Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer:
This is my build and while it may work for me and my play-style, it may not necessarily work for you. This is not a conditionmancer build. This is a powerhouse build.

I made this build due to condition damage being lackluster.

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Credentials:
Played a necromancer in GW1, GW2 BWE, and have a lvl 80 right meow that I play sensually.

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Leveling, I did have to switch up a bit. At 80, I found that dagger/dagger and staff (for ranged and marks) were the better options.

I essentially have a glass cannon build, but I am difficult to take down. I can withstand up to three people, while killing them. Anymore, and well, I do not fair so well due to CDs.

Build: http://tinyurl.com/8tgkp65
Mirror Site: http://tinyurl.com/9sc3aql
(I use spectral grasp for pvp, but use spite sig for pve)

(Edit: I forgot to mention that I use the speed buff in pvp, but in pve I use the 20% well recharge.)

This is a death shroud-centric build. You are fast attacking to gain life force to go back into death shroud, stack might, and vulnerability on your target.

I am full Power, Precision, and Crit Dmg % on all of my gear, including weapons. I use exotic ruby accessories.

I swap to staff when needed, otherwise, dagger auto attack is fast and powerful, coupled with the lifesteal on both the sigil and life siphon (2), it’s a great build. Use spectral walk when you’re being attacked to gain life force for death shroud (does not stack with Spectral Armor).

Immobilize (3) your target before you drop a well of suffering down. You cannot move it, and it takes 40 seconds to recharge. Gain might stacks from DS before dropping your well, as it is a pivotal damaging skill to your rotation.

Use Lich whenever it is off CD or to spike a target down (or save for a boss if pveing). I generally get 5-6k hits from the main attack unbuffed. If I am buffed, I have seen anywhere from 7-8k crits.

If in pvp, be sure to take advantage of your blind (4) and weakness (5) of your OH dagger skillset. Be sure to utilize your fear on enemies trying to res your downed opponents. Use your marks effectively (within a mass of people). Utilize your life transfer (4th skill in DS) to take out siege in wvw effectively, or to draw out stealthed targets.

Try the build, and happy huntin’, mates.

And this exemplifies the problem of the necro, there is no happy medium. You either have to chain out your abilities like a champ or get used to repairing armor. There is basically no room for error.

Well im sure you deal decent damage, i find that style difficult in wvw as you get locked down, have no escape or gap closer. Thus you run straight ahead (or flank) and the minute you start dealing damage, you will get stunned, locked down and you will melt.

Fun PvE build

@Gryph:

I disagree with you here mate. I have done just that, several times, due in part of being melee, however, escape is easy.

First, exhaust your dodges intelligently—next, gauge your death shroud meter, how much life force do you have left, if above 50%, use it. Begin to pull out.

If DS wears off, swap on spectral walk, be prepared to heal yourself, if you’re being hit, watch your life force shoot through the roof. Re-engage death shroud. Utilize your fears appropriates and use your teleport snare appropriately. Blind and immobilize if you can now, swap to staff to lay some marks.

I cannot tell you how many times using that exact technique got me out of the crappiest situations, ever.

danni.1824:

If DS wears off, swap on spectral walk, be prepared to heal yourself, if you’re being hit, watch your life force shoot through the roof. Re-engage death shroud.

This is awesome, I never thought of it before. Spectral Walk is gonna find a spot on my utility bar, now thanks for the tip!

You don’t need useless daggers for this DS build. Just throw away all the Blood Magic traitline and put something in Curses (Furious Demise is freaking awesome with Near To Death) and put something else in Death Magic for Greater Marks.

Use also the trait which regenerates 3% life force each mark triggered and you don’t need Daggers to build LF anymore.

Switched to this build about 30 mins ago and already noticing a big difference from my Condition build (Scepter/Focus). Only tested this in PvE

Level: 71

Main differences i’m noticing:

+Healing much much more allowing me to stay alive much longer.
+Dealing much more damage and quicker bursts of it.
+Just an overall improvement of survivability and damage.
-The lack of conditions we can actually put on our target is much much worse in this build.

To be honest I was getting so tired of the Necromancer just being downright terrible in all fields of the game compared to other classes. You’d think as a Necromancer that Condition Damage would be our sole purpose of damage and with that focusing on Condition Damage, but lets face it. Condition Damage in this game compared to Power is a just terrible and until it’s improved I plan on only focusing on Power and Critical Percentage.

