Guild Wars 2

Greatings,

I ve recently came back to my necro and i wanted to try a power based build in WvW since i wanted a change from my condition spec.
I have various builds in mind (mostly what i saw in the forums) that i want to try but i dont know what gear to take.
I m mostly interested in small group fights or running around solo.

Since necros dont have good escape moves i figured that some defence is mandatory.
For this reason I was thinking of full knights gear (toughness / power /precision), but i m concerned about the low power it provides.
Is this gear viable or should i use some berserker trinkets? Would this make me too vulnerable?
Other alternatives i m considering are cavalier’s trinkets (power/toughness/crit dmg) to keep a high toughnees or valkyrie trinkets (power/vitality/crit dmg) to boost my health pool if necessairy.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated since i dont have the time to get all types of gear and try for myself.

Finally since we lack burst would it be usefull to get some +chill duration runes to prevent foes from running away?

Thank you all for the help

This is my current build for WvW farming. In short it pumps out very decent damage whilst being pretty much unkillable when played right.

When building a Power Necromancer i typically always aim to hit 50% critical chance before adding the rest into survivability.

For a solo or roaming power i would build something like this there is no one set fits all for us, its best to mix and match to find the best results that suits you, but typically aim for offensive ascended, defensive exotic, 50% crit chance.

Thank you for the reply It is very helpfull

I will sure give it a try as soon as possible. I really liked your traits too and i think i ll start with a build like the one u currently use.

One question though…
Why do u prioritize vitality over toughness in the first build?
I might be wrong but i thought that 20k hp is enough (especially with all the condition removals/transfers necros can get) and that health siphoning would be better with high toughness.

I don’t have anything saved right now to link but with my setup I have PVT weapons, knights armor. My accessories are a little more complicated since I change them here and there but I usually end up using a zerker back, knights acc, and my necklace+both rings are pwr+tough+crit dmg. with traits I end up with 2.8k armor, 22.3k hp, 2.7k attack pwr, 40% crit chance and 62% crit dmg. I know my pwr seems low but coupled with my 40% crit chance and 62% crit dmg I actually do very good dmg while being tanky. Also with food my crit chance goes up to 50% and on both of my weapons sets I use sigil of accuracy(since I dual wield) which brings me up to 45% unbuffed 55% buffed crit chance.

Lastly, as I said before, I do swap my accessories everynow and then from knights to zerker. This lowers my crit chance by 1% raised pwr by about 60, lowers my armor by 140, and raises my crit dmg from 62% to 74% if I feel like I want some more dmg. I have a funny thing where 2800 armor just looks good to me so I usually just use knights.

Enferian.2705:

One question though…
Why do u prioritize vitality over toughness in the first build?
I might be wrong but i thought that 20k hp is enough (especially with all the condition removals/transfers necros can get) and that health siphoning would be better with high toughness.

Mainly because i had already bought the Valkyrie jewelery before i decided to go hybrid tank (i was full Berserker armour, Valkyrie jewelery for solo roaming), however thankfully the higher Vitality pays dividends in large scale fighting. With all the people dying around me 0 to 100% LF takes seconds and with a higher HP pool i can absorb alot more damage then if it was toughness.

Heres a video i took recently of Tier 1 large scale fighting on a Necromancer.

Ascii,
Thanks so much for the link to gw2buildcraft.com .

That site is just the thing when contemplating and comparing builds. The numbers seem to be a little bit off when I load my current power build, but still useful.

I have just been working on an Ascended Cavalier build vs. Ascended Valkyrie build to see what would be superior, this is the best ive come up with using my criterias (50% critical chance, same or similar critical damage)

Still working on what would be the best, Vitality or Toughness. Im leaning towards Toughness because the food renders most condition damage useless to me, so Vitality would be less effective but then there’s DS-HP to consider aswell.

Ascii.9726:

This is my current build for WvW farming. In short it pumps out very decent damage whilst being pretty much unkillable when played right.

When building a Power Necromancer i typically always aim to hit 50% critical chance before adding the rest into survivability.

For a solo or roaming power i would build something like this there is no one set fits all for us, its best to mix and match to find the best results that suits you, but typically aim for offensive ascended, defensive exotic, 50% crit chance.

That’s exactly the kind of build I am using right now. Focusing on having 50% critical chance with 3000 or more of power and it is doing great so far.

I use PVT armor that I got with WvW badges, my current accessories are still Power Prec. Condition Damage, from my previous condition build, I will change then for Knight (Power Prec. Toghtness).

I am really happy with this build, having high values of toughness made a lot of difference for me.

As per above don’t even think of going full power/crit zerker for wvw in general. While I get away with 30/30/10/0/0 for condition with staff/scepter and being able to keep range, it’s a lot harder to pull off as a power necro. As for weapons that’s a difficult decision. Staff is a given and I love dagger 3 (immobilize) but otherwise axe main is easier to use especially for chasing and with focus was my favorite combo. Spinal shivers with the range increase is unreliable but better than anything else offhand imo. I’ve gone back to condition though, like my scepter too much.

albotelho.2931:

That’s exactly the kind of build I am using right now. Focusing on having 50% critical chance with 3000 or more of power and it is doing great so far.

I’m assuming by 3000+ power, your referring to effective power and not actual power.

I’m currently wearing a Power/Vitality/Condition gear placing my Attack around 2900 and Condition dmg about 1700 before food buffs. I have always worn Prec/Tough/Condition build which gave me a higher Condition dmg output but nothing else. Mobs and Players react very different from taking damage. In dungeons, you have plenty of time to build up a stack of bleeds, but thats not the case in WvW, you need raw stopping damage(POWER). You will be lucky to get 3 or bleeds on another player before they cleanse the conitions. In WvW, range is everything for a caster, I’m having more success using P/V/C atm. I might try the P/P/C in a attempt to create more impact damage on first hit and for DS. But the first thing many necros make is to treat players like mobs, biggest mistake!!!!!

First of all thank you all for the replies

As far as i know (which might be completely wrong) toughness also increases the amount of direct damage i can take. What i mean is that if i increase my health by 50% then i can take 50% more dmg in DS. In a similar way if i increase my tough by 50% i can take 50% more direct dmg in DS.
If i m wrong and toughness doesnt affect DS in this way then i would definitely take vitality.

What i dont like about vitality is that it makes my heal seem too small. Its just a thing i have that i like my heal to heal me for about 30% of my total health.

I guess it comes down to a vitality vs toughness decision… again…

Since i read many possitive things about taking toughness i think i ll go for gear setup similar to the ascended cavalier build that Ascii posted.

Being a WvW player It might take a while to get them, but i ll let you know how things go…

Finally as a reply to Trimula, in my condition spec i chose a balance between rabid and carrion gear mostly because it was easier to get it. I ended up with a pretty balanced build which seemed to work great.. but as u said its hard to add conditions on a player therefore i decided to try a power build.

Trimula.7651:

But the first thing many necros make is to treat players like mobs, biggest mistake!!!!!

I couldnt agree more about this…