Guild Wars 2

Greetings from the depths of the abyss!

After getting my thief to 80, i got a better hang of dungeons and general pve (i am mostly pvp ing) and i was wondering to start a decent character i aim to “max out”.

And after a lot of reconsideration, i came back to Necro, the character i was supposedly in love with, since i played rpg games like 15 years ago. But gw2 kind of changed that for me. Trough it was a so called “necromancer” it was totally of for my more classical mindset for the class and taste. It was so disgusting to me i could barely keep playing after souch a dissapointment, and waiting 5 years on it…..

But i think i can force it down my throat now, and start playing it seriously, not caring for bugs or anything, BUT i would really love some feedback on general PVE and dungeons experiance.

What are necros dooing at all in dungeons? What roles can you take up?
I reconsidered Mesmer, and Ga for awesome projectile reflection, line of warding, and awesome boons.
But then again, i can see a lot of “healing” potential in Necro, like condition removal and self heal combos
Not sure if his life steal for others build is viable? I even heard crazy claims it can tank …trough i wonder those guys played fractals beyond 30….Where only dodge and mobility matters.
Trough i assume they base that on Ds.. whitch i still find a disgusting and stupid idea, but anyway.

Anyone any decent experiance in Dungeons with necro can any feedback? Or builds? (with prefered stats and runes?)

Mostly when I run dungeons, I utilize my support capabilities to account for the fact most other classes have no clue how to properly set up for dungeons and just run glass cannons, and I also run massive amounts of AoE since other than ele’s we pretty much have the market cornered on that. If you want specific builds look up some of the wellomancer builds here on the forums, and stick in a few support traits. The protection from wells as well as being able to ground target them makes for a pretty strong support build, also with the life transfer heal, I can very nearly heal an entire party to full in one pop if done right. When plague signet is working properly, its a very powerful tool for taking conditions off people (because other than guardians, hardly anyone brings any most of the time, they just facetank conditions then QQ)

As far as going a mostly dps machine, it can be done pretty effectively except the rest of the team will suffer for lack of support as I mentioned above. Once people learn to properly play dungeons instead of making it a dps race we’ll have a little more flexibility. I know a lot of people are gonna flame me for saying this but I’ve tried it both ways. Once I started going more towards support, wipes were cut in half and runs got a lot faster. I would put a build here but for some reason everytime I link the ones i make in the build maker sites it always just says “bad link” so idk what that’s all about. Look through the forums and you’ll find plenty of builds, if you want one I was talking about look for the wellomancer and modify it to your taste. As far as gear I actually keep 2 sets: a rampagers and apothecary. For trash mobs I can generally run rampagers and keep the dps up to clear faster, but for harder trash and bosses I swap into apothecary for more support. If you have any questions PM me in game and I can link you stuff if needed and go through some tactics

hmm yeah i agree. I was testing a lot and cant pick between Mesmer or Necro.

I kind of summarized all the skills and realized, Mesmer has a lot more : Blink-teleport and get araund.
Lets not forget the spread of boons on himslef.
Also Projectile reflection is quite powerfull tool. It also has like 3-4 condiion removal, even some aoe ones, and can rip boons of, but thats all basically.
Cant even seriously considered as healer, since only mantra healer build is viable.

Opposed by Necromancer, who 100% lacks all mobility, besides spectral walk. And has basically no “manipulation” skills, like Line of Warding or Wall of Reflection, that are insanely powerfull tools. And that is what is taking my mood from the class, since in all other topic’s Necro performs better.
The support skills are few, but any well can be blast finished for aoe blindlness, and have a side condition. Spectral wall and traited wells can apply almost perma protection, whitch is quite powefull. And there are insane ammounts of condition removals, and boon rippers.
Not forgetting of a decent heal Mark of blood provides. And as you mentioned dagger can heal a lot on others.
Still, i do not know what wold be the best.

