Guild Wars 2

Hi my name is Ellisd,

Thread title is a reference to a similar thread on the elementalist forums by my teammate Sad Fayce, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Ele-is-strong-I-m-here-to-help-you/page/4#post217433

In it he argues how Elementalist are not weak and dont need major buffs / rework instead players need to learn how to play the class better.

This thread is not that I am not here to argue that necromancers dont need fixing because they very much do, instead I am here to evolve the meta game and try to take the class as far as I can while I’m still interested in it. In order for this to happen I have to let go of all the preconceived notions about the class and try to work around every single possible corner I can. I’ve been constantly experimenting with builds since beta and I’m sure I’ve tried stuff that no one has ever thought of before.

Update****
In light of everyone saying there is only 1 viable build, I would like to discuss build variations and experimental builds that I have been working on.

I have a video series under development which attempts to show off and explain some unique Necromancer builds:

Everything in the video is experimental and always subject to change but I would like to attempt to move this class forward, so intelligent discussion is favorable (no trolls) critizism is fine.

Only 1 video is available now and others are on their way. As of right now I would like to share with you some builds I may be speaking about in future videos and acquire some feedback on how I can improve them. Feel free to share your own build if you feel it is unique and want others to be aware of it.

I have many directions I want to take necromancer in but feel I need to wait for future buffs to the class to do so, either way here are some builds and minor explanation.

Max Power Build ( No Signet of Spite)
2400 Power total

http://tinyurl.com/9jfjlrn

This build is a single target dps build it focuses on your channeled abilitys Life siphon, Chastly Claws, and Life Transfer to deal majority of damage, it also utilizes bone minions and well of suffering for the extra burst.

Ghastly claws > Life Transfer (Switch weapons in DS) > Life Siphon, you can also do other more complicated rotations but this one is the simplest. Requires intelligent placing of wells and good use of bone minions.

Strengths: Amazing single target damage, burst combos are available using well of suffering and bone minions + auto attack daggers. Lich form provides more burst as well as summon 4 jagged horrors which die and leave the ground covered in poison. Jagged horrors summoned from killing things die and leave the ground covered in poison.

Weakness: Lack of staff removes alot of utility such as condition transfer, fear, regen, blast finishers etc. Channeled abilitys are slow to start up and while they do alot of damage they are no 100 blades. Jagged horrors benefit enemy players using on kill sigils as well as revives downed allies upon death. No stun break. Lacking condition removal besides consume conditions.

Condition Power Build (Hybrid)

http://tinyurl.com/9yb7awv

I’ve been working on this build for a while now with many variations, and I’m desperatley trying to make it work, the blood is power buff is a step in the right direction but overall the build is lacking uptime mostly because of the lack of stun break and overall squishyness, I try to work around this by using poison cloud, and both of my enfeebling bloods for aoe weakness it works decently but it isnt enough. Runes are subject to change.

Strengths:
Doesnt rely on 1 source of damage, Dagger auto attack crits are incredible and sigil of rage usefull in most situations. High crit damage, channeled abilitys crit often and apply bleeds. Signet of spite enables 12% damage increase on a foe for about 5 seconds. 2 Enfeebling bloods and corrosive poison cloud for heavy aoe weakness.

Weakness: Very Squishy and no stun break, besides spectral armor at 50%. Lack of support utilities. High skill cap.

Fury Build (Perma Fury)

http://tinyurl.com/8smwmf6

This one is still completely experimental I’m not going into strengths and weakness on this one, I’d rather just explain the concept.

High toughness, High crit damage, Lower power balanced with perma fury.

Concept: Keep Fury up as long as possible by “Shroud dancing” keep Life force above 50%

Please feel free to share!

To be continued….

I have other necro video’s on my youtube channel if your interested:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Ellisdx3?feature=mhee

Thank you for your time!

This gives me hope, and I saw your teammates video yesterday and was actually hoping you guys would come out with a Necro one. I’ll have to try your build, but I do prefer to be focused a bit more into DPS than tanky support.

Thor Rising.7850:

This gives me hope, and I saw your teammates video yesterday and was actually hoping you guys would come out with a Necro one. I’ll have to try your build, but I do prefer to be focused a bit more into DPS than tanky support.

Thank you! A burst spec video is on its way don’t worry about that! For now I am focusing on redoing the audio for the video and making it a bit louder. Again thank you for the compliment I appreciate it. Keep an eye out for the next video!

I’m going to be completely honest and say that I literally just made this build this morning so as I said before its still in a experimental state but it does seem to work.

