Guild Wars 2

Lopez.7369:

It’s toward the bottom of the vendor. Screenshot is attached.

The only other factor that could be causing the discrepancy that I can think of is consumables. Are you using tuning crystals and food?

I was not looking at food when calculating the 1598, just base armor, traits, runes. I have the HoTW version of that armor. The armor I have has identical stats, but in the wiki it shows higher. Are you using food to get to that number?

Junkpile.7439:

Is there any point even make full condition necromancer because it’s so hard to get Prec, tough, cond dmg weapons and trinkets? I don’t do dungeons and i don’t have gold to buy any overpriced “named” exotic.

Look on the TP for rare-level “Strong” armor. There are multiple stat combinations. One of them is CondDmg/Prec/Tough.

Grawl Shaman (not imbued) can still be attacked while in his bubbles after his main one. While the normal damage is reduced to 0, any conditions still hit and damage normally. I usually don’t bother stopping my attacks when he goes into his bubble since my damage is barely reduced.

EDIT: Just saw you already had this info.

In Cliffside, I would make a note of the power of Putrid Mark against the Archdiviner. Clearing your party of conditions and piling them up on him is potent, so I make sure to tell my allies to bunch up on him if they get conditions. Yes, it’s better to avoid the wells, but it doesn’t always work out. Putrid Mark is a good way to turn a mistake into an advantage.

For your WvW guide, you may want to mention that cliffs are a necro’s best friend. Using good positioning with cliffs can turn fear into a quick kill, even if downed. If Spectral Walk is equipped and off cooldown, a cliff is also an escape route that only another necro can follow you (and even then, only if they have spectral walk equipped and ready). “Spectral Falling” is a skill every WvW necro (and some PvE) should learn.

Where can i see ur guides? I am interesting for a guide of ur build for fractal.
Also can u pls tell me for Fractal what to use? vitality or toughness?

As somebody new to necro, I thank you. This is a really helpful guide and I will be referring to it often. +1

A question, I’ve been leveling (only 34 now) with dagger/dagger since in PvE I often find I fight single mobs at short range. Is scepter/dagger that much superior for leveling?

Epidemic works on ALL mobs in the aoe range, not just up to five. And for the record, it’s aoe range is HUGE.

Feywray.4351:

Epidemic works on ALL mobs in the aoe range, not just up to five. And for the record, it’s aoe range is HUGE.

5 mobs and its a range of 600.

Hello. I will break my head on wall 12 hours now. I followed ur guide for the PvE build. I have it exactly the same. I just wear Khilbrons set and the one ascended ring that we have different give the same cond damage with urs.
I wear the rune of undead and the crest of rabit. The build costed me 165 gold.
ANyways how the heck u have 1793 cond damage when i reach 1590. All things are exactly same with urs. Please help me.

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/9779/gw001fh.jpg

Do you use food buffs?

this 1793 he have is with buff?

Excellent Guide for Condition Necromancers!

Gladly will recommend this guide to anyone who’s interested in Necro gameplay from hereon.

I’m playing exactly like this in WvW since Ex Force wrote his first guides on GW2Guru forum. Understanding this build made the Necro Class “click” for me. The Synergies and the build variation if: Corrution or Wells, or: Blood is Power or Corrupt Boon gives great Variety to boot.

It can be very satisfying to play the Necro Class and thanks to this “Conditionmancer” build you are a force to reckon with.

/vote for sticky!

@Lopez

Great guide. I like it a lot!

From the guide, “Maximizing range is one of the reasons I strongly recommend Signet of the Locust. Being able to move in and out of a fight becomes a lot easier with 25 percent extra run speed. There have been quite a few situations in which I’ve barely escaped or killed someone only to realize it was only possible because I’m running a lot faster”

This passive does not work while in combat. A different thread provided the link that explains it, however I can’t find it atm.

As far as I know, it does work in combat. Just remember it’s only your forward speed that goes from 300 u/s to 210 u/s. With the Signet on, your forward speed would be 375 u/s and 262,5 u/s.
The strafing and backwards speed always stay the same (but ofc with the buff applied).

Zonzai.2341:

As somebody new to necro, I thank you. This is a really helpful guide and I will be referring to it often. +1

A question, I’ve been leveling (only 34 now) with dagger/dagger since in PvE I often find I fight single mobs at short range. Is scepter/dagger that much superior for leveling?

To me, scepter/dagger offers more defense than dagger/dagger. I find it better to stay at range, kite and kill a bit slower rather than be taking every melee hit. If you do use d/d, Dagger5 is really helpful for reducing incoming damage.

