Guild Wars 2

UPDATED WITH VIDEO

I’ve been bugging myself to do this guide for awhile and i’ve got mad at people saying Necromancer is the worst profession so decided to do it now ^.^

This is a tPvP build, i haven’t tested it a WvW but i’m sure it can work.I started playing Necromancer because i thought it was an stylish class, for real. Had no idea it would be one of the strongest professions in the game for tPvP. It has great control, it can change the course of a group fight and is a blast at 1v1s.

This is a Conditionmancer build, which i find the strongest side of the necromancer, simply because it can excel at everything.

~Equipment~

3 Runes of the Krait

3 Runes of the Afflicted

Staff with Superior Sigil of Geomancy

Scepter with Sigil of Minor Corruption, Energy or Agony (Highly Recommend Minor Corruption)

Dagger with Superior Sigil of Geomancy

Amulet: Carrion with Rabid Jewel / Rabid with Carrion Jewel (If the enemy team has a bursty setup, i usually run Rabid )

~Traits~

Spite – 0

I didn’t find anything on Spite that is worth investing points as a conditionmancer. When I first started playing necromancer I used to put some points into it for some extra condition duration but after I got some experience found out it wasn’t worth it.

Curses – 20

- Hemophilia 20% Increased Bleeding Duration.

Great trait for bleeding duration, once you pop your epidemic you want your bleeds to last the longest possible to deal maximum damage so you want to have this trait on your line.

- Terror Fear deals damage, and it deals 50% more damage if the target has another condition on them.

This is going to be, literally, your burst skill. Bleeds are going to give you a very high damage which summed with terror from fear is going to give you loads of damage in matter of seconds while the target is CC’d by it.

Death Magic – 10

- Greater Marks Increases area of marks and marks become unblockeable.

This is a must have if you’re running a staff on your build, it gets more people inside your marks which means more AoE power and extra crowd control. Being unblockeable is great to counter that annoying aegis from Guardians and also being able to force them to cancel their ’’Shelter’’ Heal by fearing them during the cast.

Blood Magic – 10

-Mark of Evasion Leave a Mark of Blood when you dodge.

Great deal for extra bleeding and GREAT combo with Superior Sigil of Geomancy. When you feel like you need that weapon swap and manage to time it with a nice dodge you can set up instantly 7~8 stacks of bleeding on your target and get some regeneration.

Soul Reaping – 30

-Path of Midnight

The main reason that I like this trait is because it puts Dark Path (2) on a 12s cooldown while having Deathshroud on a 10s cooldown. Which means that you can get that off instantly barely everytime you pop back into Deathshroud. Great Control.

-Soul Marks Marks generate 3% life force when triggered. (Switcheable for Master of Terror: Fear you inflict lasts 50% longer)

Having more Death Shroud is always welcome. Having this trait combo’d with Spectral Walk and Spectral Armor (15 SR Trait) is going to provide you Life Force constantly, making Death Shroud up always that you need it.

-Foot in the Grave Gain Stability for 3s when you enter Deathshroud.

Mainly for Shroudstomping. Yes, if you time it right, Shroudstom kitten till possible. Necromancers don’t have many sources of Stability, which in my opinion is the best boon you can have. So you should try to get it whenever it’s possible.

~Skills~

Consume Conditions Feast on your conditions, gaining health for each one consumed.

Many people say this is the best heal necromancers have and I shall agree. Nothing much to say about it, the Minion isn’t reliable on a condition build and the Well heals instantly for the same amount but doesn’t clean conditions.

Spectral Walk Create a shadowy tether and become spectral, gaining life force when struck. You may return to your initial position by using Spectral Recall.

The strongest counter you can put into a necromancer is pressure. The best thing you can do is give yourself some mobility in order to avoid that pressure and Spectral Walk can provide that while giving you some Life Force.

Corrupt Boon Poison yourself. Transform all boons on your foe into negative conditions.

Great counter to bunkers and combo to Epidemic. Timing both Corrupt Boon and Epidemic right can kitten up the whole enemy team.

Epidemic Apply vulnerability on yourself. Spread conditions on a target foe to all nearby foes.