Looks quite interesting. Would this work for pve too?

EDIT
And what Sigils do you use? Might be a good idea to link your build

And how did you find out you get chaos armor? Is it written somewhere? Maybe I’m just blind.

I’m still deciding on what sigils to use im thinking +healing on kill as well as sigil of battle and sigil of energy for my staff but again i’m still unsure this is why i didnt include it in the video that and people tend to have their personal favorite runes / sigils so pick whatever you feel comfortable with. I’m thinking of swapping out rune of the grove for rune of lyssa, only problem with this is i would have to save my golem untill i need all buffs for 5 seconds, I may try a combination of lyssa and grove and report back.

I really appreciate your optimism about the necromancer.

This is something to try out! Looks pretty effective.

Thanks Ellisd

+1 subscribed. Keep it coming!

And thus everyone gets to know a setup almost identical to the one i have been using (only Plague as ulti since golem tends tokittenfor me and i like the toughness, dagger warhorn instead of Axe Dagger with runes of grenth and sigil of hydromancy to almost permachill the enemies – weapon swap, heal, chillblains and if it would work chilling darkness with plague form).

While all runes have not been tested, the following runes seem viable with this type of setup:

Rune of the Lyssa
Rune of the Fighter
Rune of Dwayna
Rune of the Monk
Rune of Sanctuary

your necromancer looks not as strong as other classes at all. same weak and slow like all of us here. have you ever seen other class video?..

Andele.1306:

And thus everyone gets to know a setup almost identical to the one i have been using (only Plague as ulti since golem tends tokittenfor me and i like the toughness, dagger warhorn instead of Axe Dagger with runes of grenth and sigil of hydromancy to almost permachill the enemies – weapon swap, heal, chillblains and if it would work chilling darkness with plague form).

do u go 10 in spite 10 in curses? I’m thinking of going Axe/focus for the boon strip chill and regen but then i lose out on condition removal, the plague seems interesting and il make sure to give it a try although i like the control golem enables but yes plague would be just as good

forice.3165:

your necromancer looks not as strong as other classes at all. same weak and slow like all of us here. have you ever seen other class video?..

note this isnt the only build I run nor am I saying “THIS IS 1337 GUYS TRY THIS BEST SPEC EVAR!” comparing classes to other classes you will always find flaws and weakness and that another class can do it better regardless of what class you talk about, i dont need to see other class videos to know just how strong some classes are but again im not here to say how amazingly awesome this build is, it’s more like there is more than one way to build your character and if we always only stick to one thing or always complain how other classes can do it better than we as a community and the overall profession meta game will never grow, atleast not untill they patch necro. I hope we dont turn into FOTM anytime soon either.

How are you helping? You show a video of you fighting in spvp not tpvp, vs bad players. Your damage is so low, any time its 1v1 it is very evident that your doing no damage. You were mostly ignored for a lot of the time and you didn’t even do damage then.

This was a bad video and shows not much of anything.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

How are you helping? You show a video of you fighting in spvp not tpvp, vs bad players. Your damage is so low, any time its 1v1 it is very evident that your doing no damage. You were mostly ignored for a lot of the time and you didn’t even do damage then.

This was a bad video and shows not much of anything.

This isn’t a damage spec per say more of a tanky support, this was 1 run through with the spec and as i stated its still very much so experimental, there are other specs that I have that will do burst damage but thats not what i wanted to accomplish with this spec. Every spec becomes that much stronger in Tpvp for the simple fact that you are no longer getting 8v8 zerged and as i stated before I want players to get away from the stubborn mindset that only 1 build is viable for necromancer. I wanted to show that there are still aspects of this class that people aren’t utilizing. But thanks for trying to bring me down!

As for the damage aspect you can easily slap on rune of the fighter take out 5 points in SR add it to spite and gain 30% minion damage, or ignore the healing aspect of the build and slap on soldiers amulet nothing is set in stone it is all experimental

You also failed to understand the concept of the build if all you looked at was damage

Mindx.9610:

do u go 10 in spite 10 in curses? I’m thinking of going Axe/focus for the boon strip chill and regen but then i lose out on condition removal, the plague seems interesting and il make sure to give it a try although i like the control golem enables but yes plague would be just as good

http://tinyurl.com/2WellPvP – right now
IF necro wouldnt be so bugged go full 30 into Death magic and then 10 into Curse for Chilling Darkness for Plague of Darkness, swap solider for cleric amulet and reverse for gem and Path of Midnight over Spectral master because a 600 radius 3500 heal (right now transfusion is bugged and doesnt scale the life transfer heal so its around 2600).

