Guild Wars 2

Took me a while do get all the gear for this build… but i’ve done it. I also want to thank you guys for your continuous support and appreciation. Without further ado…. here it is

Guild Wars 2 – The definition of glass cannon (necromancer bursting tutorial)

This video includes building up the glass cannon necromancer burster – weapons, stats, items, skills, utilities, traits and the most important part of them all… “Defining your auto-attack”… i think you guys will be in for a surprise.

As always… all of these explained in detail with the reasoning behind each decision.

FINAL STATS:

3355 Power
~ 54-58% Critical Chance
~ 110-120% Critical Damage
1836 Armor (+ protection on ~ 40% of the time)
~ 19372 Health
————
+ the ability to maintain 15-25 stacks of vulnerability on the target
+ more % damage increases (explained in the video)
+ massive auto-attack damage “???”, you’ll see…

If i missed anything or if you have any questions feel free to comment here, on in the comment section on youtube.

Enjoy

I am curious how much more damage you could get out of that build if you placed Hoelbrock, Fire, and Strength runes in the armor. Between those runes, BIP and might from deathshroud you looking at 21s might duration leaving only 8s left for BIP recharge.

Thanks for the video Nemesis I am anxiously waiting for the pvp videos you have upcoming.

Watched the entire vid. Good build and nice logic/explaining choices.

Looks like a pretty good build for farming open-world PvE mobs.

Nice I have been building a well AoE power build, this will make a good compliment for attacking champions.

Alkaline.2809:

I am curious how much more damage you could get out of that build if you placed Hoelbrock, Fire, and Strength runes in the armor. Between those runes, BIP and might from deathshroud you looking at 21s might duration leaving only 8s left for BIP recharge.

Thanks for the video Nemesis I am anxiously waiting for the pvp videos you have upcoming.

It may offer longer might duration but you also gain bleeding damage on the target which does close to nothing, since you don’t have any condition duration. You would also be losing critical strike damage.
It also defeats the entire purpose of the build… “full… bursting… no conditions that do damage allowed”.
Also… you benefit from longer might duration… in longer fights, bursting is about short fights.
But… if that’s how you want to play, of course you can, this is just my POV on what you said.

Midi.5967:

Watched the entire vid. Good build and nice logic/explaining choices.

Thank you.

Nilgoow.1037:

Looks like a pretty good build for farming open-world PvE mobs.

I’ve made it for people who don’t like conditions but like the necromancer. There are… many it seems.

This awesome again as always Nemesis! I love it.

This guide was really good, as all of your guides.
Keep up the good work man, you rock!

Love it. It’s essentially the build I used to run in WvW, although I didn’t have even half decent gear at the time but I still managed to put out a ton of damage.

Is there a better alternative to a Sigil of Accuracy in WvW? Its hard to obtain, and maintain 25 stacks unless you just mindlessly run with The Zerg, or unless you kill some mobs first every time you die.

This build may not have a ton of AoE, but its really all you need. Between Life Transfer, Well of Suffering, Reapers Touch, Unholy Feast, and Life Blast (if you can line it up right) you should have enough to take care of anything.

I like your hybrid build better. I think there are some pressing issues with this build.

Pros: Great synergy with the Well of Suffering and Spectral Wall downtime trading. I also like the Life Blast auto attack replacement.

Cons: There is a lack of condition removal. While this is certainly OK in world PvE, you’re going to run into problems in Dungeons or WvW. If this build is only designed for world PvE then I think the scope is a bit small, and that other glass cannon builds can do more.

Secondly I think you have too much precision. At a certain point precision won’t seem to matter as much anymore since you crit like crazy anyways. Some of the precision in the armor could have been traded in for vitality via Valkyrie gear, or toughness via Crusader gear, using Ruric and Adelbern’s rings.

Lastly, I know how lucrative vulnerability stacking can be but the real issue is that its not great to go out of your way for. Your 3 utilities are dedicated to vulnerability stacking (the grasp is for the wall pretty much). Vulnerability is worthless on champion and legendary mobs. I guess it can be useful in WvW, but players are likely to walk out of your Well and bypass the Wall. Sigil of Fraility isn’t actually that useful. If we are to believe that it has a 2 second internal cooldown (as tested by some people), the Sigil can only contribute 4 stacks of vulnerability by itself. Possibly 5 with your condition duration+ from traits. And that’s if you crit every single time it is off cooldown.

