Guild Wars 2

I love the concept of the Necro. I played one in GW1. I’m really struggling at finding a good build though.

What I want:

1.) A PvP build for hot joins and free tournaments. Any build that is useful to a team and can actually survive long enough to bring down enemies works. I’ve tried conditions, power, and hybrid builds. The hybrid was too fragile. The conditions was too slow at killing, and I couldn’t get a good utility setup figured out. The power build never kills anything. I’m clearly doing something wrong.

2.) A PvE build for open world PvE/farming AND dungeons. I don’t want to be spending gold on changing traits around. I haven’t done much of this side of the game for awhile now, so I’m sitting at level 60 or so.

3.) Tips and tricks. I clearly need to “learn to play.” That is if my recent performance has been any indication. So any advice is appreciated.

It all depends on how you like to play. Death Shroud is you most important tool in PvP so build accordingly. In PvE and WvW your most important tools are AoEs and Siphon Heals. Build accordingly.

And instead of forum surfing for builds, try different things in the mists until you find a play style you like. Then apply what I just said to it in PvE and WvW.

Also blood is power is 10 stacks of might. That’s power and condition damage. Also use Lyssa Runes for condition duration and one of the only stability options availible to us. Lyssa runes + Flesh Golem = all boons every 45 seconds which also clears all conditions at the same time. Very powerful in pvP.

I can’t really offer a full build for PvE since I tend to switch tactics every 15 or so levels, but here’s some tricks I’ve found for PvE.

Necromancers have a few fun ways to mess with conditions & boons in Well of Power and Well of Corruption. In many situations, you can use one of the two to great effect. So when you go into an area, try and note if enemies tend to use conditions on you, or if they buff themselves with boons, then pick the appropriate well. For example: fighting dredge? Take Well of Corruption. After somebody plays a gong, you can make them vulnerable, weakened and crippled, speeding up the fight (in your favour) significantly.

Also, if you carry Well of Power, consider taking corruption skills with you. The vulnerability from Epidemic turns into Protection, which can be a nice defense, and the poison from Corrupt Boon turns into regeneration.

Signet of Undeath has a huge recharge, but it’s more easily used in PvE: You can revive fallen NPCs with it. While NPCs don’t have a ‘Downed’ state, the signet will still rally them. If they’re close enough together, you get three NPCs at 50% health, which if nothing else can be good for cannon fodder.

Howdy! I should warn you that the Necro doesn’t feel like the Necro from GW1 (at least it doesn’t for me). Now I’m probably an “average” player, so take what I say with a grain of salt

1) For PvP, play around with builds. I’ve done Burst, Condition, Hybrid, Glass Cannon, Death Shroud and some have had varying success. The most recent build I’m trying I stole directly from:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=gw2+necromancer&search_sort=video_date_uploaded

An unfortunate aspect I’ve experienced is that it’s not “good” for a Necro to go solo in sPvP. That is, I recommend you “stick” with at least one other player when playing as Necro. For me, this is hard since I love back-capping, but that usually puts me in a solo situation when about 2-3 enemies pop up after respawn. The above build works great if someone else is being focused on instead of you.

2) I’ve had great success with Wells in generic PvE. I haven’t had much dungeon experience, unfortunately, but I presume Wells will work well there also. As for how to handle wells, there are many ways to go about it. You can try Knight’s Armor (Power, Precision, Toughness) for a more offensive build, or try a Hybrid build with Carrion (Condition, Power, Vitality). The Knight’s version works well for generic PvE and is great for farming Orr (Staff + Dagger/Warhorn, for me). However, melee loses out a bit in Dungeons where range is important, and aside from Staff, that leaves Necros with axe (which is terribad) and scepter (which requires high condition damage). So for dungeons, I’d recommend Carrion (or Rabid) armor.

But this now begs the question about how to distribute your Attribute Points. If you want one that can jump between Knights and Carrion, perhaps a 20-20-10-20-0 build will work, where 10 in Death Magic are for the Greater Marks. The trait choices are up to you, past that. Unfortunately, this may be “Jack-of-all-Trades, Master-of-None” build where you can perform most things well, but not necessarily better than another build.

Another advantage of this trait distribution is that it lends itself well to swapping out Wells for more Condition-centered builds. You can get a recharge reduction for Corruptions in the same spot where you get Ground Targeting for Wells in the Curses line. Furthermore, if you need more damage for destructible environment, you can swap in Bone Minions and put in the 30% damage boost in the Spite line to provide two 2k damage AoE explosions, as well as Well of Corruption and Well of Suffering.

Unfortunately, a glaring issue with this setup is the lack of Life Force generation. I’ll let you worry about that .

Have fun!