Now i’ll admit I don’t play this game for more than an hour a day so my playing skills could possibly be lower than others. Just this build has such a great medium on every side of it allowing you to eat your conditions and heal, transfer it to others around you (up to 3), speed, healing, damage, focusing on our DS, amazing damage, and just an overall improvement to the Necromancer playing ability. It actually made me excited to play my Necromancer again.

I do agree that some people might have a difficulty playing this build simply because we all have a different playing style, but this build just has such a good survivability and damage verity it allows you to get a very good result from the Necromancer.

I do hope that GW2 improves Condition Damage or simply improves the amount of damage our conditions do because I don’t believe the Necromancer should be a melee ninja, but more of a stand back, greater DPS over time, and siphoning health Necro Ninja. It’s what the class is about.

Then again, my playing skills could be much different than others simply because I don’t play enough and we are all humans (We all differ in one way or another). If you do have a good build to suggest to me i’d be glad to test it out; make sure you including the necessary information to get me going.

Thanks Danni for the great build.

sorrow.2364 “useless daggers” ?
Did you read that he wants to use a power build, and dagger melee is the stronges dmg weapon for necro atm? lol

XxCoOkyxX.8042:

sorrow.2364 “useless daggers” ?
Did you read that he wants to use a power build, and dagger melee is the stronges dmg weapon for necro atm? lol

Wrong. The strongest damage “weapon” for necromancer is Death Shroud’s Life Blast and it is also ranged! Unless you want to get in close range and dump all the snares Necromancer has (chills and cripple), than you should use ranged skills. Also Life Blast frees you a weapon slot you can use for a more defensive weapon like Scepter or Axe.

You can still use daggers, but I really don’t want to get in close range to spam autoattack, expecially when there are such an overpowered melee builds running around.

When I spec power/crit DS build, my Life Blasts can crit up to 5k plus on targets under 50% health, but usually they hit for 3-4k. My dagger chain with all crits can hit around 6k total and is faster. Dagger is the strongest dps we have. You are right about range though, it’s better in most situations, unless you are capping a point.

P.S. Try dagger autoattack + well + exploding bone minions at the same time if you want to see some real burst.

Well, it is a matter of probabilities. It is better to do a big single damage than a chain of little damage when talking about crits. A full dagger chain takes the same time that a single Life Blast but it is way harder to make all crits on a full chain.

You have 1/16 chances to make a chain of all crits with daggers with a 50% crit chance and a 1/2 chances to crit a Life Blast, so Life Blast is the best pick if you hate gambling.

To clarify about the daggers being useless:

Your main attack (auto attack) generates 3% life force per hit. Meaning, you’re quickly generating life force to go into death shroud. Couple this with the undeath sig if you’d like, or spectral walk, since you’re getting hit anyways, you will get into DS near immediately after engaging into combat.

As I mentioned in the first post, this is a Death Shroud-centric build. Meaning you are generating life force through dagger’s quick attack to get into DS.
(yay bold lettering)

Next I’d like to reiterate yet again that this is not a conditionmancer build. do not expect to apply conditions (except vuln from DS and wells), as the stats required for this build specifically do not stack condition damage.

http://tinyurl.com/PowerShroud – explo pvp if not going well support with dwayna runes (might go 2 mad king, 2 lyssa and 2 of the nightmare/lich instead if you want longer conditions, grenth rune in link is for lolz since you dont want the reanimator trait procing despite you trying to avoid it)
- 20 in power is better than the last 2 options in blood, because of the dps drop, plain more investment in power and vitality than precision in stats makes life force a bigger threat even if you are tanking
Mainly stay with Staff, scepter dagger is there for the cripple, blind and weakness, if you are sure you wont need em (boss is straight up) swap it into dagger/warhorn (warhorn having Hydro sigil).
Fear is the bane of all bosses since it ignores their defiant and the effect versions (not the boon one) of stability. Some might be immune but thats pretty rare.

On the topic up:
For WvWvW Dark Path+Well of Darkness+Dagger 1 spam is viable.

danni.1824:

To clarify about the daggers being useless:

Your main attack (auto attack) generates 3% life force per hit. Meaning, you’re quickly generating life force to go into death shroud. Couple this with the undeath sig if you’d like, or spectral walk, since you’re getting hit anyways, you will get into DS near immediately after engaging into combat.