Sigil of Force gives 5% damage+, all the time.

You certainly have no issues with open world combat, but not many builds do either. It does look very fun to play though.

Nice build, I also run a glass cannon, although it’s fairly different. People seem to forget that we have 40k+ health overall, which lends itself to glass cannon builds quite nicely, giving us way more survivability then other class’s glass builds.

Not sure why you’re using sigil of frailty, as kkagri pointed out, like sigil of strength, are simply outclassed by the plain old sigil of force or sigil of air.

You can also try to squeeze every last bit out of it, having another focus with sigil of accuracy for when you have a full stack of accuracy, maintenance oil for some more, skale venom for more vulnerability etc, although most people can’t be bothered.

I don’t see how you can say he has to much crit though, at 40% crit chance and 109 cirt damage he’s doing x1.64 his regular damage overall, at 55% that becomes x1.88. The only time you have to much crit is over 80% really.

War Mourner.5168:

Nice build, I also run a glass cannon, although it’s fairly different. People seem to forget that we have 40k+ health overall, which lends itself to glass cannon builds quite nicely, giving us way more survivability then other class’s glass builds.

Not sure why you’re using sigil of frailty, as kkagri pointed out, like sigil of strength, are simply outclassed by the plain old sigil of force or sigil of air.

You can also try to squeeze every last bit out of it, having another focus with sigil of accuracy for when you have a full stack of accuracy, maintenance oil for some more, skale venom for more vulnerability etc, although most people can’t be bothered.

I don’t see how you can say he has to much crit though, at 40% crit chance and 109 cirt damage he’s doing x1.64 his regular damage overall, at 55% that becomes x1.88. The only time you have to much crit is over 80% really.

Ah, you’re right about the precision, I was thinking about my own build with perma-fury. I’ve recently reduced my 47% base crit chance to 40% for some added toughness.

I always liked your videos, they are very well structurized and explained thoroughly.

As to the build itself, it is good for PvE, but lacks in some parts if PvP is concerned for couple of reasons:

1. I never liked spammy builds and this is a spammy build.
2. Spectral Wall isn’t viable vs good players, because they won’t go through it unless totally forced to.
3. Spectral Grab doesn’t help much in a teamfight situations because it’s a projectile.
4. You get kicked out of DS very fast in close range combat as a necro in PvP.
5. You will have exceptionally hard time against most 1v1 match-ups, especially good thieves (stealth), mesmers (blocks/reflections + confusion counters spammy builds).

There is also one important thing I don’t think you emphasized enough – in this type of build you should always aim at spamming Life Blast from 100% to 50% Life Force – it has a higher damage in that stage.

So the final rotation should be like: load 100% life force with your attacks (Axe ‘2’ or Dagger auto or Spectrals) using utilities at the same time, pop into DS, 11111111 until 50%, at this point you can use Life Transfer or get out of the DS and ride on the stacked might to regenerate LF to 100% again with Axe ‘2’ and/or Dagger auto to repeat the rotation.

Overall, a great build and even greater tutorial and video.

Gotta agree with leman on the Life Blast part. Although you manage to pull off 2k crits while under 50% LF which is pretty impressive considering the normal damage I see for that is anywhere between 500-1000 at max.

One question though – why use the dagger? I saw you use it once for Life Siphon, and it does do great damage, more than Ghastly Claws, although it doesn’t generate LF. If you’re going to be using a dagger and axe, I’d suggest using a warhorn offhand with the dagger. It almost makes up for the lack of swiftness this build has, and you can put in another sigil.

Thank you for your video and explanations, I’m going to try that

Just a quick question and a provocation.

Question : Instead of spectral grasp, for a “continuous” life force regen isn’t better the signet of undeath ? (The grip may be too situational )

Provocation : (evil here ) don’t you think that is more useful for a pve party a warrior sonic boon ( more damage and healing via shout) instead of a necro berzeker ( low damage compared to war and no utilities for party) ?

DarkniteJ.8053:

This awesome again as always Nemesis! I love it.

