Guild Wars 2

I recently made a necromancer and have been enjoying leveling him thus far. I spend the majority of my time (when not leveling this alt) in WvW in guild groups and occasionally solo.

I have two concerns with my necromacer in regards to WvW, when i am with a group what is the best way to tag enemies?(apart from the obvious answer of staff)

Also can Necromacncer hold his own in 1v1s when against a competent player?
If so, how? what build? What tactics are key?

I know one thing about Necromancers:

I have a dueling guardian that has more dps than sustain, but at some point it really doesn’t matter, because I don’t carry contemplation of purity, and a lot of guardians I know don’t either. Most dueling guardians in world vs world will carry something to this effect.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Save_Yourselves!%22

Corrupt the kitten out of those boons.

Yes, he can technically purify all those boons, but at what cost? You just made the guardian burn two utilities to one corrupt boon, and they are both on long cooldowns, as in, both longer than corrupt boon’s raw cooldown even if they are traited. Not to mention, you pretty much reduced the time on his boons by half, because contemplation of purity only gives you 5 seconds of each boon at it’s base.

To tag in WvW, you want to run one of either Well of Suffering or Well of Corruption. Drop those, drop your Greater Marks-enhanced staff AoEs, then drop into Plague Form and roll through the enemy zerg spamming blind with the #2 ability. This will give you all the bags on the planet and turns you into an unstoppable frontline machine if you work with your group.

Necromancers can definitely 1v1 against a competent player, but a lot of it comes down to timing, meta knowledge to recognize what builds are mostly impossible for you to beat, and other stuff like that. The most important thing about 1v1s and small-scale combat is to recognize when you’re in over your head. You are not an Elementalist. You can’t press two buttons and vanish halfway across the map when things go south. Every fight you commit to is a do-or-die deal. Make sure you’re doing the doin’ and not the dying.

There is no set build for 1v1s. Condition necromancers can transition the easiest from 1v1 into 1vX/ZvZ because of their AoE options, but powermancers have more frontloaded single-target damage. You can even run a minion build, but that’s overspecializing to the point that your preferred utilities become useless in zergs.

Ahh yes the lack of escapes, that will be a hastle when first learning to1v1 on necro I will have a nice repair bill but that’s how you learn right?

For 1v1 what’s weapon sets are best for conditions? And how about power? I Hear some people rant and rave about Necro D/D but is it really that good?

Sorry for so many separate questions but is condition damage all that reliable? I have only seriously run one condition spec and that was sword warrior, it worked great….. Until they took my bleeds off every 10 or so seconds.

Between marks, wells, epidemic, DS 4 and plague form, Necros have a plethora of tools for AoE tagging. Keep in mind that you don’t need to run a condition damage build for Epidemic to be effective, spreading around Chill, Vulnerability, etc. will help your side tremendously as well.