Unargueably the best skill to have as a conditionmancer, specially on this build. All your main bleed sources are going to be AoE based, which means you can set it up on the whole enemy team and pick one of them to Epidemic and have double conditions on the rest of the squad.Must have

Summon Flesh Golem Summon a flesh golem to attack foes with crippling claws.
I’m not really into minions because they are so ugly, but this one is too good to not pick it up. Cripple is a great counter to any melee around and the charge is going to give you a very powerful control and some damage. Most people run Plague, which is fine, but I find plague something more useful to counter bursts only or stow enemies on a point, so it’s more like a bunky skill in my point of view.

• Rolling~*

Necromancers are often the first target on a team fight, so what you want to do is pop Spectral Walk before you get in that way you can pop Spectral Recall to get out if the situation gets bad. I like to start up with the staff and set up all the marks. After that is done make sure to dodge your way close to the opponent, switch to scepter and epidemic. That way you should have about 10 stacks, chill, poison and weakness on the enemies and have your s/d up for dealing some condis with no efford. Make sure to move around a lot, you want to make the best use of that swiftness from the Spectral Walk. Pop the corrupt boon whenever you feel that you need it having in mind that Stability turns into Fear.

I’d love to make a video of myself playing with this build but sadly my computer won’t handle recording and playing simultaneously. So I guess It’s worth to mention that I never lost a 1v1 fight with this build.
Have fun

If you have any questions make sure to ask me, my Ingame Necromancer is Saeliam. Curious to hear your feedback on this

Enligh isn’t my first language so forgive me if there is any mistake >.>

Some Quick Footage with the Build: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q5d9d0G48k

Seeing the title I was kinda expecting a spectral build :P

It looks strong, but there are 2 things that I would change:

1. All your aoe bleeding sources (2x mark of blood, 2 sigils, enfeebling blood, grasping dead) have long durations (7-10seconds), plus you get an extra 30% from your runes. On top of that hemophilia seems like overkill, most bleeds will probably be cleansed before they can run their entire duration. The only benefactor is probably just the scepter auto attack. So I’d switch it out for either weakening shroud or master of corruption.

2. Pure rabid: yes. Rabid amulet +carrion jewel: maybe. Carrion amulet + rabid jewel: no. The +75 precision from the jewel only increase your crit chance from 14% to 17%. Just go carrion all the way.

flow.6043:

Seeing the title I was kinda expecting a spectral build :P

It looks strong, but there are 2 things that I would change:

1. All your aoe bleeding sources (2x mark of blood, 2 sigils, enfeebling blood, grasping dead) have long durations (7-10seconds), plus you get an extra 30% from your runes. On top of that hemophilia seems like overkill, most bleeds will probably be cleansed before they can run their entire duration. The only benefactor is probably just the scepter auto attack. So I’d switch it out for either weakening shroud or master of corruption.

2. Pure rabid: yes. Rabid amulet +carrion jewel: maybe. Carrion amulet + rabid jewel: no. The +75 precision from the jewel only increase your crit chance from 14% to 17%. Just go carrion all the way.

First of all Thanks for the feedback

Secondly, yeah, i kinda regret about the name thing >.> Didn’t know what to put and that was pratically the only thing i had on my head at the moment lol, Feel free to call it Sorem’s Build ! Hahahaha

1. The main reason i run all that extra bleeding duration is for maintaining Epidemic, which you usually tend to lose at least 2 seconds of the first few stacks. Everytime i managed to land a nice one i found the conditions vanishing quite fast so i got a bit more condi duration with Hemophilia. Before that i tried Weakning Shroud and Spectral Attunement, both work great i should say.

2. I had that idea just to balance the Toughness/Vitality. If i run full Carrion my armor goes lower than 2k, for some reason that bugs me to the point of feeling like a glass cannon lol >.> And slightly extra crit is always welcome in order to have some more bleeding procs

hello this is death your new bff and just one question why dont you use sigil of earth? with your curse passive Barbed Precision(60% chance to cause bleeds on crit hit) and sigil of earth you have a chance to apply 2 extra bleeds

Sorem.9157:

1. The main reason i run all that extra bleeding duration is for maintaining Epidemic, which you usually tend to lose at least 2 seconds of the first few stacks. Everytime i managed to land a nice one i found the conditions vanishing quite fast so i got a bit more condi duration with Hemophilia. Before that i tried Weakning Shroud and Spectral Attunement, both work great i should say.