You’re welcome

Aesa.4819:

This guide was really good, as all of your guides.
Keep up the good work man, you rock!

Thank you… currently training in TPvP to bring you the best conditionmancer build possible for when you step in TPvP… the rest is up to you, your skill as a player.

Levian.6742:

Love it. It’s essentially the build I used to run in WvW, although I didn’t have even half decent gear at the time but I still managed to put out a ton of damage.

Is there a better alternative to a Sigil of Accuracy in WvW? Its hard to obtain, and maintain 25 stacks unless you just mindlessly run with The Zerg, or unless you kill some mobs first every time you die.

This build may not have a ton of AoE, but its really all you need. Between Life Transfer, Well of Suffering, Reapers Touch, Unholy Feast, and Life Blast (if you can line it up right) you should have enough to take care of anything.

You could try with Sigil of Force but you’ll still need that 10% extra crit chance. Also i never did like power builds in WvW. I’ll post on this forums my own version of a WvW build. In a few minutes…

kKagari.6804:

I like your hybrid build better. I think there are some pressing issues with this build.

Pros: Great synergy with the Well of Suffering and Spectral Wall downtime trading. I also like the Life Blast auto attack replacement.

Cons: There is a lack of condition removal. While this is certainly OK in world PvE, you’re going to run into problems in Dungeons or WvW. If this build is only designed for world PvE then I think the scope is a bit small, and that other glass cannon builds can do more.

Secondly I think you have too much precision. At a certain point precision won’t seem to matter as much anymore since you crit like crazy anyways. Some of the precision in the armor could have been traded in for vitality via Valkyrie gear, or toughness via Crusader gear, using Ruric and Adelbern’s rings.

Lastly, I know how lucrative vulnerability stacking can be but the real issue is that its not great to go out of your way for. Your 3 utilities are dedicated to vulnerability stacking (the grasp is for the wall pretty much). Vulnerability is worthless on champion and legendary mobs. I guess it can be useful in WvW, but players are likely to walk out of your Well and bypass the Wall. Sigil of Fraility isn’t actually that useful. If we are to believe that it has a 2 second internal cooldown (as tested by some people), the Sigil can only contribute 4 stacks of vulnerability by itself. Possibly 5 with your condition duration+ from traits. And that’s if you crit every single time it is off cooldown.

Sigil of Force gives 5% damage+, all the time.

You certainly have no issues with open world combat, but not many builds do either. It does look very fun to play though.

This build is the demonstration of the necromancer’s maximum burst damage potential. Also if you have a chance… with this build try to spam dagger 1 in close combat, your DPS will be 7k on average. I didn’t say this in the video, cause everyone will start doing it then and die for it… but yeah… it’s possible.

War Mourner.5168:

Nice build, I also run a glass cannon, although it’s fairly different. People seem to forget that we have 40k+ health overall, which lends itself to glass cannon builds quite nicely, giving us way more survivability then other class’s glass builds.

Not sure why you’re using sigil of frailty, as kkagri pointed out, like sigil of strength, are simply outclassed by the plain old sigil of force or sigil of air.

You can also try to squeeze every last bit out of it, having another focus with sigil of accuracy for when you have a full stack of accuracy, maintenance oil for some more, skale venom for more vulnerability etc, although most people can’t be bothered.

I don’t see how you can say he has to much crit though, at 40% crit chance and 109 cirt damage he’s doing x1.64 his regular damage overall, at 55% that becomes x1.88. The only time you have to much crit is over 80% really.

I agree with what you said about crit chance, the rest of what you said has to be tested and retested… not in just a 1 vs mob scenario, but in real scenarios in dungeons… how does this effect the party’s effectiveness overall and such. Because vulnerability benefits the entire team, not just yourself… by acting as a debuffer, and 25% extra damage not just for yourself but for 4 other people sounds way better in my opinion.

leman.7682:

I always liked your videos, they are very well structurized and explained thoroughly.

As to the build itself, it is good for PvE, but lacks in some parts if PvP is concerned for couple of reasons:

1. I never liked spammy builds and this is a spammy build.
2. Spectral Wall isn’t viable vs good players, because they won’t go through it unless totally forced to.
3. Spectral Grab doesn’t help much in a teamfight situations because it’s a projectile.
4. You get kicked out of DS very fast in close range combat as a necro in PvP.
5. You will have exceptionally hard time against most 1v1 match-ups, especially good thieves (stealth), mesmers (blocks/reflections + confusion counters spammy builds).

