Guild Wars 2

I’m writing to make my humble suggestions for a viable Heal/Support Necromancer following much experimentation and number crunching in the last 3 weeks based on the following build, this is by no means a complete build by it’s based on many workaround so I can get a suitable number base to test in live PVE/WvW scenarios. I personally felt it’s quiet practical although in a very apparent need of a buff in terms of balancing.

Original build (WvW):
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.4|8.1a.h15.d.1o.h1m|6.1g.a3|1k.a7.1k.a7.1k.a7.1k.a3.1k.a3.1k.a3|3w.d1e.21n.d1e.31n.d1e.1o.63.1o.63.2w.d1e|a2.k3a.0.u251.a3|0.0|3r.44.3u.48.4f|e

Wells variant (PVE/Dungeon/Fractals):
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.4|8.1a.h15.d.1o.h1m|6.1g.a3|1k.a7.1k.a7.1k.a7.1k.a3.1k.a3.1k.a3|3w.d1e.21n.d1e.31n.d1e.1o.63.1o.63.2w.d1e|a2.k39.0.u28c.a3|0.0|3t.4d.4c.44.4f|e

To the point, while I found out I don’t have any objection to the life siphon capping, I do believe bloodthirst trait should benefit to at least 3% of healing power + it’s current base stat based on healing power. This would allow players to return benefits from using a Healing power armor if they’re going for support/attrition build while retaining a practical but reasonably suitable amount of healing. Also Vampiric rituals Well heals should be apllicable to the whole group rather then the necromancer alone and again it should be it should be affected by the same percentage by healing power. I will stand to be corrected on the above, I forwarded my suggestion as I felt it was where I could give a contribution, I hope in someway they are taken note of.

ADDENDUM: While I very much appreciate the posted builds (keep them coming, I love different approaches to support builds) I’d prefer to focus on life siphon as a group support mechanic as proposed above.

This is the support build I run, with a few minor variations in traits depending on the fight:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|6.1f.a8|b.1h.9b.d.1f.h6|1f.71h.1m.71h.1f.71f.1m.71f.1f.71g.1m.71g|1f.66.1m.9d.1m.9d.1f.66.1f.66.1d.9d|0.k39.a4.u468.a3|4d.d|3t.4b.4c.49.0|e

It’s main focus is party wide protection and damage mitigation, which really is what necro support is all about, not raw healing. The use of blinds, chills, condition flips and vulnerability as well as the condition effects your weapons provide all wrap up to make a strong build that will make life easier for your team. Since you’re bringing not only high condition damage, but also plenty of vulnerability, you’re not being a dead-weight to your team because you’re doing your own damage as well as helping them do more damage to fill the gaps of when you’re doing more healing or cc support. It does require your team to know how your skills work though, it does no good for anyone if they continually run outside of the wells as soon as you cast them, or they avoid spectral wall completely and don’t know how to kite the enemies through it. It could be adapted for siphoning wells I suppose, but honestly since the siphons do nothing to help your party, only yourself (and a small gain at that even with bloodthirst) it’s not the best option for my build. It is pretty suited for your build though, I was just tossing some of my own ideas out to you. <edit:> I always forget to put the elite in for those builders, you can run what you want really, but I like plague because you’re already specd into condition dmg anyway, and the blinds make for some good aoe chill. Lich is still a good support form though if you know how to use it as one and would still work in this build.

I agree siphoning should have some healing coefficient. I’m not sure about the wells siphon to allies as well; I don’t know that it’d be OP at all in PvP/WvW, but in PvE I can already face tank a lot as a rampager necro with siphoning wells, a whole team with that seems a bit strong.

You both seem to have my understanding of this approach, as Nay of the Ether indeed hit the nail on the head with his explanation, this wouldn’t make the Necro a burst healer as in the context of a guardian or an area HoT as with Elementalists (as I see it from my limited understanding of that profession) but as a damage mitigation for the group, of course I was very careful with the numbers in terms of balancing which currently is really almost there & the coefficient would percentile it up to an adequate level according to how much the player would be willing to invest on healing power in relation. At it’s core Life siphoning mechanic is good as it is, it require the enemies to steal life from plus that it requires the player to go in and put himself more in harms way for the benefit of the group.

An interesting note on Well siphons is that Necros the Vampiric rituals trait has it’s own capped base heal as all siphons (thus can be adjusted independently for balancing) and it would come to function much the Transfusion trait (Where the DS Skill 4 life transfer heals neareby allies), except that this trait’s heal doesn’t require enemies to siphon (Something I forgot to insert in my previous post) from which I would see as a bug, it should get that requirement as well plus my suggestion as my first post.

@Yendorion, I’m wondering if your use of Precision (49%) and CritDmg (16%) is worth the investment in those stats. From what I see, you’ll get Barbed Precision, Vampiric Precision and Sigil of Blood, but those help you and are not support for your team. You also have fairly low Power in addition to low crit dmg% so it doesn’t seem that crits will hit very hard, and your Toughness is kinda low.

Just what comes to mind when I look at it.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

@Yendorion, I’m wondering if your use of Precision (49%) and CritDmg (16%) is worth the investment in those stats. From what I see, you’ll get Barbed Precision, Vampiric Precision and Sigil of Blood, but those help you and are not support for your team. You also have fairly low Power in addition to low crit dmg% so it doesn’t seem that crits will hit very hard, and your Toughness is kinda low.

Just what comes to mind when I look at it.

