Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been mustering the courage to share my build with you guys and DayLight’s post asking for help with his Well Necro finally pushed me over the edge. So here it is:

“Oh Well”

Gear (PvE/WvW prefixes):

Armor – Knight’s, slotted w/2x Lyssa, 2x Mad King, and 2x Ruby Orb
Weapons – Giver’s (that’s right, Giver’s), slot Daggers w/Sigils of Ice and Staff w/whatever you want
Trinkets – Soldier’s Back, Neck, and Accessories (slotted with Ruby Jewels) and Berserker Rings

Key features:

*You can really use any offhand you like. Inspired by Khalifa, I choose dagger for the area weakness (since I don’t have ground targeting wells), though the condition removal is obviously awesome, and because I take dagger cooldown reduction.
*You have the ability to choose important traits in Curses for PvE or WvW (mainly swapping in Focused Rituals for ranged well-bombing in WvW). Chilling Darkness, Weakening Shroud, and Terror are all very strong, so those are situational and/or your preference.
*I never do, but for more survivability you could flip the Blood Magic traits to improve Siphoning.
*Eat some Rare Veggie Pizza to give yourself a total of +100% Condition Duration. That equals 2 ticks on your Terror Fears and a 6 second immobilize with Dark Pact (guaranteed death if you then drop wells on a poor sucker who’s blown his cooldowns), plus the other non DoTs it doubles (weakness, blind, chill, cripple, and vulnerability).
*I recommend Superior Sharpening Stones in tandem with the pizza to boost your power up near the 2K mark.

Playstyle:

In WvW, the main idea is to bait people out of their condition removal(s) with long chills. Otherwise its pretty straightforward like well Necros tend to be. I like to open with Staff 2, then 3 to apply conditions before I switch to dagger and try to close. Now that Chilblains’ chill lasts for 8s, people will ALWAYS remove it after they blow their dodges and realize they’re still chilled and you’re about to wreck them with dagger autoattack. When approaching melee range, use #4/5 as needed. Once you’re in close you’re essentially waiting for your Sigils of Ice to proc and bait your opponent out of further removal. If you’re against a high mobility/evasion or removal class, DS #2 and WoD are in your back pocket for a gap-closer and added control. The added chills will further ensure your opponent isn’t saving any removals. Once you think you have an opening (and if you’re lucky they’ve used their heal at this point, too), lock them down with Dark Pact (6s!), drop WoS and/or WoC on them, and laugh maniacally.

In PvE, you can swap out Sigils of Ice for more DPS. You also won’t need WoD as much, though it is useful in situations. BiP is always nice, as is Epidemic for leveraging everyone else’s conditions against a ton of mobs.

In general, Dagger/Staff with Gluttony means Life Force will be on-demand, so I definitely advocate hopping into DS as often as possible (especially when your wells are on CD). With Fury you’ll have ~65% crit chance, so with your ~35% crit damage Life Transfer and Life Blast are heavy-hitters. If you’re running with Terror, make sure you Fear something/someone for 2 ticks of pretty nice damage (even with low condition damage) before you hop out. And if you’re running Enfeebling Blood on DS entry, weakness is very underrated CC if you need to tank until your heal is back up.

Do you run with the same gear in Dungeons as you do in WvWvW or do you swap out for Warhorn?

I haven’t tried WH out roaming in WvW yet ‘cause I’m under the impression that condition duration doesn’t affect daze – does it? That’d be another epic lockdown if it did (even without Banshee’s Wail) and I would definitely give it a test run.

I like Dagger 5 with 15% CD reduction ‘cause of the blind and AoE weakness. I don’t have retaliation when I’m in close, so the miss plus long term damage mitigation is nice, seeing as people usually live with weakness rather than clear it.

Ichor.9360:

I haven’t tried WH out roaming in WvW yet ‘cause I’m under the impression that condition duration doesn’t affect daze – does it? That’d be another epic lockdown if it did (even without Banshee’s Wail) and I would definitely give it a test run.

I like Dagger 5 with 15% CD reduction ‘cause of the blind and AoE weakness. I don’t have retaliation when I’m in close, so the miss plus long term damage mitigation is nice, seeing as people usually live with weakness rather than clear it.

The cd reduction is minimal at best. WH is not great for WvWvW, but it’s significant in PVE.

I agree, Banshee’s Wail is meh, especially when there are so many good traits in Curses.

But I did want to confirm Wail of Doom isn’t affected by Condition Duration, as it’s not technically a condition (I think it’s an “effect”?). A 4 (6 traited) second cone Daze would be nasty…

I do use focus in dungeons, as #4 hits pretty hard and stacks 12 vuln if you hit all the bounces. So that’s nice. Epidemic-ing the long chill is always fun too. I really haven’t given WH the time of day yet in any content yet, but I’ll be sure to check it out.

