Guild Wars 2

Got any suggestiong on Power Roaming builds? I’ve been away for a couple months and i dunno what’s the new meta….

It depends entirely on your server of course, but the higher tiers have a lot of optimized roaming builds. A lot of condition builds, and heavy burst builds, which makes any power build on necro pretty risky.

There are number of decent builds posted if you look around (I don’t roam power often enough to comment), that focus on the spectral skills, and a reasonable balance of toughness and damage, but you will lose to most well played optimized builds.

As to the meta shift in the past 6 months, mostly there are more solo focused roamers and less havoc groups. But there are still a lot of people with their PVT builds trying to run to the blob around you can pick on.

Rule #1 for Power Roaming: Don’t be intimidating by the meta. If you enjoy Power Necro, you probably won’t find anything else in the game that plays quite like it. You could roll PU Mesmer, Condi Thief, or whatever other popular build for solo roaming, but unless you just want to either escape or get kills, odds are you won’t have fun with it.

You’re going to be playing from behind against these builds, but that doesn’t mean you can’t win. Your success will hinge on a key dodge/condi transfer, and if you miss it, you’ll die most likely. But that’s OK. It’ll make you a better player in the long run, and metas don’t last forever. The next time it changes, you’ll be prepared to simply adapt, while everyone else will be out on the forums complaining that their build is dead. Woe is them.

The attitude for solo roaming is, in my opinion, more important than the build, so I wanted to lead with that. You’re going to die, you won’t be able to escape fights, you’ll get zerged down, you’ll get killed by meta builds, and none of that is a big deal.

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, I personally roll with a 6/2/0/0/6 build with Spiteful Talisman, Chill of Death, Close to Death, Chilling Darkness, Vital Persistence, Near to Death, and Death Perception. I run Cavalier armor for a bit more toughness while still maxing on crit damage, and Zerker weapons/jewelry. For weapons I roll with Dagger+Focus/Axe+Dagger for the LF generation, boon stripping, kiting, and condi transfer. The Weakness is nice as well, actually. Many people run Staff on Power, and although it can be a good weapon, it just wasn’t useful enough for my playstyle.

Utilities are the end-all be-all choice for a Power Necro. If you run with the wrong utilities against a meta build, you’re going to have an extra rough time. I constantly switch my utilities around when I can, but the core I roam with is Spectral Armor, Well of Darkness, and Plague Signet. Spectral Armor is basically a temporary invuln against small groups if you blow it and go straight into DS, unless they rock Backstabs and Eviscerates on you. Otherwise, you just float in LF. Well of Darkness might as well be a temporary invuln against many melee builds, though against PU Mes/Condi Thief it’s almost completely useless.

Plague Signet is the key. It’s the lynch pin in your ability to deal with a lot of the condi pressure that floats around. A meta build “played well” is highly subjective, as often that definition will morph into “whatever it takes to kill you given knowledge of everything you’re going to do”, which they don’t have. You’ll probably run into players who try to condi burst you with confusion/torment/bleed stacking, and you have a few ways to deal with it:

1. Try dodging it. You’ll want to really practice watching for block animations, channel initiates from stealth, and get to know the other class intimately in order to pull this off. It’s probably the better route, but that condi pressure is going to continue, so you should have a back-up plan.

2. Soak it, then transfer it. Don’t dodge. Play dumb. Take the heat. You can even take it while in DS if you’d like to conserve health. Then when the time is right, throw it all back with a Plague Signet. Many players are prepared to dodge Locust Swarm, and if you roll Staff, then they may be ready to dodge your Putrid Mark timing as well. With Plague Signet, they either have to anticipate (patience is key), or get lucky, because it’s instant, it stun breaks, and then the tables are completely turned.

You can try roaming with Well of Suffering for the damage, as it can really help you lay some smackdown on 1vX situations if they blindly stick to you. However, I’m not a big fan of the damaging wells because of how counterable they are. Well of Darkness adds chill for me, serves as a defensive cooldown, and can be used for stomping as well. Well of Suffering can maybe tick once or twice, then it’s gone.

It’s going to be a matter of chaining chill/snare, kiting when appropriate, dagger #1 when appropriate, immob into Focus #4 -> DS #5 -> LB -> DS #3 when Immob is about to run out -> LB, and managing your LF to maximize your sustain. Plague Signet doubles as a rockin’ stun break and the ability to give classes like Leg Specialist Warriors their immobilize back right when they’re about to Evis/Earthshaker you.

