a better choice than the other? I mainly am going to be running around with a zerg and when I get bored Ill run around with a couple of guild mates.

Thanks

Condition build isnt that good for wvw because people run alot of condi cleansing skills/soldier runes and shout builds.
Basically condition damage is easily negated by cleansing and very easily outhealed.
Power necromancers burst damage is a lot harder to deal with while you still apply the most useful of the conditions like chill/blind etc and you dont need condi gear for them

Go power if you are running with zerg/guild.

If you are roaming with a fairly small group or solo I suggest condi.

I concur with Aphix. However, I’d qualify his statement. I’ve run condition builds in zergs with good success. Signet of Spite + Epidemic will, in my opinion, put excellent condi pressure that is very difficult to cleanse quickly. Combined with staff marks and Well of Darkness (or Spectral Wall), you will make a strong impact on opposing zergs.

It’s also a very effective means of tower/keep defense. If an arrow cart is raining down on attackers and you manage to nail a combo of: Signet of Spite + Epi / Spectral Wall behind attackers + Stakitten , you will go a long way to wiping a small-moderately sized zerg. The attackers will get stuck in the AC area of effect for 2+ seconds and will be blinded, poisoned and crippled. It’s almost guaranteed to stop the current wave of attackers

I just though I’d join in here with the other replies so far and say yeah, generally speaking, Power is better for zergvzerg and Condi is better for roaming. I run a 0/30/20/20/0 Power Wells build in WvW and find it to be much more effective than my previous Condi build.

I used to run corrupt boon (pre nerf) + epidemic and signet of spite/well of corruption and it does make an impact with the condi bomb, but still, it can be fairly quickly cleansed , epidemic/spite can be evaded and also signet of spite has a 60s cd.
Those condi bombs can be useful with more necros in organized guild runs and GvGs I imagine, but running in a zerg I still suggest power.

With WvW power builds what armor and trinkets do people use? Knights, zerker, valkyrie or cavalier?

I’ve tried both power builds and condition builds. I find that powerbuilds (DS stacking might + blood is power) is pretty kitten nice damage but it’s soooo boring. I much preffer conditions, granted that condition cleanse can be a pain in the kiester but for the most part it’s alright.

Running scepter/dagger + staff with epedemic and spectral wall you can dish out a decent amount of conditions, even if they cleanse it. More often than not, in a zerg, you can find some scallywag not running heavy condition cleanse with 10-15 stacks of bleed, sometimes more. Epedemic on that guy while he’s in the zerg is golden.

Since there is always a abundance of powerfocused players in a zerg to take down enemies quickly, a well placed epedemic on one end of the enemie zerg, one setup of marks on another, scepter + dagger skills + ds 4-5 you can tag quite a few people and get your lootbags, while still beeing somewhat of use.

While I prefer to use a condition build, should I use a power build It would probably go something like this:

Armor: Knight with Ruby Orbs
Trinkets: Ruby
Weapons: Knight
Dagger/Warhorn, Staff
Sigil of Force / something else, Sigil of Force
Traits:
30/0/10/0/30
Trait abilities:
Spiteful Spirit, Reaper’s Might, Close to Death
Ritual of Protection
Unyielding Blast, Soul Marks, Foot in the Grave

Utilities:
Consume Conditions, Well of Suffering, Well of Corruption, Signet of the Locust/Spectral Grasp/Well of Power/ Blood is Power/ Whatever, Flesh Golem

Or something like that.