If you want to make this build slightly more offensive in WvW, I suppose you could swap the OH dagger for focus, drop the Sigils of Ice (since you get another chill with Spinal Shivers) and replace them with something else. I do like having another condition removal (transfer) with dagger #4 though…

Thank you for the build Ichor! As soon as I’m able I’ll give it a go. Could you perhaps post some figures (Power, Health, Toughness, Condition Damage etc.)? I am currently at work and while pretending to be busy would like to crunch some numbers.

DayLight.9603:

Thank you for the build Ichor! As soon as I’m able I’ll give it a go. Could you perhaps post some figures (Power, Health, Toughness, Condition Damage etc.)? I am currently at work and while pretending to be busy would like to crunch some numbers.

I ran the Dagger/WH last night in COF with some fellow Necro’s. It’s ridiculously hilariously powerful. Now I was running Tak’s version with my berzerker gear. I will have to give your build a try as well.

As for Greater Marks it’s not necessary at all in pve. Regardless of what some players think it has limited usage in pve, but is pretty close to mandatory in sPvP and WvWvW.

Bas.7406:

As for Greater Marks it’s not necessary at all in pve. Regardless of what some players think it has limited usage in pve, but is pretty close to mandatory in sPvP and WvWvW.

I disagree, I have no problem getting my marks to trigger, and the blast radius is plenty big (bigger than the mark size) to encompass the 5 person aoe cap. 20% staff recharge is far superior, esp for putrid mark (and fear!)

@Bas: Yes! I’m looking forward to trying that combo tonight. The survivability and control this build offers (while still being fairly powerful) shines more in WvW, so if you’re running dungeons or whatever else in PvE you can easily afford to swap the knight’s/soldier’s gear for berserker’s. I’ll be able to do that once I save up for the gear.

@DayLight: Yeah man, go for it! It’s tons of fun when everything comes together (i.e. your chills do their job) and you’re able to land that huge immobilize. Plus the 2 second fears feel so much more necro-y. I have a spreadsheet that calculates attributes using only exotic gear. I’m sure you could finagle ascended gear and wind up with close to the same spread only a little better obviously. Here are the numbers (including Superior Sharpening Stone and Rare Veggie Pizza):

Power 1959
Precision 1757 (44% critical chance)
Toughness 1491 (2411 armor)
Vitality 1404 (23252 HP)
Condition Duration +100%
Critical Damage 33%

As for Greater Marks, it’s nice in WvW but not necessary – especially when you’re out roaming or in a small team. I’ve never played PvP so I don’t know how it performs there.

I use dagger/WH all the time, with a semi glass canon/support build with wells and life siphoning.

Life siphoning, although not THAT awesome, are a form of damage mitigation which lets me face tank most bosses.

Why Dagger? Autoattack damage alone is awesome, but life force generation is great too for survability, and life siphon all the time im under 90% HP so I’m always at full force, and finally Dark Pact to snare bosses, so they dont move out of my Well barrage.

Chill on blind trait with Well of Darkness adds survability, since slows them down and their attacks, wich means more healing from my attacks.

Now, why warhorn? Because for vampiric traits, it’s the best offhand.
Only some mobs are immune to Daze, and Defiant is easily removed by clever use of DS’s Fear, and Elite Golem’s charge.

- But the best synergy with vampiric builds is Locust Swarm. Once activated, it acts as a passive attack, AOE, stealing life from every mob it hits, crippling them and giving you swiftness so they dont catch you. The damage that locusts deal is not good, but my focus is to attack with dagger 1.

And now, my take on wells and siphoning. As long as you have the minor trait Vampiric, which allows you to siphon health on enemy hit, it makes your Wells siphon health as long as they “hit” someone; not necessarily damage:

Example, well of darkness deals 0 damage, but for every bling it applies, per pulse, it siphons health, only requisite is for it to be affecting a mob.

That’s the difference between vampiric and Vampiric rituals, which allow wells yo heal you PER PULSE, even if they don’t hit ANY mob. Which essentialy makes Wells like Well of Blood an OP healing, auto self heal + heal per tick + heal per tick trait Vampiric rituals.

Although I dont use Vampiric rituals, because most of the time I’m in melee range so my wells are hitting the enemy, siphoning health, and my autoattack + locust swarm + 28k HP, and Death Shroud, 99% last man standing if things go wrong.

Although I must admit that siphoning could use some reworking or better healing power scaling, but nevertheless, I encourage fellow necros to try out the mentioned combination because you can hit like a truck while removing boons, giving blinds and chills, or adding vulnerability from wells, thus, supporting your party (Warriors will love you with Well of Suffering + Well of Blood).

:)

EDIT: At the end of the day, most people will say WH its only useful for running. Just wanted to give some heads up and let people know that it has it’s own strengths and utilities, and it’s true that Banshee’s Wail could reduce the skills CD’s like 20-30%, but maybe that can be OP in a PvP environment since it increases the skills effects also, and since Devs are so focused on balancing the PvE aspect in the game based on the PvP aspect…