If you want to kill camps, it’s difficult to beat Well of Suffering + Well of Darkness + Well of Corruption. Drop Darkness, then drop Corruption and Suffering, then go into DS and use 5 and 4. Most often you’ll kill both Scouts and the Guard will be ultra low, then you can just clean up with kites/pressure as normal.

That’s all I have for now. I love Power Roaming, and if you ever want to chat about it, feel free to PM me in-game.

I run Solo Roaming in WvW everyday and duel in OS as Power Necro and can say my favourite Build is: 6-4-0-0-4

Its a Spectral Build with the “new Mights stacking”

I run VI,X,XII in Spite for might on LB and X,XII cause there is no substitute fo damage (I run Dagger Mainhand, if u like Axe maybe swap in Axe training)
I run IV and X in Curses love Weakness on DS when poped by a Thief or Warrior or even Shatter kittene
I run II and IV in Soul Reaping, u could swap in VIII here for more use of DS-pop-skills its just go by feeling tbh.

Utility skills I like most in this Build is Spectral Armor (9-10sec of prot),Spectral Walk and Flesh Wurm (need that Immob-break)

I run PvT + Zerk armor and same goes for All trinkets with ofc Zerk-Weapons & Strength Runes

D/F + S

I run a 4/4/0/0/6 full zerker build and have pretty good results. I use spectral walk, spectral wall, and flesh wurm because Im insanely squishy and pretty much every class can catch up to me. This build requires good positioning and you will die a lot before you get used to it. I always try to keep flesh wurm up so i have an extra stunbreaker/ getaway. You can also use the standard 30/10/0/0/30 but i like the traited warhorn in the second tree.

A few other things to remember:

1. As Bubblez mentioned Flesh Wurm, don’t forget you can leave it literally anywhere, and so long as it is alive, you can port back towards it. I often left my first one back in the home area, then just always kept general awareness as to where that was. In that instance, you have a single-directional blink, but the fun part about blinks are that the opponent doesn’t know where you’re going to go, and as a Necro, they aren’t going to expect it. Behind walls/on different levels works as well to do your evasion thing.

2. You have so many cast times that it hurts. Maybe you already know this because you’ve been on a Power Necro before, but it really threw me off the first time I wandered out into WvW on mine. In fact, I dropped it for a while until coming back later because it felt so lumberingly slow. You need to know what you’re doing next, and even more you need to plan on people dodging your abilities. For other classes you can set up burst spikes in some manner (Leg Specialist on Warriors, Basilisk Venom on Thieves, etc.), but life isn’t so straightforward on your Necro.

In fact, one of my favorite “complaints” to hear about Thieves is how the player has to have such ultra good reaction time to survive because the class is so squishy. It amuses me because they don’t seem to realize that being able to escape a situation where you’re one step behind is a luxury not all classes can afford.

I might be dramaticizing it a bit too much because I just enjoy the playstyle, but the more you know about what your opponent might do as a Power Necro, the more dividends it will pay. That can go for all classes, but if you’re playing a step behind on Power, especially against some classes, then you won’t be able to keep up. Period. You may last a while in the fight, but that doesn’t always mean you ever stood even half a chance at any point throughout.

Another thing to remember is that with longer cast times (often 1+ seconds), you have a rare opportunity to cancel cast fairly frequently. Lead in with Dark Pact, wait until your char raises his/her hand up into the air, and then cancel it. An aware opponent will see the tell and dodge, but now they’re out a dodge and you can try to immob again in 3 seconds. Or just save it like you used it, and if they get immob’d by Tainted Shackles, come out and hit them with it to chain the Immob together and dagger them for a while.

I could talk for days on Power Necro. Absolutely love it.

Oh also, I run Traveler Runes because the 25% movespeed is ultra nice, and the Condi Duration helps. I run +40% condi duration food as well because you can’t afford to not have your utility conditions land for at least close to their normal duration. Not in my experience anyway.

Take basic 6/2/0/0/6 and then customize it around you. There’s no simple rule for Powermancer.

For example, I’ve been running lately 2/6/0/0/6 as Power Necro with great sucess against boonspam meta

My personal preference for solo roaming is

0/5/5/0/4 Knights/Zerker gear, Spectral utils, Runes of the Pack, D/F and D/D

Solid balance of toughness and damage output and lifeforce regen. I’m also learning to love shrouded removal. Getting that one long duration condi off of you (without burning your heal) so you can reset your life bar is pretty nice.