Guild Wars 2

Hey, I’ve been wanting to make a Necromancer for quite some time now as its one of the last classes that I haven’t played. Just a few questions about necros.

What is the highest dps builds out there ? I’ve seen some posts with various builds but I know there was a huge patch not too long ago, oh and I mean for PVE and high end PVE content like fractals and dungeons.

Continuing from before is conditionmancer better than powermancer ? I’ve always enjoyed glass cannon builds and never really went into condition builds.

Thanks in advance

Regular dungeons are all about raw dps as you would expect. So condition builds are kind of sub par. This means you generally go down the route of beserker power builds for regular dungeons and then either beserker or rampager for fractals. Rampager hybrid builds are good for fractals due to fractals having a lot of trash mobs so aoe becomes more important in instances like the dredge fractal.

My build is the up to date build you would run in dungeons, highest dps and most suited for organised groups. You can also swap a few traits, weapons and gear to turn it into a hybrid build without retraining your trait points. I tend to use my necro in fractals mostly. I switch to rampager when we get the dredge or ascalon fractal for better sustained aoe and then switch back to beserker for the final bosses of those fractals.

Thank you this is just the clarification I needed. If you don’t mind me asking what would you swap to when you do want to go hybrid from this ?

I usually swap the focus for an offhand rampager dagger and a rampager scepter. And then maybe take epidemic instead of signet of spite. For traits i tend to not bother swapping them cause im usually quite lazy. I guess this is what I would use if i could be bothered to change everytime:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhtG1IjW6elm7G9eCB6xuINgYMjjhYoPUOA-jADBYfBEBMyUFQk0wkGgUBA5PFRjt0iIas+CVXDT5SIVBLyBB8I-e

For dredge fractal I would swap BiP for well of corruption though. They have a lot of boons so its a good well to have.

Thank you once again, excited to get my necr proper

I’m going to have to disagree with the weapon choices on the previous poster, though weapon use usually seems to be a lot of personal preference. It also depends on what type of dungeon run you’re doing (speed vs normal exp).

For example, my preferred COF P1 speed run weapon choices are Axe/Focus and either Staff (for when I’m feeling lazy) or Scepter/Dagger. For utilities I usually use wells with ground focusing, but I like to change that up. I always use Signet of the Locust, but that’s because I don’t like being slow, and on a speed run, that’s kind of important. I use a mix of Beserker/Rampager gear. (For reference, our speed runs are at or less than 10 minutes, with 2 wars, 1 guard, 1 ranger, and me.)

PvE I tend to use Axe/Warhorn or Focus, and Staff (because of the range), but I know a lot of people pref Dagger to Axe (to each their own).

For other utilities, I tend to rock minions when I’m doing PvE because I’m lazy, but wells are a fine choice. If you’re going the corruption route I’d consider the Plague Signet. (In my early days I killed myself once and had several close calls because I was using them without any way other than my heal to remove conditions – its a dicey area and heavily dependent on the situation, IMO.)

Anyway, my main point is that I don’t think both of your main hand weapons should be the same. Dagger range is only 130 (Axe is 600, which is mainly why I prefer it), so it doesn’t really make sense to have both your main hands with a melee weapon, unless you really, really, really like to be close.

Thats because the build is designed for organised groups. You can take an axe in the 2nd set if you want. Axe is an absolutely awful dps weapon though, even the #2 hits like a wet noodle. You should always have a dagger on one set when using the beserker spec seeing as your dps is trash without it. Obviously you can alter the build how you see fit to work with what your comfortable with. This is all just advice, I dont care how much people alter my build for their own personal use. Ive set it out for organised groups and maximising dps because thats how I play and im confident in pretty much all encounters with that build.

Every player, I would hope, wants to improve and going full melee is a big part of that. Also going ranged increases the chance you dont receive buffs from your group unless they are all ranged, not to mention the already bad dps when ranging. Obviously take what you need for the encounter and what your group is doing. If your not confident melee then it would be suicide to go melee solo while your pug group ranges and baits you. But im pretty sure the op has the common sense to adapt my build when he needs to.

Also bare in mind you only need 1 mainhand dagger. If your second weapon set just has an offhand, when you swap to it, it will automatically use the mainhand in the other set.

Also you can swap signet of locust whenever you’re out of combat. I do that after every fight, then swap it back just before i get to the next boss/encounter. All utilities are situational. Most of the time signet of spite and well of suffering will remain on your bar for fights but there are situations where you dont want either. Utility swapping is encouraged.