There is also one important thing I don’t think you emphasized enough – in this type of build you should always aim at spamming Life Blast from 100% to 50% Life Force – it has a higher damage in that stage.

So the final rotation should be like: load 100% life force with your attacks (Axe ‘2’ or Dagger auto or Spectrals) using utilities at the same time, pop into DS, 11111111 until 50%, at this point you can use Life Transfer or get out of the DS and ride on the stacked might to regenerate LF to 100% again with Axe ‘2’ and/or Dagger auto to repeat the rotation.

Overall, a great build and even greater tutorial and video.

It’s hard to focus in the way you speak while focusing on technical details, while focusing on what you say while focusing on combat while focusing on frames while focusing on HDD space when you make a video. I pointed out that you get extra damage when your life force pool is over 50% when i was setting the traits. Should have pointed it out again in the rotation i guess.

Thanks for pointing it out here.

Levian.6742:

Gotta agree with leman on the Life Blast part. Although you manage to pull off 2k crits while under 50% LF which is pretty impressive considering the normal damage I see for that is anywhere between 500-1000 at max.

One question though – why use the dagger? I saw you use it once for Life Siphon, and it does do great damage, more than Ghastly Claws, although it doesn’t generate LF. If you’re going to be using a dagger and axe, I’d suggest using a warhorn offhand with the dagger. It almost makes up for the lack of swiftness this build has, and you can put in another sigil.

Dagger 1 spam, and you compensate for the lack of swiftness by having 1 pull and 1 grab. Dagger 1 spam does insane damage.

TheSaint.8072:

Thank you for your video and explanations, I’m going to try that

Just a quick question and a provocation.

Question : Instead of spectral grasp, for a “continuous” life force regen isn’t better the signet of undeath ? (The grip may be too situational )

Provocation : (evil here ) don’t you think that is more useful for a pve party a warrior sonic boon ( more damage and healing via shout) instead of a necro berzeker ( low damage compared to war and no utilities for party) ?

How much DPS does the warrior put out, DPS i mean not like one single burst and you say 30k. DPS measured over 30 seconds, so it has time to stabilize and get an average value.
This build in melee range (like the warrior), just as squishy, maybe even less squishy because of the protections, + the vulnerability on target which increases the entire party’s effectiveness… can put out an average of 7-8k DPS, maybe even 9k DPS… i need to test it more. How far off are you from the warrior ?

Signet of undeath offers 1% every 3 seconds, it is intended for long fights, the spetral graps offers 10% instantly. That means spectral grasp puts out as much life force instantly as the signet of undeath puts out in 30 seconds. That is problematic since the fight will not last 30 seconds. Also spectral grasp when traited has a lower then 30 second CD, so overall way more life force.

Nemesis.8593:

Dagger 1 spam, and you compensate for the lack of swiftness by having 1 pull and 1 grab. Dagger 1 spam does insane damage.

Yea, Dagger 1 does do push out the damage. I used to use a dagger well bombing build and it was insane. But in a DS centric build where you use Life Blast for your main source of damage, use Axe #2 for Life Force gain, then the Focus skills for Life Force and Vulnerability, on top of utilities, it seems there almost isn’t any time to use daggers.

I suppose it could be used if enemies are on top of you , you just came out of DS and have less than 50% LF and so you can’t use Life Blast for damage, but that’s really the only situation I can think of.

I think personally I’d use a staff just for a bit of utility, but I’ll have to give it a try either way and see how I like it!

Nemesis.8593:

I agree with what you said about crit chance, the rest of what you said has to be tested and retested… not in just a 1 vs mob scenario, but in real scenarios in dungeons… how does this effect the party’s effectiveness overall and such. Because vulnerability benefits the entire team, not just yourself… by acting as a debuffer, and 25% extra damage not just for yourself but for 4 other people sounds way better in my opinion.