Cerbeius.7129:

As far as I know, it does work in combat. Just remember it’s only your forward speed that goes from 300 u/s to 210 u/s. With the Signet on, your forward speed would be 375 u/s and 262,5 u/s.
The strafing and backwards speed always stay the same (but ofc with the buff applied).

It doesn’t. The buff still says it’s on, but it doesn’t. Just run through and agro some mobs somewhere. Your speed will drop to normal running.

Zatria.5783:

Cerbeius.7129:

As far as I know, it does work in combat. Just remember it’s only your forward speed that goes from 300 u/s to 210 u/s. With the Signet on, your forward speed would be 375 u/s and 262,5 u/s.
The strafing and backwards speed always stay the same (but ofc with the buff applied).

It doesn’t. The buff still says it’s on, but it doesn’t. Just run through and agro some mobs somewhere. Your speed will drop to normal running.

Just did and I’m still moving faster with than without. Buff still works.

Great guide lopez. I tried the build out, it works wonderfully and has a nice “feel” to it. Haven’t tried it in wvwvw/pvp yet, but on paper should be viable. Gives me a reason to use my necro again.

I liked the reading, but i’m afraid your build for WvWvW is not very good anymore, you might kill some soloers or some really unorganized groups. But when facing organzided guilds, you run into alot more cond removal then your describing. Guardians remove 2 cond on every shout, warriors removing 1-2 cond on every shout. And that is for their allies aswell. Necro for now is a pure controll or healer class in WvWvW. You can do a burst dmg AoE spec. But there are classes that are so much better at that. There are a couple of stuffs that ANet needs to really adress when it comes to cond dmg, until it’s fixed. Necro is not a good AoE dmg class.

I have trouble with 1 ele constantly removing conditions, when there is more it’s pretty much impossible to be useful (damage wise) with conditions.

Would like to see how you use your skills because even constantly applying bleeds myself they just remove them too quick to start doing any damage.

I finally got the gear for this build and I kinda wish I hadn’t. The bleed cap is more than an issue, it’s a HUGE problem. Almost every class can stack bleeds and if there’s 1 (just one) other person in your group who makes use of bleeds you are essentially worthless because with the build you offer no other forms of damage other than the lackluster scepter auto and 2 ability. Condition removal in PvP IS a continuous and frequent thing. Shake it off has an extremely short cooldown and that’s just one ability on one class.

I liked the build originally because of the survivability and damage but unfortunately, unless you roll in specific type of group with no one else using bleeds it is extremely lackluster and in PvP its a joke due to conditions constantly being removed.

I’m now wondering if there’s another build I can use the gear for but I don’t think there is. Shelfing it for now until Arenanet works on some class balancing (which it doesn’t look like they are too interested in) and going for a pure power build.

I can’t believe this isn’t stickied yet!

Nice overview on the possibilities of obtaining the gear for those who are new to your build/guide

This guide is really awesome, i’m about to work on getting my necro to 80 and this is all really helpful thanks.

lopez, can i ask you what sigil are you using on the staff? I’m currently using sigil of battle, but i’m feeling the 3 stacks are not worth it, i would change it for a sigil of earth if the bleeding done by a mark critical hit is applied to every mob hit, do you know if this is how it works?

Just stumbled upon your PvP build and was wondering if you had any problems with life force generation? Would dropping 5 from Blood Magic into Soul Reaping for Gluttony be a better alternative or do you find life force gen. not an issue? I feel like it’s always an issue (for me) with condition builds and I hate being forced to run Signet of Undeath (unless it’s tPvP).

Firstly, this is a great build and a brilliant write-up. The best class build guide for GW2 I’ve seen. In my mind this is how necromancer should be played. My own build is very similar. I just switched some traits to fit my own playstyle.

There is one glaring problem, however, that comes with this build. I think it’s important to make a note of it, since it definitely affects the so-called average player. If you don’t play with a set group, but often find yourself playing in pick-up groups with random players, you will notice that with great toughness comes great responsibility. This stat-spread will turn you into a caster tank, because most players in this game are more concerned about their damage output than tanking ability. In other words, players tend to go with berserker’s gear (or hybrid builds) meaning that you will have the highest toughness in the group and more often than not end up having the hate of the mobs.

I understand the reasoning behind min-maxing and actually support it, but if you don’t have a tank in your group, you might want to lower your toughness a bit. It becomes rather tiresome to be the one who needs to kite the boss all the time, even if necromancers have a lot of survivability.

