Guild Wars 2

I started the game as a Tank necro but some lucky Berserkers exotics dropped for me so I went all in on that. Now, that is really fun and I’ll always come back to this for reasons, but I was wondering if a tanky necromancer was still possible. I’ve found nothing other than a few builds that no one says works and then the popular Abomination build but that was more than a year ago so I have no idea if it’ll work. So any new info would be loved.

Sure they work…. I’d be willing to bet fully traited fully geared anything thrown together “works” its wether or not the build is optimal is what other players will want to know….zerker is for dungeons until they change mechanics from no damage to one shotting you to a more sustained damage zerker will be the way to go. Now that being said play what you have fun on man kitten everyone else.

Bare in mind tank anything doesnt work in gw2 because there is no threat or guaranteed aggro mechanic. If you tank mobs you dont actually stop the boss from hitting teammates. Therefore you arent actually helping the group in anyway. You are only helping yourself.

My main is a “tanky” (as in “widstand a lot of damage”) PVT necro, and I love it. It has around 30k HP, and little less than 20k HP extra thanks to DS, so it’s difficult to kill it, just by its sheer HP.

He isn’t the top damage dealer of my party, but is normally the last man standing, even stopping wipes. Give it a try, and give us your impressions here.

Sure last man standing, but useless last man standing. A berserker/dps traited necro can die after 50% boss health and did more dmg then u. Sad but true.
Non tanky mates have no benefit if some1 is tanky like hell. And tanky ones want to get some heals or so.
U can play it, but it´s never optimal or “good”. If it´s your fun no1 will stop u. But don´t call it “usefull”.

It happened a few hours ago. Out of curiosity i tried a full pvt Warrior on these new events. 3.3k armor, 28k hp, so yeah its pretty durable just by stats.
What happened? The Knight just walked by me casualy and slaughtered all the squishy characters while i was able to sit on max hp and dealing 1k crits.

Norjena.5172:

Sure last man standing, but useless last man standing. A berserker/dps traited necro can die after 50% boss health and did more dmg then u. Sad but true.
Non tanky mates have no benefit if some1 is tanky like hell. And tanky ones want to get some heals or so.
U can play it, but it´s never optimal or “good”. If it´s your fun no1 will stop u. But don´t call it “usefull”.

Depends, you just need 24% stats crit chance to be on 100% in a actual team and soldiers total power damage output is about 20-40% lower than a zerkers depending on the enemy when just spamming AA, getting vastly lower with proper lich bombing. So no on a necro (One hander guard, LB/Cat stealth ranger and Pmesmer) soldier outdoes zerker and assassins trough sheer stats efficiency and alt buffs/trait effects/aoe steroids.

Also anyone who farms 40 and 50 fractals daily and isnt warrior or thief, probably has soldier or celestial gear (ele and the rare full dps guards) because splash damage starts to be higher than main “must dodge” attacks at 30.

Then again some people are just too lazy to bother thinking about effective damage output and damage reduction since buying and keeping alt armor sets is “hard and costs too much”.

Andele.1306:

Depends, you just need 24% stats crit chance to be on 100% in a actual team…

wut?

Yeah he says that as an answer to almost all my posts…. Maybe in a perfect world… But I don’t build counting on my party to carry my kitten .

I suppose I should have been more specific. I already have a dungeon build that works good and I really like. Also, I’m almost always solo playing so I don’t to worry about being good enough for my team or whatever.

Andele.1306:

Then again some people are just too lazy to bother thinking about effective damage output and damage reduction since buying and keeping alt armor sets is “hard and costs too much”.

Well, yes, I’m thinking that is supposed to be sarcastic but at this point that is absolutely the case with me, getting a full set of equipment is barely within my price range. Which is why I was seeing if it would be worth going broke for Knights or Soldier or Cleric or whatever.

What I run is berserk armor with div runes, celestial trinks, assassin weapons with blood/leech sigils, except the staff is berserk with force sigil.
As for the traits, you can do whatever you want with it, but I never use curses anymore, as I sit on 50-54% crit depending on if I used any points in death or blood. Usually I go a minimum of 20 blood however, I love me some life siphon. =D
My attack, depending on traits, is 2700-3100, and I facetank lv30+ fotm bosses.
Oh yeah, untraited, I have 70% crit damage.

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

Depends, you just need 24% stats crit chance to be on 100% in a actual team…

wut?

22~24 from stats (depending on which tinkets you go with), 20 from fury, 6~8 from banner or for the poor man spotter, 50% from DP..

