Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

Getting extremely bored of ele, thought I would check out necro for my new main. Any tips?

I’ll help you ingame if I can.

Play it a lot, experiment a lot, and learn everything you can about the different traits, skills, and different things you can do. Necromancer is one class where you really need to know a lot of the specifics well before you can start doing a lot on your own.

Besides that, read and follow Nemesis guides, and copy what he does until you feel like you know enough to do things on your own.

@Hydra,

I did the same thing. I liked Elementalist, but got tired of being very squishy unless you use the standard D/D build. One thing I will say is that Necro has a ton of viable builds to choose from, and a lot of room for experimentation and fine tuning.

Play style is different. You will be tanky but have to face-tank more often, too. Lots of viable builds will seem confusing as you approach 80 but there are fewer “wrong answers” with Necromancer. You will also need to get used to longer battles while leveling. Necromancer is also a pet class; more pets than Ranger, even. It was not always this good as a pet class but the last few “balances” have fixed the minions, as far as I am concerned.

Necromancer is something of a jack of all trades and master of none. I have never been truly bored because there is no easy-button. Get used to re-traiting a lot. I do it just to mix the play styles. There are four main builds; powermancer, conditionmancer, minionmancer and bunker at L80. From those builds there are many variants, including a hybrid, which is a total glass build but is still durable enough for a every-day use.

The Death Magic (toughness) tree has a lot packed into it so putting trait points there won’t be wasted. Death magic has 3 builds it supports: minion master, conditionmancer, and critical damage (power/precision/death shroud.)

Staff and scepter/dagger are probably the safest, mainstream weapon sets. Staff is good for ranged combat and has a variety of uses, though none are even close to OP. Scepter is medium/long-ish range and hits pretty reliably. The off-hand dagger has a blind and AoE weakness, which is decent in minimizing incoming damage.

There are other weapons, of course, and I encourage you to try them out, as some are better in specific builds.

For utilities, minions and wells are pretty popular, for good reason. The only good signet is Locust, which gives 25% speed boost now as a passive. The rest of the signets are crap because they are weak, have long CD, or both.

Epidemic is an invaluable utility; especially for conditionmancers. Traiting for corruption (CD reduction) is very nice when facing multiple mobs either solo or in a group as it can melt the trash mobs.

PvE is very strong, though fights can still take a while to finish, because of how tanky the Necromancer is. WvW is less satisfying for many because a 1-shot kill is pretty near impossible. In a group, Necromancers are both squishy due to lack of mobility and escape, and game-changers because they can spam a skull-full of nasty conditions.

it is easy to be effective on an ele with all the combo fields and AoE but it is more rewarding to play a necro effectively in my opinion though it will take more skill and awareness to be as effective.

I find that as an ele you are buffing your team constantly removing conditions etc where as necros are constantly debuffing the enemy. so its completely different play style but extremely fun to play, if played well.

I actually just posted a new video tutorial about all the different PvP condition builds if you interested in PvP. Here is the link to the video:

@Anchoku.8142,
If I could sticky your comments I would. An excellent explanation.

WvW is the ultimate game for me and necro is my favorite character to play. The lack of mobility and escape means no running from fights, finding solutions and finding the best way to support your server’s success.
Keep assault and defense and open-field zerg battles come to mind. And, oooooo! , the carpet of loot bags is nice too.
Experiment… you will find your favorite builds. Playstyle seems to vary with each one.

Good luck and enjoy.

I have roughly 800 hours on my necro and I only play necro highest level other than him is 25 >.>, and i personally found conditionmancer to get boring really quick. Effective very effective by all means i do not want anyone to look down upon a conditionmancer, i personally just find the playstyle boring. Once i was all geared and everything I played as conditionmancer for two nights in WvW and got bored.

Don’t be afraid to put odd numbers into your trait lines just for the minor trait.
0/15/0/25/30 is really fun build.

As a necro yes we have a high Health pool, but do not neglect toughness, as you know you played ele and lightarmor well is light lol

Dylninja.4216:

I have roughly 800 hours on my necro and I only play necro highest level other than him is 25 >.>, and i personally found conditionmancer to get boring really quick. Once i was all geared and everything I played as conditionmancer for two nights in WvW and got bored.

Don’t be afraid to put odd numbers into your trait lines just for the minor trait.
0/15/0/25/30 is really fun build.

As a necro yes we have a high Health pool, but do not neglect toughness, as you know you played ele and lightarmor well is light lol

I 2nd that CondiMancer is somewhat boring. Also, you lose out on a lot of the Life Force generating skills that the other weapons carry. I ran as Condi for about a month, but eventually swapped to a more siphon oriented build. It was just more fun, but I still keep my rabid gear in my bags for sieges. The Curses traits are nice for a Condi build, but without them my bleeds still hurt well enough for zerg vs. zerg. After a certain number of people get in a battle you really can’t do much but spam Staff marks and hope the skills actually fire when you want them to.

In open field zergy fights I usually end up doing more damage just letting my minions run into the enemy zerg and death nova die in the middle of the enemy group thanks to skill lag, but at that point it’s mostly about tagging more than being super effective.