My solution was to drop 20 points from Death Magic and put them into Spite thus dropping 200 points of toughness. The minor traits that you lose are pretty much useless. Losing the major ones does hurt though in some cases. The other option is to slot exquisite chrysocola or coral jewels to your accessories instead of rabid crests. Or even drop those runes of the undead and go with krait and afflicted runes (Lopez even mentioned them in his guide).

Have to say, been running with this build for quite some time with a few trait modifications (20/30/10/10/0), but otherwise down to the T. I absolutely love it. The only thing I sometimes have trouble with is thieves who stealth and ezmode backstab in WvW — especially with culling. Other than that, warriors, guardians, mesmers and the like have had some serious problems trying to take me down before my conditions melt them. I used this gear/build before I found your guide, but it is certainly a lot more information than I originally went in with and it has helped tremendously both in 1v1 and zerg fights. Thanks Lopez!

-wooks

Backstab thieves I pretty much never have issues with in WvW. The difficult ones are the ones that spam the crap out of stealth and have the “Remove conditions on stealth” trait. They don’t really do much, but they are annoying as hell to deal with.

Lopez.7369:

I’m actually not sure if this is much of a concern in fractals. Mobs and bosses don’t really seem to stick to toughness-geared players like they do in other content.

It can definitely be a problem with dungeons, though. But it’s not like the bosses will absolutely always stay on the necromancer, and, honestly, it’s probably not a bad idea for a necromancer to have aggro in a group that’s so squishy.

I’ll add a mention of this to the guide just to keep players informed. I don’t think most people know mobs tend to focus whoever has the most toughness.

Perhaps “glaring problem” was a bit too strong wording. I must admit that I have gone back to full toughness build already. But sometimes it’s annoying to be the tank of the group even when you are running with guardians and warriors. Sometimes you just want to relax and damage stuff

Definitely this problem isn’t as bad in Fractals as it can be in other dungeons. I just wanted to give people a heads-up, because they might want to take different utility skills, if they need to tank the whole dungeon run. But as you said, necromancers are good for tanking too.

Lopez.7369:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Backstab thieves I pretty much never have issues with in WvW. The difficult ones are the ones that spam the crap out of stealth and have the “Remove conditions on stealth” trait. They don’t really do much, but they are annoying as hell to deal with.

Yeah, they can be annoying, but I don’t mind them two much. Thieves come in two kinds: They either do huge damage at first and can then be easily avoided and controlled, or they have a ton of survivability but essentially do zero damage.

The last kind of thieves you said never pick up a fight alone, while the first kind (all damage on opening) yes, so I’m more concerned about the first one….

Lopez.7369:

I advocate for flesh golem in the guide. It’s the best DPS choice for condition

Some guy with almost 10,000 achievement points (highest I’ve seen so far) tried to tell me that Lich Form and Plague form on a Condition Necro did more damage than Flesh Golem in a 3 minute window against the ice crystal structure in the Svanir fractal. He even explicitly clarified that the direct damage component of Plague Form (not the conditions) did more than Flesh Golem in that time.

By the way, Lopez, your guide references power as the primary stat in Rampager, it’s precision.

Plague form does almost no direct damage. Flesh Golem regularly hits for 600+.

I think Fleshie wins the damage race over the duration of Plague, let alone the 3 minute recharge.

This is going to sound off the charts stupid, but I don’t know if I understand the bleed cap correctly.

What you’re saying is that after 25 stacks of Bleed are on a foe, all subsequent bleeds are wasted? And each bleed you apply is basically for nothing because bleeds stack intensity not duration? So you’re going for a short powerful bleed after short powerful bleed?

EDIT read previous posts again, I get it now

While I’m a die-hard Well fan I’ll definitely give this a whirl. Thanks!

Have you taken down your guides or something, Lopez?

Gah! What happened? I was using these guides!

Ack! I need muh guide!! Bring it back! D=

Where’d you go man? I loved your guides

He removed it from gw2guru also. Maybe they are part of a paid site now?

Would be nice to have some explanation as to why you took this down OP. If you decided to sell your guide, as someone hinted, it would make sense to say so here so we could google it and become potential customers.

I loved the guide, really regretting not screenshotting it.

Well, I have the WvW page on google’s cache, I assume the other pages are likewise available:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lopezirl.com/2012/12/30/a-condition-necromancers-guide-to-world-vs-world/

Helicity.3416:

Well, I have the WvW page on google’s cache, I assume the other pages are likewise available:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lopezirl.com/2012/12/30/a-condition-necromancers-guide-to-world-vs-world/

Thank you Helicity! i thought his guide was lost.