Araska.9370 – yes i was just snarking, point is if you can get 10% crit chance pre 30% crit damage you have and got over 2k power, you deal real damage to enemies.

spoj.9672:

Bare in mind tank anything doesnt work in gw2 because there is no threat or guaranteed aggro mechanic. If you tank mobs you dont actually stop the boss from hitting teammates. Therefore you arent actually helping the group in anyway. You are only helping yourself.

You can slightly tank by boosting toughness a lot. That increases your value as a target to mob AI, but Spoj is correct in that there is no way to claim aggro other than raw stats and dps. Therefore, there is no real tanking build, though we call high defense builds by that name.

Like Soldier’s, Dire is also popular, it being the conditionmancer version of Soldier’s power stats. Everything depends upon your play style and confidence in damage avoidance. If you are a pro at dodging and watching for an opponent’s tell so you can flip to DS before the hit, then you can go berserker.

Generally, a higher armor value does not guarantee survival, just a lingering death. For Necromancer, there is no escape but a glassy build may send you down earlier. The trades are straightforward that way. There is no JP button. Enjoy.

Andele.1306:

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

Depends, you just need 24% stats crit chance to be on 100% in a actual team…

wut?

22~24 from stats (depending on which tinkets you go with), 20 from fury, 6~8 from banner or for the poor man spotter, 50% from DP..

Araska.9370 – yes i was just snarking, point is if you can get 10% crit chance pre 30% crit damage you have and got over 2k power, you deal real damage to enemies.

Yeah i worked out you were referring to DP last night. And we had a good laugh in guildchat about it. Im sure people can work out why having only situationally good crit chance is bad.

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

Depends, you just need 24% stats crit chance to be on 100% in a actual team…

wut?

22~24 from stats (depending on which tinkets you go with), 20 from fury, 6~8 from banner or for the poor man spotter, 50% from DP..

Araska.9370 – yes i was just snarking, point is if you can get 10% crit chance pre 30% crit damage you have and got over 2k power, you deal real damage to enemies.

Yeah i worked out you were referring to DP last night. And we had a good laugh in guildchat about it. Im sure people can work out why having only situationally good crit chance is bad.

Not really situational since you are in it for 4/5 of every fight in fractals when you can actually dps the boss and yes i love how the initials of most of our skills and traits are very dirty.

Well I doubt its 4/5 of the fight unless you are playing flawlessly. And if you can play flawlessly you may aswell go for better dps 100% of the time in melee.

Either that or you are doing fractal 10 or something. :/

spoj.9672:

Well I doubt its 4/5 of the fight unless you are playing flawlessly. And if you can play flawlessly you may aswell go for better dps 100% of the time in melee.

Either that or you are doing fractal 10 or something. :/

Orrr you just press F1 if in DS when a large pile of mobs are about to die because they give 10% lf pre death while not in DS, then easy 7s later you jump back in since D1 and Wh5 generated the rest up.

Because theres always a convenient amount of mobs to restore your lifeforce….

Lets see: Krait, Cultists, Grawl (aka grubs), Ascalonians, Molten, Crystal elementals and Svanir… so the two fights on which you cant melee generate LF or rely on mobs is… Mai, who is immune to damage either way till you kite her and the Mossman whos invis hit you gotta dodge/use marks and well vamp damage to detect him. I dont really see a problem there.

Just ignore the fact that theres boss fights in every fractal which dont involve constant trash mobs. The only exception being krait which noone does anymore, mossman and sort of volcanic.

So it seems you are saying its good because its good for trash mobs. Trash mobs are generally not what you should build around.

And in higher fractals you should be using cc and soft cc for them. Which means you want to have warhorn and offhand dagger to debuff and interrupt on cd. Staying in DS is going to be unreliable especially as piercing doesnt really work that well as a cleave and you will get kicked out of it a lot against trash mobs anyway (especially if your group doesnt cc properly).

This is assuming standard tactics which means stacking and LoSing. But I guess thats where your weird ideas come from as I seem to remember you think those tactics are exploits.

spoj.9672:

Just ignore the fact that theres boss fights in every fractal which dont involve constant trash mobs. The only exception being krait which noone does anymore, mossman and sort of volcanic.

So it seems you are saying its good because its good for trash mobs. Trash mobs are generally not what you should build around.

And in higher fractals you should be using cc and soft cc for them. Which means you want to have warhorn and offhand dagger to debuff and interrupt on cd. Staying in DS is going to be unreliable especially as piercing doesnt really work that well as a cleave and you will get kicked out of it a lot against trash mobs anyway (especially if your group doesnt cc properly).