As I mentioned in the first post, this is a Death Shroud-centric build. Meaning you are generating life force through dagger’s quick attack to get into DS.
(yay bold lettering)

Next I’d like to reiterate yet again that this is not a conditionmancer build. do not expect to apply conditions (except vuln from DS and wells), as the stats required for this build specifically do not stack condition damage.

You generates 3% life force per hit, true, but at the cost of being in close range. 3% Life Force per mark does the same job. If you need Life Force, just switch at staff and EVERY skill generates life force and also at 1200 range. You can also picking daggers for fast life force building but it is way too risky and you should also take staff as life force building weapon.

Like I said, my build might not work for you. If you’re afraid of being in melee range that much, then swap to staff, it’s an easy change. I find that I deal much more damage, and much more quickly through daggers and life stealing. It’s simply player preference at that point.

I simply know no fear of death, I guess.

I don’t know much about PvP but I see little reason to use D/D in PvE.
Aside from looking cool anyway.

Dagger generates a ton of Life Force, and if you use it with a Warhorn the Locust Swarm makes for even more Life Force.
Alternatively you could use Focus, which also generates quite a bit of Life Force with Reaper’s Touch.

I’m also wondering why did you go for so much Life Stealing.
Last I checked it was bugged out and didn’t do much of anything.
Your build will probably be awesome once Life Stealing is fixed and the Dagger is buffed but for now it seems like an odd choice to me.

With that said I use Power+Condition Damage atm and people going for Crit Chance+Condition Damage are definitely missing out on how good Death Shroud can be.
My stat split certainly stacks a lot less Bleed though.

@LastDay:

I am not sure what you are referring to with the life stealing bugging out. My life siphons tick anywhere from five to six thousand, and much more when heavily buffed. Yeah, it doesn’t generate that much health, but it deals decent damage that isn’t, from what I have seen, mitigated by toughness.

I have been dagger/dagger in PvE since a little after I hit 80. I’ve played this way for over a month, and I absolutely love it. It isn’t about ascetically looking cool, it’s about what I bring to the table.

The bug is with the vampiric traits. And its related to downscaling. Bascially what seems to happen is that the damage scaling end up turning a high level toons vampiric drains into a heal instead when visiting low level areas. Best guess, someone coder forgot to define the variable for the damage value as unsigned, so it ends up going negative when the scaling is applied rather than stopping at zero.

I haven’t noticed this. Then again, if it isn’t a boss, I generally don’t life siphon in low level areas. A few swings of my daggers and whatever I am attacking is dead, so it would be a waste of time to life siphon.

I would view this as a minor problem, at best. Nothing to not use the build over. But that’s just my opinion, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

From what i understand, it does not affect dagger 2. It only seem to affect the various Blood Magic traits.

By all means use what you want!
It’s none of my business.

I’m just saying that after I learned to live with only Consume Conditions and Putrid Mark to get rid of Conditions I haven’t found much of a reason to use Dagger off-hand personally.

It’s great with the Scepter in a heavy Bleed stacking build, and it’s very nice in a Corruption build but I’m not sure why would anybody without a Condition Damage spec use it.

I remember somebody from GW2guru using it in a Power build as well, but I don’t remember the reason.
Might have been the raw Damage it does if there are 3 or more opponents.

I give up, too much cross talk.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh I’m an idiot. I should read threads more thoroughly before posting, haha. Deleted it.

Dagger/Power does more damage but you are in the danger zone being that close to mobs/players.

The problem with Condition build is it has no synergy with DS. Also, conditions can be fairly easy to ditch for most classes, so the ability to extend duration is not as appealing as increasing the damage output.

I guess I am just comfortable with my dodge key well enough to be in melee range.

i like tha idea of d/d first off looks awesome and tha damage is great cloth user with d/d and we have a large heath pool i like ur build and i will give it a try, ty danni

@Danni – I like the idea of your build (I can’t see the original build, everything is set to 0 for some reason, i think that site is buggy).

I switched to Dagger mh a few weeks ago, it’s been a pretty good run so far, but I still find myself fiddlin with my utilities. I used to love running Spectral Walk, but i found that I would get repeatedly snared in combat reducing the effectiveness of the move as an escape. So i switched to Spectral Armor, pretty much the same thing except i get to live longer in those situations.