If you’re the only one stacking vulnerability, perhaps. but I usually have atleast 1 other person stacking some sort of vulnerability (usually a GS warrior, which has vulnerability on autoattack and whatever that trait it called for vuln on crit, as well as ‘on my mark’), which when combined with your build would be excessive vulnerability on anything except bosses (who with their 1/2 vulnerability duration makes it pretty poor in it’s own right).

But anyway, just looking at simple numbers, with 55% crit chance, you have 16.5% chance per hit, with a second/ 2 second CD to proc 1 stack of vulnerability. With axe 1 you do about 2 hits per second, maybe a little faster, but assuming 2 hits per second that gives you a 30.3% chance to proc every second. (If I had a calculator on me I could then go on to figure out how much dps overall it gives to your team, but the ICD makes it a little hard to do in my head.) Against a boss that vulnerability will last 6.5 seconds (you only have duration bonus from traits, right?) which means you’ll be lucky to get 2 stacks of vulnerability up at a time with this sigil (if you have a calculator you can figure out exactly). Assuming all your party has the same dps as you, that one stack of vulnerability is 5% extra damage, or 1% extra damage across the party, which is the same as a sigil of force, which has no chance involved.

Not really sure what I’m trying to prove here though, either way It’s not a huge difference, but it’s interesting to look at, atleast.

this guy is decked out on gear. im jelly.

This build is better at aoe than you give it credit for especially if you use a 4th weapon. Dagger/Dagger

War Mourner.5168:

Nemesis.8593:

I agree with what you said about crit chance, the rest of what you said has to be tested and retested… not in just a 1 vs mob scenario, but in real scenarios in dungeons… how does this effect the party’s effectiveness overall and such. Because vulnerability benefits the entire team, not just yourself… by acting as a debuffer, and 25% extra damage not just for yourself but for 4 other people sounds way better in my opinion.

If you’re the only one stacking vulnerability, perhaps. but I usually have atleast 1 other person stacking some sort of vulnerability (usually a GS warrior, which has vulnerability on autoattack and whatever that trait it called for vuln on crit, as well as ‘on my mark’), which when combined with your build would be excessive vulnerability on anything except bosses (who with their 1/2 vulnerability duration makes it pretty poor in it’s own right).

But anyway, just looking at simple numbers, with 55% crit chance, you have 16.5% chance per hit, with a second/ 2 second CD to proc 1 stack of vulnerability. With axe 1 you do about 2 hits per second, maybe a little faster, but assuming 2 hits per second that gives you a 30.3% chance to proc every second. (If I had a calculator on me I could then go on to figure out how much dps overall it gives to your team, but the ICD makes it a little hard to do in my head.) Against a boss that vulnerability will last 6.5 seconds (you only have duration bonus from traits, right?) which means you’ll be lucky to get 2 stacks of vulnerability up at a time with this sigil (if you have a calculator you can figure out exactly). Assuming all your party has the same dps as you, that one stack of vulnerability is 5% extra damage, or 1% extra damage across the party, which is the same as a sigil of force, which has no chance involved.

Not really sure what I’m trying to prove here though, either way It’s not a huge difference, but it’s interesting to look at, atleast.

What you just said puzzled my mind this early in the morning…

I did however successfully made the burstiest necromancer possible, me thinks… does well at single target ranged, does even better in melee range (melee-ers are suppose to hit harder, i explained in the video why) with dagger 1 spam. Not that suqishy… and has the highest possible single target DPS for the necromancer, about 5k at single target range and about 8k-9k up close single target… not bad all things considered…

This goes up against it’s opposite the conditionamancer who can’t put out more then 3500 on a single target no matter what, and has about 10-15k damage AoE on 5 targets… I see a fine balance here, i like it… i agree with it, and i tried to exemplify both extremities of it… as well as the hybrid.

Levian.6742:

Nemesis.8593:

Dagger 1 spam, and you compensate for the lack of swiftness by having 1 pull and 1 grab. Dagger 1 spam does insane damage.

Yea, Dagger 1 does do push out the damage. I used to use a dagger well bombing build and it was insane. But in a DS centric build where you use Life Blast for your main source of damage, use Axe #2 for Life Force gain, then the Focus skills for Life Force and Vulnerability, on top of utilities, it seems there almost isn’t any time to use daggers.

I suppose it could be used if enemies are on top of you , you just came out of DS and have less than 50% LF and so you can’t use Life Blast for damage, but that’s really the only situation I can think of.