In terms of runes, Dolyak is too weak (30 hp pre second but doesnt scale and doesnt work while in DS thus kinda useless), Monk was nice, especially the boon duration, but i just like chill more, Ice works great if the enemy has a lot of squish, but i am biased because Grenth is kitten, Lich works great too, but i already hate that the enemy has Reanimator minions to rally by… (would be rune of choice if minions didnt rally and traits worked).

Right now Dagger works wonders, but it is true that swapping to axe/focus will probably be better post trait fix.

Andele.1306:

Mindx.9610:

do u go 10 in spite 10 in curses? I’m thinking of going Axe/focus for the boon strip chill and regen but then i lose out on condition removal, the plague seems interesting and il make sure to give it a try although i like the control golem enables but yes plague would be just as good

http://tinyurl.com/2WellPvP – right now
IF necro wouldnt be so bugged go full 30 into Death magic and then 10 into Curse for Chilling Darkness for Plague of Darkness, swap solider for cleric amulet and reverse for gem and Path of Midnight over Spectral master because a 600 radius 3500 heal (right now transfusion is bugged and doesnt scale the life transfer heal so its around 2600).

In terms of runes, Dolyak is too weak (30 hp pre second but doesnt scale and doesnt work while in DS thus kinda useless), Monk was nice, especially the boon duration, but i just like chill more, Ice works great if the enemy has a lot of squish, but i am biased because Grenth is kitten, Lich works great too, but i already hate that the enemy has Reanimator minions to rally by… (would be rune of choice if minions didnt rally and traits worked).

Right now Dagger works wonders, but it is true that swapping to axe/focus will probably be better post trait fix.

Very interesting thank you for the info and your take on the build much appreciated!

If your trying to be support spec your doing a very bad job. You don’t cast your abilities to help other players only your self. Your ability to take damage is very low. When ever 2 or even 1 player attack you your health drops like a rock.

If your going to run a support spec than you really should support the players around you.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

If your trying to be support spec your doing a very bad job. You don’t cast your abilities to help other players only your self. Your ability to take damage is very low. When ever 2 or even 1 player attack you your health drops like a rock.

If your going to run a support spec than you really should support the players around you.

Like i said this was one run through you cant act like you know my playstyle or how i play in a group based off 1 pvp session especially when i state that it is the 1st time im running said build. And yes i did notice my health did drop a bit to quickly but i also noticed how amazing my heal was, the very begining of the video i was being chased by 3 after running into a zerg of course im going to be bursted down and on the defensive and I am currently looking at ways to improve it, but to totally kitten on my video calling it and myself bad is totally just being rude. You seem very angry mr angry squirrel

I really like this concept behind this.

In its current state, it doesn’t seem terribly effective in sPvP; for example, in the first skirmish at graveyard, you weren’t able to boon up / assist your teammates enough to keep them from being downed by the enemy team; it looked like it was either 3v3, 3v4(their favor), or 4v4.

Another thing I’m not liking is thekitten ai that bone minions exhibit; they can’t reliably combo with ethereal wall. Which is upsetting. They need to gave us a reliable nova to blast combo with. Until such time, I suspect Well of Darkness to blind would probably be a better defensive tool than bone minion for Chaos Armor as a defensive tool.

I’m not sure if it’s better than the run of the mill wells bunker build, but it’s definitely different, and I definitely like the idea. Thanks for sharing!

Mathemagician.7314:

I really like this concept behind this.

In its current state, it doesn’t seem terribly effective in sPvP; for example, in the first skirmish at graveyard, you weren’t able to boon up / assist your teammates enough to keep them from being downed by the enemy team; it looked like it was either 3v3, 3v4(their favor), or 4v4.

Another thing I’m not liking is thekitten ai that bone minions exhibit; they can’t reliably combo with ethereal wall. Which is upsetting. They need to gave us a reliable nova to blast combo with. Until such time, I suspect Well of Darkness to blind would probably be a better defensive tool than bone minion for Chaos Armor as a defensive tool.

I’m not sure if it’s better than the run of the mill wells bunker build, but it’s definitely different, and I definitely like the idea. Thanks for sharing!

Bone minions are there to be summoned while defending, putrid mark is a much better option for straight up fights.

Mathemagician.7314:

I really like this concept behind this.

In its current state, it doesn’t seem terribly effective in sPvP; for example, in the first skirmish at graveyard, you weren’t able to boon up / assist your teammates enough to keep them from being downed by the enemy team; it looked like it was either 3v3, 3v4(their favor), or 4v4.

