Guild Wars 2

Hey,

So, i’ve been playing a Thief for a while now and thought it’s about time i made an alt, and i’ve narrowed it down to a caster class.

I’ve always liked the look of Necro’s but never really understood the class, so i quickly made one and went to Heart of the Mists to try one on dummies. I tried out a few weapons and i do like the staff. However, im not sure how the build works, i mean the skills have pretty long cooldowns.

Is this class more focused on minions doing the damage?

Any help and advice is much appreciated.

Minions are effective in spvp and solo leveling, some people can use them in dungeons I’ve found we are more effective in using wells and aoes in dungeons. In large wvwvw battles I think they are useless, for a roaming wvwvwvw character they are awesome. The minions are used more for tanking damage allowing you to use your weapon attacksmore as well as for their abilities bone minions are a pretty good nuke.

Condition necros would be the best but because of the condition limit they can be ineffective if there are others using conditions.

I like the power necro builds a/f staff and wells. You do decent damage with everything except the axe’s auto attack. I usually start with staff let your face tank guys run up drop your marks switchs to axe focus drop your wells start running in hit focus 4 axe 2 axe 3 focus 5 by now you’ve taken some damage switch back to staff hit your ds hit ds 4 start backing away and use the ds autto attack until you lf is about half switch out of ds and drop your marks again.

Staff is more of our all-around utility weapon and not so much a primary damage weapon. Depending on what type of spec you are interested in determines the weapon setups you will use.

We are not dependent on minions… in fact a lot of people hate them and don’t use them at all. Condition specs or power specs are the most common with condition being the primary one. Nemesis has some tutorial videos at the top and spec overviews and there is also a build thread stickied there too. No one can give you the “best” spec since, in my opinion, it is all about what you enjoy the most and want to do.

So what weapon choices would you advice for power or condition?

Dagger/warhorn is great for power builds. Axe/Focus is for minion builds. Scepter/Dagger is for condition damage. And staff really can go either way, it has decent damage either way, but you’ll be taking it for utility, not damage.

Bhawb.7408:

Dagger/warhorn is great for power builds. Axe/Focus is for minion builds. Scepter/Dagger is for condition damage. And staff really can go either way, it has decent damage either way, but you’ll be taking it for utility, not damage.

Easy summary, understanding that it is generic. Good guide to follow for new necros.

Once you get more familiar with the class, you might find your axe/focus setup fully compliments the dagger/warhorn for a power build.

Yeah, I was trying to make it as basic as possible, there are, of course, a lot of ways you can vary, depending on what your build needs.

You should note that Thieves have some of the highest damage around.
Necros are more about Controlling and being able to take a lot of damage.
Their damage isn’t very high compared to some of the other Professions.

But remember that Necros are hard to kill and good at area control.
That in turn balances things out somewhat.

Minions and Wells definitely add a lot of damage, though.

About stat spreads:
You can also go Hybrid if you want!
I like to use Carrion Armor, Rampager Jewels.
It allows for a wider selection of weapons and skills and also allows you to make great use of the Death Shroud and the Staff.

One of my favorite Weapon sets is Dagger/Dagger.
It looks like an odd combo, but works rather well.
Off-hand dagger is incredibly useful for getting rid of Conditions on you and both the Blind and Weakness go well together with the fact that you deal high damage (for a Necro) in melee.

With a Sigil of Earth and enough points in Curses you can take advantage of the Dagger’s fast, repetitive hits and add quite a few Bleeds.
It’s nothing like a full Condi Necro, but still a decent amount.
Plus if you hit the 25 Bleed cap for any reason (Say, you go fight one of the Dragons) you still deal a decent amount of damage thanks to the Crit chance and Power.
Condition immune things won’t be a problem either.

If you want you can even grab the Quickening Thirst trait and have 25% run speed while holding D/D.
Very useful if you want to be fast without using Runes, Warhorn or Utility Skills for mobility.
Of course then you’ll lose out on some really good traits, such as Ritual Mastery.
Choices, choices.