This is assuming standard tactics which means stacking and LoSing. But I guess thats where your weird ideas come from as I seem to remember you think those tactics are exploits.

No standard tactic is murder the kitten out of the boss. Which includes dodging blocking and working as a team. And its not about thrash mobs its about being able to generate life force, in which case every boss except mentioned mossman and mai are very easy targets or summon easy targets.

Morbridae.8607:

My main is a “tanky” (as in “widstand a lot of damage”) PVT necro, and I love it. It has around 30k HP, and little less than 20k HP extra thanks to DS, so it’s difficult to kill it, just by its sheer HP.

He isn’t the top damage dealer of my party, but is normally the last man standing, even stopping wipes. Give it a try, and give us your impressions here.

Just to give you a heads up some bosses and mechanics are % based so all the hps in the world mean nothing.

Also, Your spec is totally useless in a group setting and offers nothing.

Little to no dps and little to no support.

So what exactly is the point of being the last man standing if you can’t accomplish anything ?

In some instances it is relatively easy to run out of trash mobs but Necro has multiple ways to generate LF. Often, it is DS CD that gets in my way or plain old running out of it from absorbing damage or playing with it too long.

Sometimes, I wonder if Life Blast should get stronger as I burn through LF rather than weaker.

Andele.1306:

spoj.9672:

Just ignore the fact that theres boss fights in every fractal which dont involve constant trash mobs. The only exception being krait which noone does anymore, mossman and sort of volcanic.

So it seems you are saying its good because its good for trash mobs. Trash mobs are generally not what you should build around.

And in higher fractals you should be using cc and soft cc for them. Which means you want to have warhorn and offhand dagger to debuff and interrupt on cd. Staying in DS is going to be unreliable especially as piercing doesnt really work that well as a cleave and you will get kicked out of it a lot against trash mobs anyway (especially if your group doesnt cc properly).

This is assuming standard tactics which means stacking and LoSing. But I guess thats where your weird ideas come from as I seem to remember you think those tactics are exploits.

No standard tactic is murder the kitten out of the boss. Which includes dodging blocking and working as a team. And its not about thrash mobs its about being able to generate life force, in which case every boss except mentioned mossman and mai are very easy targets or summon easy targets.

Spoj, congrat’s on pointing out that trash mobs are “different.” It is an important distinction that is often glossed over in arguments. I take one minor exception to your statement about not building around trash mobs – a trash-specific build can compliment a bunch of zerker builds clearing the field so they can focus the bosses but it requires the other group members be not AoE condi-build. Great observations, though.

Andele, maybe on an individual basis you are sort of correcr that the objective is not to murder the daisies out of the boss but from a group perspective that is definitely the case There are very few PvE events, mostly fractals and the new Teq, where adds matter. An occasional Epidemic relieves the need to pay much attention to them.

no, no it’s not a thing. zerker is the way to go for pve

Building a tank Necromancer in PvE? No. Building a tank Necromancer in WvW? Yes.

To Norjena, Dalanor, Azreell, and any other player kind enough to answer me before: thx for your comments!

I strongly disagree about that build/gamestyle being useless. I agree that it doesn’t have the highest dps, but I firmly believe that there is more on this game that just bigger numbers. Besides, I believe that a full berserker build of any class only works if the whole group is build the same way, so that you can work your way through enemies by sheer force. And I believe also that if you die before the fight ends, you are no helping to your full extend.

When I talk about being the last man standing, I don’t talk about being the last one to die, but about being the one that kills the mobs, or the one that heal the rest of the party back on their feet. Nevertheless, I understand your points.

I agree that the build is far for optimal, and that it is very individualist and doesn’t offer anything to the group (at least, not bonuses, boons, etc, of any kind).

So, as an experiment, could you please share with us the builds you normally use on dungeons and fractals? I promise to try them, and with a little luck I will be able to learn something, and you will help create a better necro. In the worse case, I will maintain my opinions, and you will maintain yours, so nothing will be lost.

thx for your responses…

PVE Tank Necro is not a thing.

PVE Tank anything is not a thing.

Dakota.4591:

PVE Tank Necro is not a thing.

PVE Tank anything is not a thing.

Actually, its one of the 3 kinds of necro people seem to take in and real fractals, next to full DP zerker and scav carrion true damage/siphon builds.
Tho thats more for a carefree mai, ascalon and dredge fractal.