Guild Wars 2

Greetings. I am new to playing a Necromancer. I have no idea what I am doing and have been unable to find any helpful articles on the play style of this class.

What I was told:
* Stats I need, in this order, are Power (a lot), Condition Damage (a lot), and vitality (some).
*Light Armor Only.

Now, I have no idea what this means or what it will help me do. I also have no idea on what specs I need and where I should use my skill points. Any and all help would be great.

PvP/WvW/PvE? You need different stats / builds for these.

This site might help you out.

Hi Mythx,

welcome to the necromancer. You can find some articles and guides on the necromancer class on the GW2 reddit. Also make sure you check spoj’s guide on dulfy.net. Last but not least, check metabattle the GW2 ressource for builds.

The necromancer is a well rounded class : as a spellcaster, you have a weak armour but as a necromancer you have lots of HPs.

The necromancer is the master of conditions and a relatively tough boy. To compensate, they have limited mobility and cleaving abilities. It is also a very selfish class : they are very autonomous but bring little to a party compared to guardians and elementalists.

Necromancer are good mob farmers and are welcomed in all but the most optimised parties in dungeons.
Necromancer are a part of the WvW meta and are efficients in both zerg and roaming.
Necromancers perform poorly in competitive PvP events. They are enjoyable in casual PvP though.

If you are leveling from the ground up, the best thing is to forget about stats besides power, toughness, and vitality. Precision and critical hit rate do not make an appreciable difference in low through middle levels because you just cannot get enough to be of use until you close in on level 80.

Participate in events, do heart quests, explore all the areas on the map in PvE, enjoy the story (green star with hints and instructions) and gather materials with sickles, axes, and mining picks. Try crafting once you get enough materials but do not buy too much. You can also try world versus world, though that can be intense and daunting for new players. Essentially, do everything. That will help you level quickly and unlock new abilities.

Wear any gear you find that increases your stats and fix it at the broken heart points scattered around whenever you die. Buy salvage kits, the cheapest ones, and salvage everything you can for crafting materials, including old gear and gear you cannot wear because it belongs to a different armor class. Your inventory bags can let you deposit materials into your crafting collection. More bags to expand your inventory space drop from mobs, can be crafted, or are available on the black lion trading post.

For Necromancer, specifically, Consume Conditions is your best heal. War horn gives you swiftness of movement along with Spectral Walk and Signet of the Locust in your utility skills once you can unlock them. Bone Minion was my favorite and will often tank for you while you learn to dodge and kite monsters. Dagger is the fastest, most damaging weapon while the others have greater range. Try them all and learn how they work. Most of all, have fun.

witcher.3197:

PvP/WvW/PvE? You need different stats / builds for these.

"This site":http://metabattle.com/wiki/index.php?title=MetaBattle_Build_Wiki might help you out.

Great question, I am looking for a PVE epc only. While PVP and WVW would be interesting, it is not something I am looking to do at this time.

I did take a look at the website you kindly gave me. I did find the general tab and the necromancer section, but I am not sure I follow. I use to use Noxxic, but they, along with others, have dropped Guild Wars 2 all together. So, I am now trying to find something close to what they had. It just seemed to make sense to me on how to play the class well.

VodCom.6924:

Hi Mythx,

welcome to the necromancer. You can find some articles and guides on the necromancer class on the GW2 reddit. Also make sure you check spoj’s guide on dulfy.net. Last but not least, check metabattle the GW2 ressource for builds.

The necromancer is a well rounded class : as a spellcaster, you have a weak armour but as a necromancer you have lots of HPs.

The necromancer is the master of conditions and a relatively tough boy. To compensate, they have limited mobility and cleaving abilities. It is also a very selfish class : they are very autonomous but bring little to a party compared to guardians and elementalists.

Necromancer are good mob farmers and are welcomed in all but the most optimised parties in dungeons.
Necromancer are a part of the WvW meta and are efficients in both zerg and roaming.
Necromancers perform poorly in competitive PvP events. They are enjoyable in casual PvP though.

Thank you for taking the time to write in. Sadly, metabattle was of very little to no use to me. For someone starting out, it does not explain things well at all. I will take a look at the other websites, but I am starting to rethink the class I am playing. =\ Maybe Guild Wars 2 is not the game for me afterall.

You can find more explanation on PvP/WvW builds, but for PvE there really isn’t much to explain in terms of how to play the build. If there’s anything to explain, it’s about the dungeons in general. For that use this site

Are you looking for leveling or end-game PvE? Leveling is more about enjoying the story and getting to end-game. If you are interested in end-game builds, Necro has at least two for every situation. There is no “one size fits all” build for Necromancer. If there was, it would be The Meta.

Leveling Necro is pretty much powermancer builds with some slight variation on traits or minionmancer builds with again some slight trait and gear setups. Personally I would go the minionmancer way with stats in power and vit to keep you healthy since if you die then your minions go byebye. The third stat is your own personal choice for what you think fits your play style.
Run axe/warhorn and staff with axe for vulnerability stacking for your minions and warhorn for swiftness and a daze for oh kitten moments. Staff should keep regen up on you and your minions for awhile with a condition transfer for yourself on #4 and a fear on #5. The best way to get around minions clunky ai is to target a mob and just swing at it a few time to get the minions to target and attack it.

For leveling power/toughness/vitality in that order. Use staff and minion traits and skills to faceroll almost everything except dungeons where you should stick to something else like wells. Weapons would be staff and axe+focus or axe+warhorn whatever you like really but you need that staff for facerolling while leveling. Basically shoot mob with staff to make minions attack then spam staff skills there to keep minions alive. (note that in some environments it maybe difficult to keep minions alive, in dungeons they are mostly useless because of aoe spam)

For minion master pick skills which heal you and your minions or make minions stronger. For wells pick skills which reduce cooldown and all that stuff.

Conditiondamage skills are not very good in pve usually. It takes forever to apply all stacks to make damage and stuff even though you can make it work too but it’s.. quite boring tbh.

For pvp there’s too many working builds to list. But necro has apparent weaknesses so try to figure out how to overcome those for your favorite playstyle. You can be tanky, berzerk or condition build or something between and make it work decently (except top end meta bättles)