Guild Wars 2

Hey guys it’s Black Avarice (really wish I could switch account names as mine currently does not reflect my main) and I have a new and unique build for the necro community. I really enjoyed representing us in the amazing saturday edition of the SoAC tournament and this build is hopefully the silver lining to our loss against mesmers.

First off, I know historically minions are a big NO for condi builds but, I believe I have found an exception. It is specifically designed to push necro toward a different group role, provide team pressure while also giving an option to disengage, while all around being a survivable/sustain condi build. Yes it is unconventional, but it does work even without a full necromancer composition. Timing and positioning are everything as with a ton of other necro options.

Build: 10/20/30/10/0

Spite: IV

Curses: II, IV

Death Magic: II, III, XI

Blood Magic: III

Weapons: Staff, Scepter/Warhorn
~Warhorn is a personal choice I very much like in this build. While dagger OH is good, the transfer is unreliable and it lacks LF generation. Warhorn gives you a second way to interrupt guardian block heal (1st is staff 5), engi or warr block, and stomps/rezzes. You also already get dagger #5 every 15 seconds with traits and gain a good amount of swiftness as a trade off.

Heal: Consume Conditions

Utilities: Bone Minions, Flesh Wurm, Plague Signet

Elite: Flesh Golem
~Minions are expendable so plague is an option but I find Golem better. Not only is it another poison field, it also gives more control/lockdown, and is on a reasonable CD with trait.

Gear: Either Rabid or Carrion amulet should be used with this build. Since I am not a theory crafter I suggest testing both to find your niche, I switch based on the team I am fighting. Generally they both perform well, with small differences:

~Carrion has an edge on sustain because vitality directly affects LF. Against condi builds the vitality definitely helps when soaking them up for transfers.
~Rabid has significantly more toughness so it performs better against direct damage but has less room for error against condi. With higher crit you proc more bleeds and generally have slightly higher sustain damage. I suggest a carrion jewel with rabid for the additional vitality with this amulet.

-Sigil of Superior Agony on scepter, Superior Energy on staff, and minor corruption on the OH warhorn.

Runes: 2 Krait/2 Centaur/2 Affliction for bleed durations seeing as there are not enough points for lingering curses. With points spent in weakening shroud and marks on dodge, it is important to keep ticks going on those without cleansing. All in all this build boasts 85% additional bleed duration.

Key Points:

-This build is not only for MM fans! Know that besides this build I have never played successfully or quite enjoyed MM in sPvP. It is a very strong kiter that fits the general condi play style of necro.

-The minions are a sacrificial part of this build and are completely expendable, feel free to treat them as any other utility as they are not the builds cornerstone. Your condi damage will stand on its own and you have an additional stun break along with DS for when they are all recharging. Wurm should be wiped everytime you choose a new location to enter combat so he will be up for the next disengage. Bone minions are used for the blast finisher and combo field in one, not high uptime.

-You are strongest when contesting points. With aoe condi pressure and a handy golem charge you can push people off point and keep them off point with fear while you get the neutralization. It only takes a few seconds and if needed elsewhere flesh wurm allows you to port out to help at other points, forcing enemies to waste time recapping or face losing points.

-Fighting off point is not impossible but is not recommended. Only in perfect circumstances will bone minions always be in position for blasts, but holding home point/pushing far restricts combat to node circles. This makes your poison fields far more effective against guards/eles/rangers or other constant healers.

So lets see, overall we get out of this build…

Cons:
-Minion cast times (only in combat issue)
-lack of boon removal generally in necro condi builds
-Since one stun break is tied to your condi transfer you may waste the transfer and not have it ready for a stun later, and vice versa. This is where timing is very important.
-If flesh wurm is killed or poorly placed you lose your disengage. Practice and proper planning is key.
-Trait allocation does not allow Soul Marks so you lose some of condi builds easy access to LF. Wurm, locust swarm, and scepter 3# attempt to alleviate this.
-Very rarely you will pick up an allys cripple/chill from signet when roaming between points, which is annoying. Besides that, in team fights plague signet is quite handy at turning the tides.

Pros:
-5 poison fields, 2 on very short CDs
-4 blast finishers, although Flesh Wurm will very rarely activate a field due to positioning.

~after playing this build I had a purposed change to flesh wurm. When you activate the stun break I think the minion should swap positions with you and drop its innate poison field and blast finisher where the necro was and NOT where the wurm was placed. Very rarely will you ever poison enemies on wurm port because if enemies were near it you wouldnt want to activate it!