Even without hemophilia your bleeds should last between 9-13 seconds. If they vanished quite fast after an epidemic then they probably got cleansed.
Just try master of corruption sometime… since you’re using 2 corrution skills, I really believe this would have a bigger impact than hemophilia.

Sorem.9157:

2. I had that idea just to balance the Toughness/Vitality. If i run full Carrion my armor goes lower than 2k, for some reason that bugs me to the point of feeling like a glass cannon lol >.> And slightly extra crit is always welcome in order to have some more bleeding procs

In that case you could also put a shaman’s jewel on the carrion amulet.

Opened thread cause thought you came up with new condi build that`s tPVP viable. What do i see? The build i have been running since dawn of time. Only i prefer flesh wurm instead of spectral walk.
Surprised that noone have posted description of it before, pretty sure its one of first tpvp viable necro builds.

The good thing about this build is you can pick up fear duration + fear damage traits. You can also pick up both spectral cd reduction + life force on use traits. I personally use 0/30/10/0/30.

ballerkat.3094:

hello this is death your new bff and just one question why dont you use sigil of earth? with your curse passive Barbed Precision(60% chance to cause bleeds on crit hit) and sigil of earth you have a chance to apply 2 extra bleeds

Lol hai hai Geomancy has a great on demand bleed stacking (4 stacks) and fit perfectly on the rotation giving you a fluent gameplay with constant adding up bleeds. Also, you’re going to be mainly running Carrion Amulet, which means you’re gonna have less crit so Sigil of Earth won’t be that big of a change

Leeto.1570:

Opened thread cause thought you came up with new condi build that`s tPVP viable. What do i see? The build i have been running since dawn of time. Only i prefer flesh wurm instead of spectral walk.
Surprised that noone have posted description of it before, pretty sure its one of first tpvp viable necro builds.

I’m not sure if that’s a complement or what I haven’t seen anybody running this build and had a lot of people asking me for it so i decided to post it :o

flow.6043:

Sorem.9157:

1. The main reason i run all that extra bleeding duration is for maintaining Epidemic, which you usually tend to lose at least 2 seconds of the first few stacks. Everytime i managed to land a nice one i found the conditions vanishing quite fast so i got a bit more condi duration with Hemophilia. Before that i tried Weakning Shroud and Spectral Attunement, both work great i should say.

Even without hemophilia your bleeds should last between 9-13 seconds. If they vanished quite fast after an epidemic then they probably got cleansed.
Just try master of corruption sometime… since you’re using 2 corrution skills, I really believe this would have a bigger impact than hemophilia.

Not everybody tends to run Condition Removal, specially Glass Cannons haha If we were to only meet good players around i wouldn’t worry so much about it but truth be told, some people just underestimate condition damage But again :P All about preference haha

Sorem.9157:

2. I had that idea just to balance the Toughness/Vitality. If i run full Carrion my armor goes lower than 2k, for some reason that bugs me to the point of feeling like a glass cannon lol >.> And slightly extra crit is always welcome in order to have some more bleeding procs

In that case you could also put a shaman’s jewel on the carrion amulet.

That would take off some condition damage and give some healing, which i don’t find it to be really much usefull as a necro D;

Added a footage video to the topic, gotta forgive me on the quality and as i stated before, my computer isn’t supposed to handle recording and gaming so i was a little laggy aswell >.>

This is an oldy but a goody. This build requires the necromancer to be right on top of the capture point for maximum bleed stacks.

Can also consider changing hemophilia to Weakening Shroud for another 3-stack of bleed burst.

So the ideal rotation is something along the lines of:

Staff 2, staff 3, dodge roll forward, geomancy sigil, Dagger 5, Dagger 2, Deathshroud 3, Epidemic, Staff 5

The off-targets should now have 25 stacks of bleed and some poison on them while being Fear-dotted.

Of course that is ideal, but the main point is to do 5 of the 7 sources of 3-stack AoE bleeds as fast as possible to everyone on a capture point and Epidemic for 25-stack of bleeds on off-targets.

So a quick rotation can be:

Spectral Walk while running in, Staff 2, Dodge roll, geo sigil, Deathshroud 3, Dagger 2or5, Epidemic, Spectral Walk out

Some Tournament PvP Vidoes of Necros doing this are always fun to watch. Shoutout to Gibbly and Well Whale Well (RIP) as it’s similar to what they have been doing for quite a while.

Thanks for posting!