Guild Wars 2

Hey, ive played necro since BWEs and in pve ive pretty much always run a condition build partly because i got the consensus that it was the most effective no doubt, aswell as i didnt wanna have to get new gear.

Now since ive played this for so long ive started to get curious if things have changed since way back. Say for fractals or any other hard PvE dungeon, is the ScepterDagger/Staff still the most effective combo?

Or can Axe or Dagger compete, maybe with a DS build and piercing shots? My thought was something like Marks generating life force, getting might stack and piercing shots on DS for example.

Also im wondering if the life leech traits + eventually the one for weapon do enough in a dungeon environment to help you survive?:) Thanks!

A life leech build does work in dungeons.

That’s the one i use:
(edit: removed because i messed up something with the tool, i linked my build again
in a post below)
As food Omnomberry Pies are pretty much mandatory though.
If you have any questions about the build, feel free to ask.

Saw this in action and it looks solid. Would like to try it myself in a tough pve environment although im uncertain if i have the time to swap all my gear out;(
Wonder bout your utilities though, i assume you run a 2/3well spec because of the traits?

Sure wish food did not seem so mandatory in this game…

My bad, those utilities are for underwater combat, i didn’t realize the skill builder
was replacing the utilities for normal combat too.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAoY3djQaV6haea87JApHNjt1TP42bxjKUMA;TsAKnMOJcy6k0pFGDMOYsD5hxMEA

Those are the well utilities i set.

If you are fighting dredge, i’d use a setup like this because they are immune to blind:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhdu1IkWlemmnG/eCQ6RzYb90Du9W8oCFD;TsAKnMOJcy6k0pFGDMOYsD5hxMEA

The build makes you tanky, still does decent damage, let’s you lend some support
with wells and you have a few cripple/chill/fear effects for control.

Dulon do you run knights gear or how is your setup?

Yes, mainly pve knight’s gear, only my offhand items have soldier’s stats.
With food and oil i have 3k Attack, 3k Armor (3.4k during channels), a 50% crit chance
and roughly 22.5k hp.
I can’t check ingame right now, but those are the figures from the top of my head.

What about the lack of stun break and stability? In a place like AC it seems like it could be an issue.

In situations with multiple threats like that (like the dog groups in TA) plague form really shines.

In AC it’s enough most of the time to just save your DS fear. You can still use it while
knocked down if you happen to miss the dodge on the knockdown leap.

If you mean colossus rumblus, you can simply interrupt further rocks by switching
to DS and fearing him too. You can even interrupt kholer’s spin attack after he started
it. If you fear him during the pullback move, he’ll simply start spinning right away
though.

If you feel uncomfortable without a true stun breaker on your bar, you can replace
one of the utilities with a stun breaking one. I just removed the stun breaker because i
hardly ever used it in dungeons.

Do you feel the wells are essential to running dungeon tank? I was eyeing a non-well build to do it with.

The build doesn’t use staff in usual play so it is lacking a bit of aoe damage.

Aside from support and personal survival (vampiric rituals and ritual of protection)
wells also offer some aoe damage (not too much, but with retaliation and life transfer
it’s at an acceptable level) .

Depending on the situation, i sometimes switch out one or two wells.
For example, if your party puts 20+ bleeding stacks on some enemy, you could think
about adding epidemic to your bar.
If movement/speed is important, spectral walk and warhorn offer permament
swiftness.

In general, i feel wells add a lot though and i wouldn’t want to miss them.

a’ight, thanks for the reply.

I’d recommend dropping 5 points in both death and blood tree (well siphon trait is minimally beneficial due to Well uptime being 45-60 seconds, removing 1 condition on DS exit is a waste, we have many condition removals/transferrals) those extra 10 points are better spent elsewhere.
with those 10 points in another tree, you can get might on lifeblast (good for power ramping in DS), any of the Soul Reaping Adept Major traits (which are all good imo), or Banshee’s wail (15% cd mod on horn), focused rituals (targetable wells), or Spectral attunement (extra LF on Spectral util usage and longer duration)

Concerning Vampiric Rituals:
Each well tick heals/damages for 80 hp.
Well of Blood gives 800 per target, all other wells 400.
If you are surrounded (when wells are in general most useful and you need them the
most) and you reach the target limit of 5, well of blood heals you for 4k, the other wells
for 2k on top what they already do.

Concerning Shrouded Removal:
Deathly Swarm has a 18 second cooldown and requires me to stay on Dagger. It also
requires a nearby enemy.
Well of Power has a 60 second cooldown.
Without the 10 second cd condition removal, it’s much more likely to sit on a
condition for 10+ seconds in battle. Or be poisoned for 30+ seconds after battle.

I don’t really want to give those up.

Focused Rituals is very pointless though, i want to be in the activation area because
of Ritual of Protection and i am in melee range anyway.

Spectral Attunement isn’t important to me as well, i mainly use spectral walk for
swiftness. But with full points in Death Magic and using Warhorn, that already
provides swiftness fulltime. I hardly ever use the other spectral skill in pve. So i also
don’t feel like needing the Warhorn trait.

It does work but u wind up having to stack a lot of toughness to make the life leech viable and lose too mcuh damage. If there is no other tank etc maybe it is worth it to go. Last time I went this kind of spec was when i was doing TA with all low lvl players in guild. Most of the time u pug there will be a guardian or warrior who can do a better job.

It is a fun spec IMO but you are relying a lot on your group to bring the damage. Your damage with dagger AA is not bad though.

Spec is 30 points in power to get the grandmaster trait and at least 20 points in blood. Then can do some combination of death magic and blood with remaining points. Or could possibly put points in death shroud tree since the 15pt trait is good. For utilities can switch between wells/minions/BiP as needed along with changing traits (eg well cd→ minion leech). Gear would be majority knights. I also used omnomberry pie along with the hardened sharpening stone/quality maintenance oil. This should give you a lot of extra power. Or you can just use the dungeon-specific potion.

How do you know you lose too much much damage?
And how can you compare it to the effectiveness of a guardian/warrior?

We simply lack the parsing tools to make any definite calls.

If i take life leech into account, my Ghastly Claws ends up doing 4.5-6k damage.
Considering the main focus of the build is survival, that should still be an acceptable
number.

I have damage variation of my life leech build that drops the death magic traits.
But i don’t feel it’s as strong as the build i posted.
If i really dropped the toughness on the gear and points in either death magic and/or
blood magic i’d definitiely feel too squishy and would probably reach glass cannon
levels when in melee.