Necro seems to be better for PvP actually then PvE.
And mesmer is prooven to be decent pvp er alredy, but considering the skills i would assume it might be a better support to….dephending on dungeon. (lets not even mention bugs and the fact they can wield Gs -that loooks nice -_- )
Any opinions?

Nekroseth.5186:

I kind of summarized all the skills and realized, Mesmer has a lot more : Blink-teleport and get araund.

Opposed by Necromancer, who 100% lacks all mobility, besides spectral walk.

Necros actually have a lot more mobility. Spectral Walk combined with the Warhorn (and 2 traits) gives you permanent 33% swiftness. Otherwise, you can just use Signet of the Locust and have permanent 25% swiftness. True, Necros don’t have Blink or Portal, but Spectral Walk has a 2nd use that sends you back to the spot where you cast it from, which I’ve personally used to confuse the hell out of other players (although it might be limited for PvE). There are also traits that increase your movement speed while wielding daggers or while in Death Shroud. Mesmers have a similar trait for increased movement while illusions are out so I suppose that’s a bit of wash. But if you check the Mesmer forums, their lack of general movement speed is a big complaint, especially for WvW.

You kinda answered yourself with your other points. Sure, Mesmers have a lot of useful skills but so do Necros. Mesmers tend to complain about their lack of performance in PvE, too, if that’s telling of anything. They also don’t have very much in the way of survivability which Necros excel at. That’s not to say Necros are automatically better for you personally, though.

I’m currently on level 32 fractals and i play my Necromancer as support conditions in instances.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBLhZakRrcvdTdjePRMVobQPul7dW0DiZskB

Epidemic decimates inside FoTM, and Corrosive Poison Cloud is also extremely handy for weakness spamming on bosses as-well as a perma-poison for others to combo off.

I have an amazing dungeon build written down! It has amazing AoE control that will really help your party dealing with groups as long with bosses!

……if they would JUST FIX THE KITTEN CHILLING DARKNESS BUG

I used to run a classic condition/support necro and it went really well. I have gathered all the gear needed, including ascended gear, and there’s no question that we are the masters of conditioning. But recently i got bored. Really bored. So i started a power,crit dmg, precision build with axe and focus + staff and with 3 signets always on. You know what?? it goes pretty well. im happy. i got tired of worrying about survivability of the party. i mean other classes don’t care why should we right?? guardians think they are dpsers, warriors, mesmers e.t.c. We can play however we want, that’s the true power of necros

I’ve been running variations on this build for higher lvl fractals and it’s working nicely.
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.1.7.18.0.0.0.0.0.107.110.123.127.130.1.1.0.301.306.0.321.0.0.0.0.0.351.354.0.366.369.0.20.10.0.20.20

You’ve got several AOE heals you provide your team. Life Transfer in DS heals teammates, leaving DS heals in area, Staff Mark of Blood provides regen, Well of Blood is AOE heal and regen.

The build is bulky but can also get good DPS due to might and vulnerability stacking and the new terror damages.
Use the focus #4, then Blood is Power, then DS and spam the #1 attack for more might and vulnerability.

I traited for the added damage when downed because it’s powerful and it’s a great way to ensure you rally quickly.

This build synergizes well when you’re supporting 1-2 more melee characters like warriors or guardians.

Tony’s sentiment echoes that of many players. If other people in PUGs do not want to run dungeons with the optimal setup for their profession, then why should we? I know I have run dungeons using experimental builds but, if I want to farm them, I opt for a conditionmancer switching skills around as necessary and hope the others in the group do the same with their jobs. The power of a good group mix playing optimal builds for their profession is hard to under-state and Necromancers are particularly valuable for their condition controls. A Necro can make fights a lot shorter and less dangerous for the rest of the group, which helps the high dps jobs unload damage to their greatest effect. The last thing anyone needs in a dungeon is a boss free to move and chasing after light and medium armor players instead of standing there and soaking all the damage.

