Guild Wars 2

I recently read a few posts where various people suggested a lack a creativity with some necromancer builds. I made an effort to try some new things and found a combo that’s effective and hasn’t (to my knowledge) been discussed.

The key to the build is “Near to Death” in the Soul Reaping trait line. This trait will reduce the cooldown of death shroud to 5 sec. This is great for one main reason: “Furious Demise” (15 points in Curses), which grants 5 seconds of fury.

I figured it would be interesting to try a power build that focused on maintaining fury by enabling death shroud and immediately disabling it. This grants 5 seconds of fury. When fury runs out, enable and disable death shroud again. We maintain death shroud only when the enemy is clustered and we can maximized the utility of piercing (“Unyielding Blast”: Soul Reaping).

Since I was swapping in and out of death shroud, I figured I could use several abilities that would be effective in this type of situations. First, there’s “Weakening Shroud” (10 points Curses), which cast enfeebling blood whenever you trigger death shroud. Second, there’s “Spiteful Spirit” (10 point Spite), which grants 3 seconds of retaliation.

This means that every 5 seconds you get 5 seconds of fury, 3 seconds retaliation, and a cast of enfeebling blood.

Since it’s a power build, I figured a dagger would be the most useful. To keep enemies in range, I would focus on keeping them chilled with either “Spectral Grasp”, Focus 5, or a Sigil of Ice. In addition, I’d keep swiftness up with horn 5, or Spectral walk (which can also be used to run into a zerg and drop a few wells and return to the top of a tower wall).

Totally optional tweak of the build: focus on keeping chilled on the target with various runes (Svanir, Ice).

Chill will also grant us a little mobility in that it will slow our pursuers down when we’re trying to flee. It can also be useful to trigger death shroud, fear, and continue fleeing.

Initially, I was a little protective of this build, but I figured the necro hive-mind might be able to improve on it . It’s unusual and doesn’t take advantage of some of the necromancers better skills (Epidemic, Minions, etc.), but it’s fun and interesting. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

As for gear, it’s pretty flexible. I do WvWvW, so I mix a little PVT and PPT gear.

Anet doesn’t seem terribly interested in overhauling our traits, so let’s seem what we can do with what we have.

Build:
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.1.4.18.21.23.0.0.0.106.120.123.108.128.10.8.0.305.310.0.319.325.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.364.366.372.20.20.0.0.30

Regards,
Crow on a Wire (Henge of Denravi)

Do you roam? If not, why do you need 5 sec DS fury? The d/d eles in your team and warriors will keep you with perma fury.

20% more damage against targets below 50% health is a lot more useful as is that extra power you’re getting if you want to maximize your offense.

I tend to roam or work is small groups (3-4), so I’m not always guaranteed the fury, but I acknowledge your point for most large zerg battles.

Actually i’ve tried this kind of build. My main point was the whole 5s enfebbling blood CD. But you know? There is an hiden internal CD on “Weakening Shroud” (15s or 18s) that weakened a lot the build purpose. Plus, on my opinion, it lack boon duration to.

It’s still viable and enjoyable but you’ll soon see that this ICD is a huge pain.

I think the 5 sec DS flash build is kind of what Anet mistakenly believes is the hidden secret to Necros. That they were ‘scared’ of people learning, or basically waving our weaknesses away on people figuring it out.

But in reality it comes out kind of as a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, or not much substance. A whirling dervish that attracts a lot of unwanted attention but isn’t doing that much. This kind of playstyle, swapping every 5 seconds, I also find very exhausting and tedious, and unfun way to play a build. If you take Near to Death and all the other bells and whistles procs for DS, you kind of end up like a DD ele playstyle more focused on timed rotations than actually skill reactions to what is going on in a battle. But unlike the DD ele, we have not nearly the sustain. Only 1 weak heal coming out of DS, and losing one condition going in.

And at the end of the day, if you are going to be diving into big melees with DS, to fire off your DS procs, its still comes back to lack of mobility killing us. As at some point you are going to need to get out of dodge in bad situations. But without invulnerability skills, turning invisible, or being able to Ride the Lightning out, you still end up a juicy pinata for enemies to focus fire on.

Simple major flaw in any perma-fury build that uses Furious Demise, after you double tap F1 for the fury, you have no Deathshroud for 5 seconds.

If you could get Near to Death and Foot in the Grave, if both weren’t grandmaster, thus 60% stability uptime, then you would be talking some interesting possibilities.

It would actually make a lot of sense as an alternative to large mobility moves, which they seemingly don’t want to give us. But if you don’t want us zipping around the field, and we are to be bags of HP waiting to be beat on, at least give don’t make us so vulnerable to every cc, knockdown, stun, etc in the game so that we are being bounced around like pinballs in a team fight.

I’ve used this kind of a build before. Near permanent retaliation, fury, good weakness uptime, the problem is that this type of build is very difficult to play. Every 5 seconds you have to make the choice of whether to flash DS to gain your benefits and continue going with a fairly high damage build, or to stay in DS to tank damage. These kinds of builds can work, but I’m not sure how well it compares to other builds.

Overall not bad. I personally use Power/Prec/Vitality gear, with a staff + soul marks instead. The HP scaling with how much LF regen you are looking at is amazing, and you can afford to tank a lot with DS that way.

Ascii.9726:

Simple major flaw in any perma-fury build that uses Furious Demise, after you double tap F1 for the fury, you have no Deathshroud for 5 seconds.

If I have ever quoted a post that was more correct, it has been a while.

Giving up access to your only reliable instant cast interrupt, your damage soak, your additional DS skills, all for Fury? No thanks…. if I care that much about 100% uptime on fury, I would run with runes that do that, or a group that can do that.

Not to mentioned you have spent 45 trait points and a GM level trait to make this happen, and are wasting the very reason to have the 5 second DS, which is better access to those skills, not the ability to hop in and out every 5 seconds.

It sounds really awesome till you look at DD ele builds, and engineer builds, and warrior builds, that can all do this easily with far less sacrifice in traits.