Necromancers and Vulnerability
Looks alot like Nemesis’s glass cannon build, except you modified it a bit to fit your play style.
I’ve done basically the same thing except I speced more into the blood tree for vampire traits.
As for your build in PvE it doesn’t matter you’ll be ok with any build. I’m guessing your talking about PvP or WvW then? In which case this build is kinda squishy compared to a conditionmancer who gets all that extra range. With this one you basically have to become a warrior/berseker type class but your a light armor class.
So my advice would probably try to increase your survivability with some Knights gear or such. Any toughness you can get will be helpful for you in the long run.
I’m not really going to comment on your build and how you traited it. As far as I’m concerned switching up 2-3 traits and not following the common build isn’t going to screw you over. It’s all about having the better gear. So what I’m trying to say is if you like this build and it works with you no matter what other people say play and enjoy it.
I like the theme of the build and awesome that it includes axe, but the problem with vulnerability is how long it takes to stack it (outside of 1 on 1 focus 4).
In theory, improving party damage output by 15% seems awesome. But by the time you stack 15 vulnerability with axe 1 and ds 1 on someone in WvW, it’s likely that they’ll have long been dead. Death Shiver and Axe 1 also both have pretty measly range, putting you in a lot of danger while stacking. WoS and Spectral wall are decent for stacking vulnerability but require good positioning (especially with the lack of focused rituals).
That being said, I think it can still be a viable build. My advice to improve the build-
1. Focus more heavily on support. Since you wont be able to compete with a true damage based build (inherent weakness of axe), I would completely drop the spite line. You can then pick up Enfeebling blood (weakness) and either focused rituals or spectral attunement in curses. Then, with the remaining 10 trait points, pick up Transfusion from the blood line.
2. Change to staff secondary. Staff is the best “support” weapon we have and is a great swap for any necro in general. If you do change to staff, I would suggest swapping ritual of prot for greater marks since you only have 1 well anyway.
These are just my opinions and not necessarily the best… In the end, if what you are doing works for you and is fun, then it’s the best build to have!
I haven’t even seen Nemesis’s build, but I’ll look at it. Glad to know I’m on the track of a popular one though. I run cleric’s set for survival and haven’t had problems with dying in WvWvW.
@ Bobosaur
No you haven’t seen nemesis build then and cerulean’s. Vulnerability can hit a stack of 25 in around 3-4sec with this build.
You can use focus 4, your wall, or your well. You have 3 different skills to stack a large amount off the bat. Not to mention that puting 30 points into the Spite tree gives you a increased condition duration by 30% also if you use
Rare Veggie Pizza[s]
Food
Required Level: 80
Nourishment(1h,30m): +40% condition duration
+70 condition damage
+10 Experience from kills
All that condition duration will stack and last a hell of a lot longer.
Yeah, I didn’t want to go too deep into foods and whatnot for the intitial write-up, but that’s exactly why I’m fully down the spite line. All my conditions (vuln, poison, daze, cripple, weakness) benefit from duration and not damage.
@ Bobosaur
No you haven’t seen nemesis build then and cerulean’s. Vulnerability can hit a stack of 25 in around 3-4sec with this build.
You can use focus 4, your wall, or your well. You have 3 different skills to stack a large amount off the bat. Not to mention that puting 30 points into the Spite tree gives you a increased condition duration by 30% also if you use
Rare Veggie Pizza[s]
Food
Required Level: 80
Nourishment(1h,30m): +40% condition duration
+70 condition damage
+10 Experience from killsAll that condition duration will stack and last a hell of a lot longer.
This is true, but I believe he is using this build specifically for WvW. In WvW, focus is only a reliable vulnerability stacked on 1 target. Condition duration itself is rather useless in this case because 10seconds of vulnerability vs. 20 in WvW will not really make a difference. It will either be cleansed or the target will be dead before 10 seconds is up.
Bobo thats a great point you brought up there. I’d like to make a suggestion then.
@Cerulean if you are indeed going to use this build for WvW I’d suggest you use a dagger offhand with your dagger and pick up Epidemic instead of your wall or something.
Dagger 4 Spreads conditions to your enemies, and epidemic applies vulnerability and spreads conditions to your enemies. So if you can Stack up 25 vulnerabilities on a enemy in WvW then ‘gift’ them to all his friends around you’d be much more suited for that environment.
I use the build for higher level FOTM and dungeon play as well and if I have warriors or thieves on the team, I see bosses melt pretty quickly.
Great point DeathShada! I always forget about Epidemic. I generally toss Spectral Walk out of my build fist. I really like the Etherial Field I get from the wall. Confusion bolts and Chaos armor is great. I can lay the field in front of my melee group in a zerg and watch my friends get 5secs prot and my enemies get confusion and 10 stacks vuln. Great suggestions guys! I really appreciate your inputs.
Thanks for the suggestions! I tried out several of them last night.