In the end all my utilities ended up being spectral, right now I am running Spectral Wall, but I’ve been on the fence about switching it out for Well of Suffering.

It suprising how often people would walk through Spectral wall twice in a fight and stand in front of me with 20 stacks of Vul. It’s also nice when i get to walk through it myself and get a protection boon (so great when I can save my Spectral Armor for stun breaks or if it’s already on cool down but i wanna buffer some damage.). I tried WoS once though, and if i can imobalize or slow someone down in it, I can stack up vul pretty kitten fast and be consistent. The trade off with WoS is a longer cool down (I thought it was 60 seconds but its actually 45 making it only 5 seconds longer. lol). and not much defense my team mates also don’t seem too impressed with Dark Fields compared to spectral.

Have any of you tried adding spectral wall to your Dagger/Power mix?

Also @Danni, would you mind posting your build with gw2skills.net? I’d like to take a closer look at your traits. I have attachment issues with the trait Close to death – i can’t imagine not having it

i’ve never seen anyone do well in a 3v1. you get stunlocked and die.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.304.308.312.0.0.0.331.0.0.350.347.0.0.0.0.30.5.10.20.5

this build would be much better for the playstyle you’re describing.

Dagger2 Siphon
Hit DS, Life Transfer (All the while, +400 armor makes you pretty tough)
Drop a BiP on one mob
Use Plague Signet to transfer the remaining 2-3k of bleed to target(You now have 13 stacks of might, use it….)
Epidemic (Spread massive 12-14k dmg AoE)
once all the mobs are below 50%, your Spite mastery trait kicks in. Use the 13 stacks of might + 20% dmg bonus and literally go to town and facemelt everything in your path.

If low on health, pop Dagger2 for siphon. (if you have good + power gear, your siphon numbers upscale i believe)

That is a real damage-soaking glass cannon vampire.

my current build is similar, (20/30/0/20/0)
And hit 4-5k easy on dagger2, my Auto volley comes out as 770, 770, 1600,
my BiP alone drops 14k damage (if transfer last stacks) without critting.
If you gear up into +power and +precision +crit dmg (Berserkers) then your DS4 will hit very hard. All death shroud skills scale with more power, albeit DS2 which has 3 stacks of bleeding.

So for the first.. 13 seconds… its literally all siphoning/transfer while tanking.

p.s Toughness is vital in Arah and surrounding orr… I recommend you find some.
I’m currently running with full Rampager’s Exotics which is max damage with cond/power/precision but any brute type mob can 4-hit me if i’m not careful. Planned to either go Power/Critdmg/Toughness, Cond/Tough/Prec, and patch the precision holes with corresponding trinket set and a +5crit sigil on offdagger with a sigil of perception on maindagger.

http://youtu.be/l_wrqBWFZDw if you wanted proof of its complete power and survivability. Cooldowns are so easy that you could chainkill on and on.

@JohnCrow:
Utility skills are completely based on player preference and should cater to their personal play-style. At least that’s what I like to think. I am more of an aggressive-type player, so I tend to stick with Spectral Walk for boost (both to speed and lifeforce gain) as well as Well of Suffering and Spectral Grasp to get those pesky runners. Spectral Grasp, imho, is severely overlooked, as that skill is incredible for any situation. I have even used it in PvE to interrupt mobs. It can be invaluable.

Here is the build on the site you asked for: http://tinyurl.com/9sc3aql

@Sheobix:
I like the idea, and have tinkered with the Spite tree in conjunction with Blood, but I never found decent enough traits, minus the +dmg vs <50% health. I do not use signets, personally, for my play-style, so I stick with SR and Blood tree instead. :>

Also, to respond to your edit about Orr — I am in full exotics and full berserker gear and ruby orbs… I never have -any- problems in Orr or Arah. I’ve ran with guildies and friends plenty of times. I have found it incredibly easy to farm Orr, as mobs die in just a few hits.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you’d have a hard time in Orr : )

But Arah can get pretty nasty, and sometimes Long Haul > Dps and staying alive can be more important than being a death nuke. Idk, Its a good idea to read up on how damage is calaculated before trying to finish a toon with Orrian armor (that is, if you plan to)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

its basically Weapon DMG x Power x Skill Coefficient(commonly ~1) / Armor (includes toughness)

If you run a couple dummy numbers, + or – 400-500 Toughness can mean a lot less incoming damage.
Berserkers is fantastic, I had to choose either that or rampagers, But even with high crit dmg with a nice Dagger1 auto, I still get the sense that necros are really screwed if they get stunned/knockdown/dazed by a large-mob action. And given that a lot of our strong setting-up utilities have a sort of slow cast-time, that moment can really end up fatal in a tight dungeon environment.

