Guild Wars 2

I’m unsure which way I want to play my necromancer. I find both avenues equally entertaining. I’m thinking knights with some valk gear mixed in for a well build with staff and axe/focus or pure rabid condition with staff and scepter/dagger.

I would like to see your reasoning for which is more useful in WvWvW. Why you find one avenue of playing more enjoyable than the other? I tend to lead towards a power build for solo roaming, but condition just does so much more AoE damage for camp stomping. What is your opinion?

More useful? It depends on playstyle…

Both are viable at different things. An axe necro skirts around the edge of a zerg, lambasting anyone that strays too far. I wonder about their 1 on 1 viability, but it’s popular now, so I guess it works.

I roll conditions. Condition duration on gear does nothing right now, so skip it, and even when it does work again, who cares? WvW is about burst, even if it’s conditiony burst. You need exotic condition gear in every slot, or just forget it, your damage won’t matter if you don’t max it.

If you go conditions it’s all about your survivability, be ready to run 24/7. Plant Mark of Blood on the edge of a zerg, when it trips, spread it with epidemic. Or if you see a mesmer, spread his confusion. Scepter is for 1 on 1.

I started WvW with a conditionmancer, using staff and scepter/dagger with Corrupt Boon, Blood is Power and Epidemic. You’ll have to learn when you can land CB. It’s frustrating at first. Going conditions works best against tunnel vision opponents. You will quickly find that conditions against organized opponents will get wiped, sometimes before you can land Epidemic. The other bad thing about conditions is that they also get wiped when someone enters the downed state.

That’s why I switched to power build with wells. I find that I can use wells anywhere, even against camp supervisors with RI on them. Dark fields and projectiles will lifesteal them. Everything I have works against everyone no matter what state they’re in. I’ll even use marks to hit a downed player if theres another player to trigger it. Sometimes I’ll even drop a mark to keep other players from trying to rez a dead player. Spectral Walk and Plague Form either slows down the enemy or breaks them. Either way the bags and badges are all over the place when it’s over.

Power necro ftw, cranking out 2k auto attacks and 4-5k with 2 burst abilities… that AND the most OP elite in the game hitting around 3-4k per hit… mix all that in a bowl of the highest HP pool of any class and you got yourself a cake

I would go condition if you just want to zerg around. Our utility in large fights and sieges as a conditionmancer, and with all that range, is hard to match.

Power is viable too, but is more fit for like small group action, roaming, or situations where you can freely commit to ‘win or die’ engagements with good chance of coming out alive.

I have a non-traditional view myself, that condition can actually cover all scenarios above, but not gonna say its easy. But I like to move from different style operations within WvW without changing more than just a few utilities.

I go condition but given the current ‘meta’ of World vs. World, your spec doesn’t really matter, as it won’t make-or-break an encounter as much as, say, a glamour mesmer or hammer warrior could.

I would say condition trumps powermancer for the most part. WvW is all about AoE and group fights, and I find most powermancer stuff is single target, save for the one-off well casts.

For anything larger than 10 man – Conditiomancers offer so much utility and damage that it’s almost always a better choice.

For havoc squads of 10 or less power mancer and Minions come into play a lot more and prove to be effective.

We have had two very strong wvwvw guests on the podcast, check it out when you get time, and they offer some great advice on two different styles of play.