Guild Wars 2

I believe I read that the Axe used to be a multi-target weapon in BWEs, but it was removed. I want to play around with Direct Damage (DD) builds for PvE AoE, but all I can really find are wells (with annoyingly long cooldowns) and DS’s life transfer. Minions are also, for the most part, single-target except for bone minions. What options am I missing?

Staff marks perhaps?

Well at first I dismissed marks, because they seemed condition-based, but on second look, maybe it works. Maybe power scaling is good enough for power/precision.

Yeah pretty much, we’re very cooldown dependant, and our weapon skills overall are just bad. We rely on Death Shroud and Utilities for alot of our dmg.

Also the only mark that actually does decent dmg is Putrid Mark. The rest do like 200 dmg and with power will at most crit for like 400-500.

All you can do is try to using Staff auto’s to pierce, lay down the underwhelming mark dmg, and space out well and Life Transfer cooldowns.

There’s also the bone minion explosion if you feel like dealing with that.

I’m going to assume you’re talking about tagging here. =p

Tagging yeah. Also for solo PvE because I’m on sporadically. Conditions have worked very well for me, but I’m trying to expand my horizons. (Level 55 so far). Also conditions tag all right, but I suspect they don’t do enough up-front damage because I seem to get a much lower loot rate (both PvE and WvW) than I do with, for example, my engineer.

If you’re soloing/leveling, conditions do fine.

If you plan on doing the boring competitive tag farming in Orr I suggest another class.

I rolled a warrior to faceroll tag whenever I decide to farm events, just a billion times easier spamming 1500-2000 dmg auto attacks every 0.5 seconds to tag mobs that die within literally 1-3 seconds after becoming vulnerable.

As I said before, AoE direct dmg for necro’s is completely cooldown based. We’re just not that good at tagging in those extremely zerged events.

That’s not the only way to make money however, and it is pretty boring to begin with, so unless it’s really important to you, you should be fine. Plus if you group up constantly any mediocre dmg you can fit in usually gets you decent drops.

Knote.2904:

All you can do is try to using Staff auto’s to pierce

Soul Reaping VI makes Life Blast pierce as well.

digiowl.9620:

Knote.2904:

All you can do is try to using Staff auto’s to pierce

Soul Reaping VI makes Life Blast pierce as well.

Not as good IMO.

The hitbox on the projectile is alot smaller than Staff Auto’s.

It’s a pain trying to hit more than one target with piercing Life Blasts, good luck trying to tag with that.

Ah yes, i have noticed the lack of affected width.

Staff #1 seems to hit as if there was a extra projectile to each side of the visible one.

digiowl.9620:

Ah yes, i have noticed the lack of affected width.

Yeah, it would be nice if it was changed to a splash/explosion effect or just had a much wider width.

Knote.2904:

digiowl.9620:

Ah yes, i have noticed the lack of affected width.

Yeah, it would be nice if it was changed to a splash/explosion effect or just had a much wider width.

Now that I think about it, it would be nice to have some semi-aoe attacks like that. But i don’t think i’ll hold my breath for it

I recently changed to this build and found it very solid in PVE zerging and dungeons:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcVMMm9cmMhFomMhFoxa0x0MobVzVR
I swap out BiP at times for a different skill depending on the fight.

I generally lay staff 2/3/4 right in the group of mobs as I run right into them, by the time I reach them, I have a good start on life force. I drop both wells down in the group that seems to cap out my LF. I then swap to DS and aoe them. The group is either dead or close to dead.

During boss fights, I lay all marks on it while autoattacking with staff 1. As I reach the boss (assuming melee is possible) I then lay both wells and swap to dagger. LF is nearly capped at this time so I swap to DS and atk 1 until I’m at 70-75% LF left and then drain. auto attack etc the remainder of the LF time. swap to staff, laying marks again, dropping wells again and swapping to lichform, dropping atk 2 for more vuln and minion well then auto attack the rest of the time refreshing vuln or atk 5 for cleanse as needed.
When Lich form ends, I drop marks again, wells, and swap to dagger till DS is ready again (literally fills up extremely fast, sometimes it seems instantly) and repeat the cycle. Not only can I melee, but range fight and aoe with even decent bleeds from marks but it has very solid survivability in PVE.

I personally don’t know what Superior runes to use yet, I run with berserkers gear (pwr/prec/crit dmg) so far as well with pretty good success.

I was a conditionmancer, and loved it, but decided to try out a power dagger/staff spec and I’m very happy with what I’ve seen thus far.

:)

Jaer.1029:

…

Our traits are different because I’m lvl 57 and haven’t gotten my book yet, but your “rotation” (for lack of a better word) is precisely what I’ve stumbled upon. That makes me think I’m on the right track. The downside for general open-world PvE is that the wells and life transfer have long enough cooldowns that I have to take breaks between fights. Contrasted to my engineer, where I have very viable grenades and bombs on auto-attack and more reasonable cooldowns, necro feels weaker. But eh, I guess that’s just the nature of being a necro.