-2 ways to pull condis off of allys.
-2 stun breakers, on 48/32 second cds. Along with DS, these give this build a gentler learning for newer necros against high burst classes compared to typical meta builds.
-3 full condi removals, two in the form of transfer and another full cleanse on heal. Even without a dagger OH you have good condi clears.
-A minion build not destroyed by moa. Your condi damage is your sustain and with 2 fears and a daze you have CC outside of minions when moa ends. You lose your elite and 2 short cd utilities. Other necro builds will lose plague/lich on higher CDS and other minions builds lose CC and damage. While moa still sucks and you need to attempt to disengage, you are in no way worse off than any other profession getting moa’d.
-Team fight utility. All minions besides wurm are meant to die in team fights for poison fields. You have plenty of ranged condi pressure and alot of stomp/rezz support. You have golem charge, 2 fears, and a daze for interrupts. If all else fails disengage with your wurm.
-Minions still give you the ability to take down things like treb and walls. With Golem Charge you can take out approx. 30% of trebs health. Along with wurm, staff #1, and explosions you can take down treb relatively quickly even as a condimancer. If you can get the treb operator to run on the first engagement it is best to abandon treb at low health and return with a recharged golem for a quick kill when they return.

I am actively working on getting recording capability so I can create a video tutorial for this build and other content. If anyone has any software/recording advice for a mac player I’d appreciate a PM! Try it out, see how you like it, and tell me what you think. If you have any Q’s or want to see it in action whisper me in game and I’d be more than willing to run some tourneys/allow spectating/or any other preferred learning types.

Special thanks to Gibbly for coaching us during SoAC! He was vocal when he needed to be, gave great advice and input for team strategies, and never remotely pressured us out of our builds or playstyles. Also want to thank Altroll for pushing me towards off-meta builds and Bhawb for all his minion PoV videos which really helped me develop this builds play style.

Will definitely need to look at this (I saw minions).

Haha you should, its actually very very fun to play. Not to mention effective! I’ll have to admit it took me forever to come around to fitting minions into one of my builds but I think this was the perfect compromise.

EDIT: This was originally my counter to the mesmers strategy, I was lucky a build actually formed out of it. The plan was to push far and use sustain to force them to portal a second mesmer home and occupy them until it despawns. I’d then use wurm port/plague sig/locust swarm to escape and leave mesmers split 2-3 so we could win the mid fight then bunker 2 points. Unfortunately with the split in profession groups between higher/lower tier I no longer qualify to play on our team.

Condi-minion hybrids actually work very nicely because of how conditions scale (you don’t lose a lot of condi damage). Its great to see people being smarter with minions and working them into builds in ways that I think are more viable at a higher level of play.

Been doing some practices with it and have changed a few things for optimization.

Gear
Best amulet: Carrion w/ rampagers jewel
Sigils: Sigil of Geomancy on both staff-scepter and minor corruption on war horn
Runes: 6/6 Rune of the Nightmare

Traits
Curses: switch out the additional 20% bleed duration for the trait “Terror”

With these changes you have more PBAoE and damage with terror. Duration wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped seeing as poison and weakness didn’t suffice as cover conditions. With damage on fear and the ability to generate 10-15 near instant aoe bleeds you are much more likely to pressure cleanses leaving your enemy without CDs.

I generally hate MM builds, but I pushed aside my bias for this one.

It’s a decent MM build, but I don’t find it very effective. It’s essentially an sustain condition tank, but in a group fight, it gets dominated easily. It lacks serious damage output, the corruption/well utilities for a Necromancer are his strongest sources of damage, replacing them with… ugh… Minions doesn’t help very much. I’m glad that you used my Plague Signet idea with MM builds, but it still doesn’t help much without speccing around it.

Honestly I don’t see the advantages this build has over other condition builds, infact I find it to be somewhat weaker.

To improve this, I would move the 10 points from Spite into Curses, then equip Runes of the Undead. Sometimes duration can take a backseat to damage. I would then equip a Rabid amulet, and add Sigils of Earth to some of your weapons. I would also remove the Plague Signet, since you’re not built for it, and switch it to Corrupt Boon, or Well of Corruption. You’ll also want to put back Dagger on Scepter offhand for the transfer, as unreliable as it may be you can buffer it with Doom and Flesh Golem/Bone Fiend. Then I would replace Flesh Wurm with Bone Fiend. Bone Fiend is highly underrated, but it is not weak, it does high damage, and can make melee opponents suffer. Besides, you’re a Minionmancer, while Flesh Wurm is nice, you shouldn’t be trying for escapes like that. It’s not helpful in team fights.

Haha appreciate the input man. Seems you missed the point, but like you’ve experienced, not everyone will see the value of unique builds.

Glad you tried it at least!

As I’ve also experienced, not all unique builds are extremely good. This one is decent, I’ll agree, however it’s not necessarily viable at high levels imo.

36 of my Necro builds are viable, I’ve had atleast 85 that are completely worthless, but unique/interesting. This one has a neat idea, but could use improvement.

I’m glad you’re starting to theory craft though