So go out there and show the other professions all the bleed, cripple, weakness, armor-break, darkness, poison, chill, fear/interrupt, condition consuming-converting-multiplying, mob control skills you have. If you like minions, use their skills for bind, poison, knock-down, etc. Maybe Necromancer is not as tuned for solo PvE but in a group or zerg against foes that do not drop easily, the condition control is a huge bonus.

joshisanonymous.5270:

Nekroseth.5186:

I kind of summarized all the skills and realized, Mesmer has a lot more : Blink-teleport and get around.

Opposed by Necromancer, who 100% lacks all mobility, besides spectral walk.

Necros actually have a lot more mobility. Spectral Walk combined with the Warhorn (and 2 traits) gives you permanent 33% swiftness. Otherwise, you can just use Signet of the Locust and have permanent 25% swiftness.

Necros have the least mobility in the game. Every profession has access to perma swiftness through weapon, utility skills, traits, and/or rune combinations. For instance, Mesmers with 6/6 Centaur runes, Mirror, and Focus have perma swiftness.

However, necro is the only profession in the game that have no means of a fast travel ability. Because of this, the necro is the only profession that can never disengage from combat successfully if the profession chasing wishes to continue combat. Likewise, if the necro is chasing another profession that is out of range, they will never catch up

You do know that signet of locus + 15% run speed with dagger main-hand allows you to cap 33% running speed without ever using a skill? Same goes with 10% offhand or 15% while in death shroud. And who in his right mind would waste rune slots for a 6/6 centaur set!?

Pizz.3698:

You do know that signet of locus + 15% run speed with dagger main-hand allows you to cap 33% running speed without ever using a skill? Same goes with 10% offhand or 15% while in death shroud. And who in his right mind would waste rune slots for a 6/6 centaur set!?

Locust and the dagger trait stack?

Pizz.3698:

And who in his right mind would waste rune slots for a 6/6 centaur set!?

This is what I was thinking. Admittedly, I haven’t done much WvW, but when I have I’ve noticed many Mesmers just running at normal speed. I asked about speed in the WvW forums when I was choosing a class because I wanted something I could solo with and pretty much everyone listed the lack of speed for Mesmers as a huge problem. Even in when the centaur runes idea is brought up in the Mesmer forums, people immediately jump on it as a huge waste. Sure, every class has some way to gain swiftness but there seems to be a big difference between having to completely base your build off just having the ability to move fast and being able to just pick a trait or two for the same effect (as with Necros or Engineers).

Munrock.3092:

Locust and the dagger trait stack?

They do, but you cant go past 33% running speed.

joshisanonymous.5270:

Pizz.3698:

And who in his right mind would waste rune slots for a 6/6 centaur set!?

This is what I was thinking. Admittedly, I haven’t done much WvW, but when I have I’ve noticed many Mesmers just running at normal speed. I asked about speed in the WvW forums when I was choosing a class because I wanted something I could solo with and pretty much everyone listed the lack of speed for Mesmers as a huge problem. Even in when the centaur runes idea is brought up in the Mesmer forums, people immediately jump on it as a huge waste. Sure, every class has some way to gain swiftness but there seems to be a big difference between having to completely base your build off just having the ability to move fast and being able to just pick a trait or two for the same effect (as with Necros or Engineers).

6/6 Rune of the Centaur is one of the cheaper, and support oriented loadouts because a mesmer can give 100% swiftness uptime to their entire group.

Mesmer swiftness can also be maintained by using at least 4/6 Superior Rune of Air, Mirror, and Focus recharge trait Warden’s Feedback, and +boon duration food (if they don’t want to put points into Chaos for +boon duration via that trait path). Rune of Air is still a very solid rune set, even after the nerf.

Needless to say, my original point holds true, every profession has access to 100% uptime of 33% movement, yet the necro is the only profession without a burst speed ability.

As for Signet of the Locust and Dagger movement traits stacking, this was previously not the case. As I haven’t tested this out specifically since the Dec 14th patch, I can’t say unequivocally that they still don’t stack, but there were several threads/posts after the patch stating that they still don’t. I’ll look at it when I get home.