I think personally I’d use a staff just for a bit of utility, but I’ll have to give it a try either way and see how I like it!

If that’s how you chose to play go for it. Even though the range damage on this build is lower then the dagger 1 spam on this same build, i explained the range damage more because the melee damage on this build is not always an option. For those of you who have done fractals know…

If you had to choose one to run in Dungeons, Nemesis… would you favour this build or your hybrid burst/condition build?

Nemesis.8593:

War Mourner.5168:

Nemesis.8593:

I agree with what you said about crit chance, the rest of what you said has to be tested and retested… not in just a 1 vs mob scenario, but in real scenarios in dungeons… how does this effect the party’s effectiveness overall and such. Because vulnerability benefits the entire team, not just yourself… by acting as a debuffer, and 25% extra damage not just for yourself but for 4 other people sounds way better in my opinion.

If you’re the only one stacking vulnerability, perhaps. but I usually have atleast 1 other person stacking some sort of vulnerability (usually a GS warrior, which has vulnerability on autoattack and whatever that trait it called for vuln on crit, as well as ‘on my mark’), which when combined with your build would be excessive vulnerability on anything except bosses (who with their 1/2 vulnerability duration makes it pretty poor in it’s own right).

But anyway, just looking at simple numbers, with 55% crit chance, you have 16.5% chance per hit, with a second/ 2 second CD to proc 1 stack of vulnerability. With axe 1 you do about 2 hits per second, maybe a little faster, but assuming 2 hits per second that gives you a 30.3% chance to proc every second. (If I had a calculator on me I could then go on to figure out how much dps overall it gives to your team, but the ICD makes it a little hard to do in my head.) Against a boss that vulnerability will last 6.5 seconds (you only have duration bonus from traits, right?) which means you’ll be lucky to get 2 stacks of vulnerability up at a time with this sigil (if you have a calculator you can figure out exactly). Assuming all your party has the same dps as you, that one stack of vulnerability is 5% extra damage, or 1% extra damage across the party, which is the same as a sigil of force, which has no chance involved.

Not really sure what I’m trying to prove here though, either way It’s not a huge difference, but it’s interesting to look at, atleast.

What you just said puzzled my mind this early in the morning…

I did however successfully made the burstiest necromancer possible, me thinks… does well at single target ranged, does even better in melee range (melee-ers are suppose to hit harder, i explained in the video why) with dagger 1 spam. Not that suqishy… and has the highest possible single target DPS for the necromancer, about 5k at single target range and about 8k-9k up close single target… not bad all things considered…

This goes up against it’s opposite the conditionamancer who can’t put out more then 3500 on a single target no matter what, and has about 10-15k damage AoE on 5 targets… I see a fine balance here, i like it… i agree with it, and i tried to exemplify both extremities of it… as well as the hybrid.

Well hey now, burst necro’s have been around for a while now. Its nice of you to make a tutorial video and all, but there are contradictions.

A few posts above you claim that you are making a burst demonstration. Its not the burstiest necro around, its close; but if it was a straight up damage race you’re probably not use Spectral wall and Spectral grasp. These simply offer very little in the way of burst. You’d also be demonstrating it with a dagger (as you have pointed out). From what I see, you’ve made a viable, fun build that uses the axe, and these are rare really.

Then you tell War Mourner that you prefer sigil of frailty over sigil of force, because it helps out better in a team environment. This is a contradiction to your entire build because its support capabilities are minimal outside of piling vulnerability on a single target. Other enemies caught in the wall or well will have their vulnerability run out while the targeted enemy is getting destroyed.

There’s no way around it, sigil of frailty sucks. ¯\(°_o)/¯

Nemesis.8593:

Took me a while do get all the gear for this build… but i’ve done it. I also want to thank you guys for your continuous support and appreciation. Without further ado…. here it is

Guild Wars 2 – The definition of glass cannon (necromancer bursting tutorial)

This video includes building up the glass cannon necromancer burster – weapons, stats, items, skills, utilities, traits and the most important part of them all… “Defining your auto-attack”… i think you guys will be in for a surprise.

As always… all of these explained in detail with the reasoning behind each decision.

