Guild Wars 2

Ok, maybe I’ve been watching too many YouTube highlights reels. But one thing I’ve seen many times is people just plain out-lasting multiple opponents. Guardians can build to be absolute tanks, with incredible healing output. Engineers can incorporate a bit of everything so they’re rather mobile, but stacking loads of boons to cut down damage and and provide decent heals. Elementalists have their D/D build that provides a huge amount of healing and mobility, though I know from personal experience that they’re very timing dependent (i.e. if you miss-time your skill rotations you die).

All of the above builds, and quite a few more (thinking of a Ranger GS build that looked like a nightmare to actually play), work because they provide loads of durability through healing or boons. Their damage output is fairly mediocre, but that doesn’t matter because they can ideally outlast opponents.

What does Necro have to offer on this front? Surely we can bring a Mediocre Damage/Amazing Durability build or two out. I know Juggermancer is a prime candidate, though I dislike actually playing it. Has anyone tweaked our Conditionmancer build to increase durability? I’ve been fiddling with it, and trying to use Weakness, Chill, Poison, and Cripple to accomplish similar results as the boon stacking Engineer but I can’t get it quite how I want it.

Anyone else have any success in well-balanced builds that can take lots of punishment over long periods of time?

And I know there was a long thread full of whining about the “Attrition” playstyle, and I don’t really want to start another one. I think we’ll all benefit from reading about what works, rather than focusing on what doesn’t.

Sadly the deck is stacked against you in finding a viable necro to play this way. In PvE you might be able to find a way, but in PvP there is not possible solution. Here’s why:

No Vigor
No Blocking
No Invulnerable
Limited Heals
Poor Scaling with Healing Power
Bad Stun Breaks+Long Cooldowns on them

I agree focusing on what Necro does well is more productive, so don’t dwell on bunkering. Necro does do a decent job of bunker busting when used appropriately with teammates, and can be extremely valuable in team fights due to a number of factors, probably the biggest being the best Rez in the game.

I’ve actually been pondering this myself. I’m in the process of trying to find the right balance between survivability and constant, high damage. I’m coming from the dungeon side of things though. I haven’t done much in WvWvW yet but am trying to tailor the build towards easily switching a few traits up (the guild i’m in is very active in WvWvW).

So far the gear was looking like a mix of soldier, valkyrie, knights, and berserker. I accidently deleted a link to the gw2buildcraft of it but from memory it was about:

2200 power
56% crit chance
51% crit damage
1350 toughness
2200 or 2400 armor
22K health

Also (from memory) it used a 30/20/10/0/10 trait setup (modified from Khalifa I think) and used solely exotics, no ascended, but with food/utility buffs. But like Myrmidian says, the deck seems to be stacked against us.

This is actually what I am hoping a Spectral build becomes if Arenanet gets around to fixing it. When traited, a fixed Spectral build would have reduced damage output because none of the utilities will do damage but faster LF generation, reduced incoming damage from nearly constant protection, and both weakness and vulnerability stacking should mitigate other professions’ higher damage output.

A Spectral build could be a real tank, a relatively toothless one, even compared to typical Necromancer builds, but it would serve to prolong the fight like the profession is supposed to do. Spectral Armor needs a shorter CD, even when traited, and Spectral Wall is a bit too easy to dodge. If Necromancer had 100% protection uptime when traited for it and a little more access to non-damaging conditions, it, too, could be an impressive tank like the other professions’ tank builds.

You can build a very reliable PVT build that is extremely tankish and relies on well of blood to reheal your team. We have DS to act as a sort of invuln, and we can actually sit on 30k health with 3k armor and a 2800 power for WvWvW.

In pvp, it’s best to leave the bunkering to those with a better assortment of boons, and work on helping your team be stronger.

Anchoku.8142:

This is actually what I am hoping a Spectral build becomes if Arenanet gets around to fixing it. When traited, a fixed Spectral build would have reduced damage output because none of the utilities will do damage but faster LF generation, reduced incoming damage from nearly constant protection, and both weakness and vulnerability stacking should mitigate other professions’ higher damage output.

A Spectral build could be a real tank, a relatively toothless one, even compared to typical Necromancer builds, but it would serve to prolong the fight like the profession is supposed to do. Spectral Armor needs a shorter CD, even when traited, and Spectral Wall is a bit too easy to dodge. If Necromancer had 100% protection uptime when traited for it and a little more access to non-damaging conditions, it, too, could be an impressive tank like the other professions’ tank builds.

One large barrier to this is that our +Boon Duration line doesn’t really provide any boons. You get 5s of Retaliation on heal, 3s of Protection on well usage, and a 20% reduced CD on staff skills. So…..perma Regen. Awesome……

Problem for us is DS is nothing like invuln unless fully traited, which kills DS. Same problem with any of our split trait lines, you can’t focus on anything.

The scaling from vit line gives more to raw DS potential than the DS line does.

Then you pick up crit damage, which is wasted unless you pick up precision, which goes further away from survival.

I’ve been trying to make a survivable necro for a few weeks now, and it just can’t be done really.

MM with life siphon on minion hits is probably the best necro bunker, but it is a poor bunker compared to any boon stacking class with easy access to stability, protection (a simple protection buff gives most if not more of the function of DS to other classes by knocking countless damage from multiple sources off by 1/3rd instead of extending a single life bar by 1/2…even at 30k health) Plenty of other classes have this and true invuln and not the shoddy excuse DS is. Your MM bunker can be completely shut down by one moa, or anyone with AoE to wipe your minions quickly.

I can live in S for quite a while on a PVT build, but I spend most of that time kiting 3-5 ppl through marks at 1/5th life. Which while fun in a trollish way, I could be on an ele or thief and actually get far enough away to reset and come back in for another pass.

Necro is just a badly designed class for S anyway. Other classes can do survival, burst, and conditions much better.

You can actually build a bunker DS build for PvP, besides the normal Juggermancer build. What you want to do is use the 30 into SR 5s CD Death Shroud as a boon/cleansing/debuffing/tanking device. With it, you can get perma fury (meaning it is very easy to have highish damage output even as a bunker) plus perma retaliation, which will hit close to 400. Then you will also have about 66% weakness uptime on nearby enemies, a condition removal every 5 seconds, strong LF generation, full regen uptime with staff, and if you choose to go high healing power (instead of PVT gear), you can heal yourself and your team for quite a lot, using wells to buff yourself against conditions further, and pop boons off the enemy.

The problem with such a build (I use a few variations of it in PvP) is that it takes a lot of practice to use correctly, because you need to enter/exit DS every 5 seconds, know when to stay in DS for a prolonged period or just pop out (like you want LF empty when you hit 50% HP the first time for the Spectral Armor trait), you need to get out staff marks well; basically you need to juggle a whole lot of things all at once to really get good output, otherwise you are just a build with major traits that are useless.

Also, PVT MMs with siphoning are very tanky, and still have quite a strong damage output if you learn proper CC burst rotations.

The problem with a total spectral build is where the trait lies. Boons and conditions make the build too powerful. A viable spectreal build would have to be a bunker build.