Another thing I’m not liking is thekitten ai that bone minions exhibit; they can’t reliably combo with ethereal wall. Which is upsetting. They need to gave us a reliable nova to blast combo with. Until such time, I suspect Well of Darkness to blind would probably be a better defensive tool than bone minion for Chaos Armor as a defensive tool.

I’m not sure if it’s better than the run of the mill wells bunker build, but it’s definitely different, and I definitely like the idea. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the input without being rude! And for sure i have a build that can bunker much better than this and it does use well of darkness, and yes the ai for minions in general is crap, but i believe once a bunch of stuff is fixed for necro, builds like this will start popping up more often, so for now I will continue to experiment with it. My goal is to have people start moving in the right direction or atleast in a different direction this way once our bugs are fixed and the class in general is tweaked we will already have multiple builds and ideas to play with. Thanks again for your input.

I definitely like the direction of this build. Regardless of the skepticism I may have, I do have a couple suggestions.

It feels like this entire build is based around using ethereal wall and bone minions to take advantage of the protection + chaos armor. A very defensive build to say the least. However, consider the following:

Bone minions can also be used in a dark field such as Well of Corruption, Power, or Suffering for an AoE blind. This can also be said for Putrid Mark while using staff. You can produce a similar, more reliable effect that can also add benefit offensively.

Coupling a pulsing aoe blind with a very small 3 second protection buff via traits seems to be somewhat of a poor decision. The only time this would be effective is in situation where you have multiple people both inside of the wells range and outside of it- in which case the 3 seconds of protection might prolong your death by half a second (30% reduced damage, not invulnerability)

The 3 seconds of protection would work quite nicely with Well of Blood… but this comes at a cost. First, the effectiveness of Well of Blood, along with the 3 seconds of protection, becomes an unreliable method of helping allies. It becomes even more so when you don’t have the ability to cast the wells from a range. To take advantage of the heal over time (the only reason you would use this over consume conditions- outside of the aforementioned unreliable ability to benefit teammates) you would be forced to remain relatively stationary inside the well… negating any benefit you would have otherwise received.

Retaliation is a tricky boon. To get the most benefit out of it, you’ll need to be the primary target in the fight. In a 1v1 situation, it could prove extremely useful. But in a situation where you’re fighting competent players, nobody is going to focus the ball of life force with 15 seconds of protection standing in his own heal over time (dealing hardly any damage, mind you) when there’s a 18k hp thief with triple the damage 15 feet from you.

The extra 5% power converted to healing trait in spite seems pretty useless here. On a low-power based build, where you do not benefit from dagger main-hand life siphon, and no cool-down reduction or larger marks from staff, you may be getting an extra 100 hit points every 32 seconds.

On a build not reliant on life force usage or generation, or even crit damage, the 5 points in soul reaping also seems rather fruitless. Instead, you could either remove the points entirely, or go 10 points deep to pick up the cooldown reduction on spectral wall. Yet again, you’d be placing points into SR without benefiting largely.

Boon duration seems somewhat pointless to specialize in on a necromancer. The only boons we can use are might (which you have not specced into), fury (which you have also not specced into), and of course protection, which lasts a very short duration of 3 or 5 seconds (10 seconds if you step into the wall twice) for a total bonus of 3 extra seconds of protection out of every 30.

In summation, the defensive aspect of the build looks interesting… but it’s effectiveness is questionable.

Kayotik.5790:

I definitely like the direction of this build. Regardless of the skepticism I may have, I do have a couple suggestions.

---

Bone minions can also be used in a dark field such as Well of Corruption, Power, or Suffering for an AoE blind. This can also be said for Putrid Mark while using staff. You can produce a similar, more reliable effect that can also add benefit offensively.

---

The extra 5% power converted to healing trait in spite seems pretty useless here. On a low-power based build, where you do not benefit from dagger main-hand life siphon, and no cool-down reduction or larger marks from staff, you may be getting an extra 100 hit points every 32 seconds.

---

On a build not reliant on life force usage or generation, or even crit damage, the 5 points in soul reaping also seems rather fruitless. Instead, you could either remove the points entirely, or go 10 points deep to pick up the cooldown reduction on spectral wall. Yet again, you’d be placing points into SR without benefiting largely.

---

Boon duration seems somewhat pointless to specialize in on a necromancer. The only boons we can use are might (which you have not specced into), fury (which you have also not specced into), and of course protection, which lasts a very short duration of 3 or 5 seconds (10 seconds if you step into the wall twice) for a total bonus of 3 extra seconds of protection out of every 30.