FINAL STATS:

3355 Power
~ 54-58% Critical Chance
~ 110-120% Critical Damage
1836 Armor (+ protection on ~ 40% of the time)
~ 19372 Health
————
+ the ability to maintain 15-25 stacks of vulnerability on the target
+ more % damage increases (explained in the video)
+ massive auto-attack damage “???”, you’ll see…

If i missed anything or if you have any questions feel free to comment here, on in the comment section on youtube.

Enjoy

I have the Berserker’s Acolyte set and would like to know what runes i should use for the glass cannon spec?

nice build, the 9k hit floored me but your skill and trait choices are a bit off if you dont mind me saying. This power build will have issues in places like Citadel of Flame explorable because of the lack of Aoe control.

The build i use is able to very easily survive the the mass of mobs while trying to defend Maggs while dealing alot of dmg in CoF path 2, so much better than i dreamt possible. In fact it seems more of a tank canon build than anything.

Also the damage is about the same as what you posted except the 9k crit with axe since there is no need to stack vulnerability using a power build in pve. Actually trying to stack vulnerability with axe is part of what reduces your personal dps. I use an axe but not rlly for vulns except against a veteran mob.

I will make a video and post soon

Lunatic.9314:

Nemesis.8593:

Took me a while do get all the gear for this build… but i’ve done it. I also want to thank you guys for your continuous support and appreciation. Without further ado…. here it is

Guild Wars 2 – The definition of glass cannon (necromancer bursting tutorial)

This video includes building up the glass cannon necromancer burster – weapons, stats, items, skills, utilities, traits and the most important part of them all… “Defining your auto-attack”… i think you guys will be in for a surprise.

As always… all of these explained in detail with the reasoning behind each decision.

FINAL STATS:

3355 Power
~ 54-58% Critical Chance
~ 110-120% Critical Damage
1836 Armor (+ protection on ~ 40% of the time)
~ 19372 Health
————
+ the ability to maintain 15-25 stacks of vulnerability on the target
+ more % damage increases (explained in the video)
+ massive auto-attack damage “???”, you’ll see…

If i missed anything or if you have any questions feel free to comment here, on in the comment section on youtube.

Enjoy

I have the Berserker’s Acolyte set and would like to know what runes i should use for the glass cannon spec?

I use Ruby Orbs.

Ragion.2831:

nice build, the 9k hit floored me but your skill and trait choices are a bit off if you dont mind me saying. This power build will have issues in places like Citadel of Flame explorable because of the lack of Aoe control.

The build i use is able to very easily survive the the mass of mobs while trying to defend Maggs while dealing alot of dmg in CoF path 2, so much better than i dreamt possible. In fact it seems more of a tank canon build than anything.

Also the damage is about the same as what you posted except the 9k crit with axe since there is no need to stack vulnerability using a power build in pve. Actually trying to stack vulnerability with axe is part of what reduces your personal dps. I use an axe but not rlly for vulns except against a veteran mob.

I will make a video and post soon

Waiting to see it mate… curious now.

I have updated the video’s description to include the new best in slot items that have been recently released, and i also included a cheap alternative until you can acquire those items…

ps: better links this time, some of the old ones weren’t working anymore…

I like the build… I have a couple of guides up on GW2Guru pve forums for necros as well. The second one I started yesterday after watching this video and was interested in doing a more glass cannon build.

Difference in mine… I didn’t go 30 in to Soul Reaping only 20. Now, I could see maybe going 25 and getting Strength of Undeath so you can manage your life force to keep that 5% damage increase, but the last 5 points I didn’t see as crucial to the build. I also didn’t go in to Blood Magic… went Curses for precision and some better utility major traits for various encounters. If you are truly doing glass cannon, then siphon health isn’t going to be helpful to your overall damage and the health you gain back won’t save you very often in FotM. What are your thoughts on that?

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V08c7-KGlHFJ0m37JVJ0g3FJVB0r3BK;4TJ;0J45B46;552-OR1;3JF04JF045Bm

Takarazuka.3025:

I like the build… I have a couple of guides up on GW2Guru pve forums for necros as well. The second one I started yesterday after watching this video and was interested in doing a more glass cannon build.