Your observations are correct to a point, thus this post. Precision would be fine as would be toughness & critical damage as these would be made up for healing mitigation & health siphoned from enemies respectively. I made my calculations based on how much healing power would be needed as a coefficient to be added at the capped base of each siphon to make it adequate as so far as you correctly point out is a bit sub-par. (although it works to an less than almost good degree)

At the core my critique is on the mechanic not on the build itself.

PS. I will study your build, looks interesting.

Your build doesn’t look that support-y, with so much focus on power, precision, and condition damage, it looks closer to a hybrid build. (I personally run a slightly more bursty healing build than Nay, with all cleric’s armor, if you’re interested in more bursty support.)

As to your build, if you’re going to go for every stat in the game, you should really be using celestial trinkets (and superior runes of divinity, if you can afford them, but they cost a fortune, so I’d wait on those until I was sure I was happy with the build), which give more total stats than mix-and-matching various prefixes. Here’s a modification of your build using celestial trinkets and divinity runes:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.4|8.1k.h15.d.1k.h1m|6.1k.a3|1o.71j.1o.71j.1o.71j.1o.71j.1o.71j.1o.71j|411.0.211.d1e.311.d1e.1o.68.1o.63.2w.d1e|a2.k3a.0.u251.a3|9.0|3r.44.3u.48.4f|e

You get slightly more power, critical damage, condition damage, toughness, and vitality, equivalent healing power, but 2.7% less critical chance. Edit: I’m pointing this out not to say “use this build” (I just made it up on the spot), but to demonstrate the advantage you get from celestial items if you’re going for all stats.

As to whether those stats are worth it, they seem all over the board to me. What do you want to do? All stats are pretty useful with a staff, but with a dagger/focus primary weapon set you might get more out of skipping some of the condition damage for improved power.

this build
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v6pnXc_Rp3k

is around abusing “deathly invigoration”
basically going in and out of death-shroud for 5 sec CD AOE heal.

Lalangamena.3694:

this build
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v6pnXc_Rp3k

is around abusing “deathly invigoration”
basically going in and out of death-shroud for 5 sec CD AOE heal.

The only beef I have with that is the actual affected area is so small (for a healing radius anyway) it’s about half of a well of blood, roughly the size of your enfeebling blood recticle. I’m not saying it can’t be done and definitely something I’m going to pursue myself and see if I can work it into some of my play, oh and it scales bad with healing power, but then again lots of necro heals do but I guess the frequency would make up for it if you could keep enough LF to keep it going.

Lalangamena.3694:

this build
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v6pnXc_Rp3k

is around abusing “deathly invigoration”
basically going in and out of death-shroud for 5 sec CD AOE heal.

Deathly invigoration is ok, and gets to be sort-of-good if you can cast it every 5 seconds and have really high healing power, but in my opinion well of blood and staff 2 are where it’s at if you have high healing power. Transfusion/“Life transfer heals nearby allies” is decent and works decently with or without healing power.

Edit: Didn’t mean to seem troll-y, that video is pretty good in general, and also talks about well of blood, staff 2, and transfusion. If you’re looking to start making a support build, watching it is worthwhile.

DelOnasi.6051:

Lalangamena.3694:

this build
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v6pnXc_Rp3k

is around abusing “deathly invigoration”
basically going in and out of death-shroud for 5 sec CD AOE heal.

Deathly invigoration is ok, and gets to be sort-of-good if you can cast it every 5 seconds and have really high healing power, but in my opinion well of blood and staff 2 are where it’s at if you have high healing power. Transfusion/“Life transfer heals nearby allies” is decent and works decently with or without healing power.

Edit: Didn’t mean to seem troll-y, that video is pretty good in general, and also talks about well of blood, staff 2, and transfusion. If you’re looking to start making a support build, watching it is worthwhile.

I’d safely disagree on the Deathly invigoration which is a self-heal first of all, which does nothing for a group support build and secondly the trait itself is simply horrible in terms of healing. Transfusion which is a group heal has much better healing itself.

Thank you for the video!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deathly_Invigoration

“Heal in an area when you leave death shroud.”

It isn’t a big radius as the poster mentioned. You would have to invest in a lot of mobility to make it functional, and you would have to do some testing to see if it is target limited, and how big the radius actually is (I think its about the size of standard marks (untraited)). Probably not viable in serious play, but I dink around with sub-optimals all the time for fun anyway, just to change up the gameplay.

If you max out healing while keeping the 5s shroud CD (15,0,0,25,30, Clerics) you can get the heal into the 700’s per shroud dance while keeping high up time on retaliation (need the 15 pt spite minor to max healing). It would be a kinda silly way to play, and most people would probably just wonder what in the hell you were doing running around in circles the whole time popping in and out of shroud, but it might produce entertaining results.

EDIT: Couldn’t resist posting one.

http://www.intothemists.com/calc/index.php?build=;043Z;2IFG034oI-K0;9;69TT;41;058729BUVk6;2rRnCrRnC3Nk

Went with 0/0/10/30/30, Water Runes, 2 energy sigils+ life, Golem Elite and Wurm, Undeath, Locust. Basically it is a stupid amount of healing with decent toughness and passive damage from the minions. Might be able to support a mid fight, and semi-bunker for teammates to do a quick side cap. I lost a little healing giving up the spite trait, but it just isn’t nearly as good without greater marks. Huge regen uptime on an AoE is just too stronk in conquest. As a concept it still isn’t a really good build, but it would probably get some lol’s.