Guild Wars 2

yo

I just bought the game a few days ago, and of course I fall in love with the Necromancer (always have, always will, every game, all the time).

I’m not trying to race to the endgame, but I would like any suggestions for a decent mostly-solo experience as a Necromancer. Right now I’m toying with a minion-master-esque build, but I’m only level 10 so I have a lot of flexibility right now :-P

Thanks in advance for any pointers you’d have.

ONE MORE question: is it worth it to level as one spec and then re-spec at endgame? I’d like to roll as a healer in the later levels but it usually makes for a boring experience in the first 70% of the game (in my experience).

Thanks!

-PM

Best tip I can give any Necromancer: Blood is Power. If you have either an OH dagger or a staff you will have skills to transfer conditions to the enemy (Deadly Swarm #4 OH dagger, Putrid Mark #4 staff) you can use Blood is Power and then convert the bleeding you have to the mob. If you use staff you do this: Mark of Blood > Chillbains > Blood is Power > Putrid Mark (blast finisher on Chillbains) > Epidemic (if AOE) and pretty much everything will be dead.

If you go for this setup you still have 1 utility slot left over, Spectral Walk is a pretty good one for leveling to get around a little quicker or grab a pet to make yourself feel more like a Necromancer!

From what I’ve gathered thus far (still relatively low level myself), the basic idea behind the Necromancer is to stack conditions and then spread them. I’ve tried other approaches but they didn’t work out as well for me, e.g. dagger or axe as a main hand weapon. I currently use staff and scepter, with dagger off hand.

I’ve found Signet of the Locust very useful for its passive movement speed increase. Its active ability leeches health from enemies which is also pretty handy.

Signet of Spite is very powerful (especially in conjunction with Epidemic), but has quite a long cooldown time (90 seconds, although you can spec for 20% Signet cooldown reduction q. early on). As mentioned, Blood is Power is very good and has a much shorter cooldown than SoS.

Thus far I found playing the Necromancer most difficult around the lvl 15-16 mark (actually, I’d probably say that about all my alts). Since opening up slot 9 at lvl 20, things have become quite a lot easier.

I tried running with a bunch of minions earlier on, but that didn’t work out for me at all. ymmv of course. I’ve not yet tried a well-heavy build so cannot comment on that.

My biggest gripe playing Necromancer is that the damage you deal feels somewhat indirect compared to the other classes I’ve tried. The only ‘beefy hits’ that I’m aware of are the dagger #1’s third strike (Necrotic Bite) and Scepter #3 (Feast of Corruption); as long as you’ve stacked a bunch of different conditions on your foe. They have suspiciously similar animations too…

HTH :-)

thanks for your responses I’ll definitely try both of these and see how they feel, probably tweak them to my own style (of course).

Thanks guys

-PM

I must admit that I found running around with 3-4 minions made leveling as a necromancer incredibly easy – up to around lvl 60 or so, when I was traited/specced well enough to make conditions and wells more interesting (I just don’t feel comfortable with blood is power though)
And yes, even with the Minion AI being as crappy as it is – I hardly ever died, definitely less than with my alts.

Oh, I also played around with axe quite a bit in the beginning, but it didn’t feel nice enough after having experienced the great damage output it had in the first Beta Weekends…

There are 2 viable builds for fast leveling, these are:

- Well-o-mancer.
- Conditionmancer.

Well-o-mancers focus on the AOE potency of staves, with utility skills being wells (more AOE) and rely on being able to pull 5+ enemies at a time as single target damage is abysmal (or you’re wasting long cooldowns on 1 enemy). Well-o-mancers are favored in dynamic events, because of the obvious ability of the vast number of AOEs to tag many enemies.

Conditionmancers focus on the damage of conditions that are applied by Sceptre/Dagger. This brings some decent single target damage to the class, but when combined with utility skill “Epidemic” it allows all conditions on the targetted enemy to be passed onto nearby enemies. This allows for fair single target leveling, as well as effective AOE leveling.

While not effective, some players find being a minion master fun. Minion masters focus on honing the ability of the necromancer’s minions, while “nerfing” themselves in order to do so, making the necromancer wholly reliant on its minions. The main issue with this build is the terrible AI of the minions – one reason I don’t play this.

With reference to your last point – yes it’s worth leveling as something and respeccing at 80, it costs so little & you won’t be leveling in exotics anyway.

Hey, I’m also lvling since a few weeks (lvl 69) right now, no crafting at all.

I like conditions like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQJArIjMat7pbW6IgoHEbcyA
and put the rest in spite.

The 2nd weapons could be axe+warhorn/focus or staff (right now better for me, since more utility).

gear: condition and prec, later condition, precision, power

A single target could take a litte bit longer(compared to dagger build) but if you dot one and spread the scepterdots and BiP+dagger4 with epidemic it takes nearly the same time for 3-6 targets.
After epidemic switch to staff (2,3,4) or use Well of Suffering+DS4
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I also feel MM is super strong but at that moment my pets pulled a hole camp and wiped me and 2 other guys i decided that i don’t want to rely only on pets without control.
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I would love to use a power build axe/focus -> dagger/dagger (or switched offhands) but i’m not tough enough to tank mobs and i get knocked down in dungeons far too often in near melee range + less AOE. If someone has good hits how you survive/dd with such a build I’ll be happy
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oh and if you change your mind with your playstyle, i’ll suggest to update your complete gear after 5-6 lvl (or sooner, but i’m not rich) including your runes, sigils and at that point you’re free to change your traits as well and try out something else since you’ll buy new stuff anyways.