I run a full on condition damage necro using Condition Damage, Precision, Toughness armour and trinkets and is amazing in Fractals to the point where you can stay on the ground in the Dredge boss loading conditions on him and still deal the same amount of damage as other people. Bleeds can tick up to 3500 (that’s about 134 damage a tick) damage a second if you have a full stack of corruption and use food with Blood is Power’s might stack. It can go as high as 184 damage a tick if you have a party that constantly applying might, which is about 4500 damage a second.

This build is a damage build, but extremely effective at killing adds on bosses due to Epidemic spreading your high intensity and high damage bleeds. Literally you can kill adds in a matter of seconds in level 30 fractals. Not only that, you’ll have 2750 armor to boot.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.2.7.13.0.21.21.11.0.107.127.125.119.129.4.4.29.0.0.0.317.322.326.332.335.0.346.353.0.0.0.0.0.30.20.20.0

Caudecus Manor is extremely troublesome for necros due to the high volume of CC and high-damage projectiles. I felt like I was just along for the ride when I went through it in explorable. About the only time I felt really useful was in a small-room fight with a stealth-happy thief boss where Greater Marks kept tabs on her quite easily.

This was also before the Fear-Defiant nerf, so it’s not quite as useful now.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Caudecus Manor is extremely troublesome for necros due to the high volume of CC and high-damage projectiles. I felt like I was just along for the ride when I went through it in explorable. About the only time I felt really useful was in a small-room fight with a stealth-happy thief boss where Greater Marks kept tabs on her quite easily.

This was also before the Fear-Defiant nerf, so it’s not quite as useful now.

CM is baby cake for necro! You gotta run Well of Darkness and Well of Power and you can shutdown those riflemen. Plague Form #2 skill is awesome as well.

Fears are also still really great for some of the harder hitting mobs.

cerulean moth.2743:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Caudecus Manor is extremely troublesome for necros due to the high volume of CC and high-damage projectiles. I felt like I was just along for the ride when I went through it in explorable. About the only time I felt really useful was in a small-room fight with a stealth-happy thief boss where Greater Marks kept tabs on her quite easily.

This was also before the Fear-Defiant nerf, so it’s not quite as useful now.

CM is baby cake for necro! You gotta run Well of Darkness and Well of Power and you can shutdown those riflemen. Plague Form #2 skill is awesome as well.

Fears are also still really great for some of the harder hitting mobs.

The problem with Plague is that you have to actually get to the riflemen, which when 4 of them focus fire you and drop you as you walk into the door doesn’t happen. Well of Darkness is great, but that 48 second cooldown traited is still very painful.

Pizz.3698:

Munrock.3092:

Locust and the dagger trait stack?

They do, but you cant go past 33% running speed.

They do not stack. Confirmed tonight with multiple test runs and variations (equipping dagger first then selecting Signet as a utility skill, off hand fist, main hand first, Signet first, etc…) that dagger +speed trait still does not stack with Signet of Locust.

With Signet, dagger/dagger and Quickening Thirst active, my speed was an exact match when running along side 2 other friends running their profession’s +25% speed signets. When they both activated swiftness, they both ran faster than my Signet coupled with +25% speed from dagger/dagger.

Quillixx.7034:

Pizz.3698:

Munrock.3092:

Locust and the dagger trait stack?

They do, but you cant go past 33% running speed.

They do not stack. Confirmed tonight with multiple test runs and variations (equipping dagger first then selecting Signet as a utility skill, off hand fist, main hand first, Signet first, etc…) that dagger +speed trait still does not stack with Signet of Locust.

With Signet, dagger/dagger and Quickening Thirst active, my speed was an exact match when running along side 2 other friends running their profession’s +25% speed signets. When they both activated swiftness, they both ran faster than my Signet coupled with +25% speed from dagger/dagger.

I think its because the signet itself does not stack with anything, but you could prob stack the dagger speed traits with other forms of speed boosts, but then it’s not true perma-swiftness I guess :-P