Difference in mine… I didn’t go 30 in to Soul Reaping only 20. Now, I could see maybe going 25 and getting Strength of Undeath so you can manage your life force to keep that 5% damage increase, but the last 5 points I didn’t see as crucial to the build. I also didn’t go in to Blood Magic… went Curses for precision and some better utility major traits for various encounters. If you are truly doing glass cannon, then siphon health isn’t going to be helpful to your overall damage and the health you gain back won’t save you very often in FotM. What are your thoughts on that?

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V08c7-KGlHFJ0m37JVJ0g3FJVB0r3BK;4TJ;0J45B46;552-OR1;3JF04JF045Bm

Can’t take a look, it says bad link…

Bah forgot they don’t like semi colons on this forum…

http://tinyurl.com/necrogcbuild

Another option with your build that I will throw out. I would consider skipping the points in Death Magic, only putting 25 in Soul Reaping and instead put 15 into curses so that you can get the Furious Demise trait. This will ensure that you have an extra 20% crit chance for 5 seconds when you pop into Deathshroud. You’re almost guaranteed to get 5 Lifeblast crits that way, plus you’ll gain about 7% more crit all the time from the trait line investment.

I get why you would put points into Death Magic, but real glass cannons don’t invest in survivability :-P

Just another FYI, I’ve noticed that some of the life siphon traits aggro the hell out of bosses. I don’t think they appreciate us doing high damage while also getting healed.

Hi, Nemesis. I’ve tried your condition, hybrid and GC build and that’s the one I find the most fun to play.

There is something I wonder : in this build we hardly ever use the dagger (axe/Life Blast rotation at range does great damage and is much safer) so wouldn’t it be better to use “Axe Mastery” instead of “Close to death” ? I mean AM’s damage boost (+15%) also applies to Death Shroud when you enter it with an axe in your main hand, so wouldn’t it be better to have that damage increase on the skills you use the most during the whole fight rather than a 20% damage boost on all of your skills but only in the last part of the fight ?

Grinn Tyaz.4970:

Hi, Nemesis. I’ve tried your condition, hybrid and GC build and that’s the one I find the mokittenn to play.

There is something I wonder : in this build we hardly ever use the dagger (axe/Life Blast rotation at range does great damage and is much safer) so wouldn’t it be better to use “Axe Mastery” instead of “Close to death” ? I mean AM’s damage boost (+15%) also applies to Death Shroud when you enter it with an axe in your main hand, so wouldn’t it be better to have that damage increase on the skills you use the most during the whole fight rather than a 20% damage boost on all of your skills but only in the last part of the fight ?

In this build you use dagger when ever possible, since it will topple your axe DPS by quite a bit. The reason your auto-attack isn’t the dagger is because you will not be able to use it all the time… where as the DS 1 skill is pretty much usable at all times with the low CD on DS as well as the insanely fast life force regeneration.

Takarazuka.3025:

Bah forgot they don’t like semi colons on this forum…

http://tinyurl.com/necrogcbuild

You have the condition damage factor there, you have the ability to apply condition damage but you lack the condition damage stat, to me that is a wasted investment… but overall it is not a bad build… except for the signet, it’s more or less worthless. You could do way better by choosing something else, like spectral wall.

Also… i was adding a bit of life siphon, even though it isn’t really effective… i was doing it for all the people that initially saw the build and went “OMG… so squishy…”. Even so people said it is too squishy…
Wonder if they ever tried playing a glass cannon thief

So i recently got all the necessary components for pushing this build to it’s upper limits in terms of the highest damaging number it can give out.

These are the results…
Absolute power – highest recorded necromancer hit

With that being said… i am looking for 3 more necromancers that are using this build, so that i may record a CoF path 1 fast run timed event… just to prove a point, not sure what point yet… but… it’s good to know the class’s limits

I’d really rather have a link to a build page as well, rather than just a video that analyzes why you don’t want to take X trait, why you do want to take Y trait, etc. The video is great for its purpose, but after watching 2 of these I won’t be watching anymore. Without the build link I have to sit there and watch for ten minutes before I figure out whether you’re posting something I find interesting or something that everybody has already played around with 9 months ago. I don’t mean to sound overly critical btw, I appreciate the effort going into them, and both the videos I watched would be excellent for new necromancers. Just providing feedback.