In summation, the defensive aspect of the build looks interesting… but it’s effectiveness is questionable.

IF you put it in a straight up fight situation, true, but try placing the necro as a point holder if your guardian and engie are needed on other spots, it becomes pretty efficient (even if im still on a debate between the minions and one well since they are pretty unreliable on swarms to run into the wall – if you spawn em in the wall, they dont cause the combo field effect most of the time, same as placing the wall onto somone, if he doesnt leave and you putrid him, most of the time, no effect on you despite shooting giant claws onto the enemy from 200 range).
Overall thing is it works better than full on MM, conditionmancers than dont go glass cannon and blood focused setups.

To Andele:
I switched to your setup it is indeed much easier to set things up with dagger/WH and plague form makes you a beast idk why I didnt use it in the 1st place since my bunker build uses it lol golem is still fun tho and it takes out half the trebs and gates life in 1 charge lol thanks for the advice!

I also switched to Rune of Lyssa for the boons with plague form

Bump*** Updated the OP to include some builds I am working on, and some minor explanations. More to come and the videos for these builds are on their way.

I’ve done support/bunker necro builds, but this just looks like an inferior wellmancer build.

For starters, Spectral Wall is pretty awful, and you’re basically giving up 2 utilities just to give an aoe chaos armor (and you weren’t staggering your explosions for double uptime, since they don’t stack) which is only going to give regen/swiftness on allies when hit, since they changed Chaos Armor for mesmer to no longer proc protection, but apply it when cast, you (and your allies) will only get protection if they actually run through the wall.

Compared to just going all wells, being more support (blind/chill field + boon convert) as well as more (and reliable) uptime on protection, and dark fields. I just feel it’s inferior. And it’s definately not reliable from what I watched, as your minions wouldn’t be detonating in the wall or detonating on other fields (such as your Well of Blood for a measly bit of retaliation instead).

And if you’re trying for a true “Boonmancer” build how come you didn’t go with 2 Water/Monk + 2 Grove rune combo?

Then the 5 point in Soul Reaping, that minor trait doesn’t actually do anything, it’s supposed to be a 5% overall increase in Life Force gain (i.e. 50 life force + 2.5 life force) but it doesn’t even do that. Not +5% life force for each ability that grants life force). Even if it worked it wouldn’t be worth it.

I’m not trying to flame you or anything, I just feel the specific build in the video overall is sub-optimal.

Mindx.9610:

I also switched to Rune of Lyssa for the boons with plague form

I would consider trying this with Golem as both summoning and activating the golem procs it (with a cooldown however).

Knote.2904:

I’ve done support/bunker necro builds, but this just looks like an inferior wellmancer build.

For starters, Spectral Wall is pretty awful, and you’re basically giving up 2 utilities just to give an aoe chaos armor (and you weren’t staggering your explosions for double uptime, since they don’t stack) which is only going to give regen/swiftness on allies when hit, since they changed Chaos Armor for mesmer to no longer proc protection, but apply it when cast, you (and your allies) will only get protection if they actually run through the wall.

Compared to just going all wells, being more support (blind/chill field + boon convert) as well as more (and reliable) uptime on protection, and dark fields. I just feel it’s inferior. And it’s definately not reliable from what I watched, as your minions wouldn’t be detonating in the wall or detonating on other fields (such as your Well of Blood for a measly bit of retaliation instead).

And if you’re trying for a true “Boonmancer” build how come you didn’t go with 2 Water/Monk + 2 Grove rune combo?

Then the 5 point in Soul Reaping, that minor trait doesn’t actually do anything, it’s supposed to be a 5% overall increase in Life Force gain (i.e. 50 life force + 2.5 life force) but it doesn’t even do that. Not +5% life force for each ability that grants life force). Even if it worked it wouldn’t be worth it.

I’m not trying to flame you or anything, I just feel the specific build in the video overall is sub-optimal.

Mindx.9610:

I also switched to Rune of Lyssa for the boons with plague form

I would consider trying this with Golem as both summoning and activating the golem procs it (with a cooldown however).

I agree with everything you said, this isnt the only build i run, my well bunker build is much more superior to the boonmancer build but I’d rather experiment with every option rather than disregard things entirely even if they are sub-optimal. Anything in the video is subject to change and I do list other runes that are available, I just happen to use grove in the video…..yes i know bone minion + spectral wall is hard to pull off but the combo is there and should be utilized. Remember it was only 1 play through with the build and my 1st time using it at that. Thank you for your input!