Just food for thought : ) Happy hunting!

Side note, have you looked into using Blood is Power instead of Well of Suffering? BiP does about 8k bleeding damage, then another 3k if transfer through either a signet or staff 4(plus more if they crit) and that can be spread using Epidemic (much more AoE damage than Suffering, had my fair share of experience.. was my old favorite.

I love the spectral utilities, and I agree that they are pretty much up to personal preference, but Dagger 4 can be used in tight situations to substitute for a spectral grasp interrupt. dagger4 is also a jump-skill.

Thats all well and good, however if you ever take the time to level up another class to 80 and pvp wvw even pve you might see while necros can do ok other classes with the same amount of time and effort invested can do outstanding and are just plain more fun responsive classes. Still if you really like the class and just pve or wvw nothing is stopping you, the problem comes in when you want to have a viable top level spvp tpvp classs.

Xom.9264:

Thats all well and good, however if you ever take the time to level up another class to 80 and pvp wvw even pve you might see while necros can do ok other classes with the same amount of time and effort invested can do outstanding and are just plain more fun responsive classes.

I agree entirely. I’m just one of those ol’ stinky kittens that can’t let go of necromancers despite how hard it is to make them useful.

Noticed i had a warrior in my second char slot

But there is a certain thing about this class that still makes it enjoyable… I think its being able to go from DS to plague form and back and forth with all that extra HP (while it nannies your cooldowns) and being able to sustain for a long time.

I like the playability of other classes very much. But even in something as trivial as Mad King, I was in there with 4 other capped exotic players and the mesmer, warrior, and guardian were all going down a few times despite the fact that I had aggro because even a couple trash mobs harassed them.

as for t/spvp there are some solid builds very close to a power/prec/crit build. There is the mr.freeze build which utilizes our actually large array of freezes to slow down an opponent’s cooldowns to a slog, there are spectral power hybrid builds, which use the spectral interrupts to screw with powerburst and glass-cannoneers… All pretty viable, it just takes a little more focus because the necro has to walk a finer line.

good video sheobix is this also a good build for WvW? cause i plan on running wvw a lot more tha higher lvl i am… ps: i love d/d

Hey Sheo;
I have thought of BiP—but here is why I haven’t used it: condition damage isn’t that great compared to raw power, and my wells stack vuln, as well as cause a mecha-ton of damage. I tested and theorycrafted BiP vs WoS, and WoS came out on top.

I also have a mesmer, guardian, elementalist, and a thief. But I love necromancers, ever since GW1. Always will.

Yeah i have never seen my bleed crit before, nor any other condition. More stacks, long lasting durations, even things to buff my base damage of my conditions I do but ive never seen it crit for more damage. You can crit and add another bleed and such. So what do you mean when you crit Sheo.

sorrow.2364:

XxCoOkyxX.8042:

sorrow.2364 “useless daggers” ?
Did you read that he wants to use a power build, and dagger melee is the stronges dmg weapon for necro atm? lol

Wrong. The strongest damage “weapon” for necromancer is Death Shroud’s Life Blast and it is also ranged! Unless you want to get in close range and dump all the snares Necromancer has (chills and cripple), than you should use ranged skills. Also Life Blast frees you a weapon slot you can use for a more defensive weapon like Scepter or Axe.

You can still use daggers, but I really don’t want to get in close range to spam autoattack, expecially when there are such an overpowered melee builds running around.

I find it impossible for someone to convince me that they are right about something when they obviously don’t know the difference between “than” and “then”. Show me that you’re competent enough to proof read your work, then present your argument. If you can prove a basic level of literacy, it will be easier to take what you say seriously.

ryan.5106:

sorrow.2364:

XxCoOkyxX.8042:

sorrow.2364 “useless daggers” ?
Did you read that he wants to use a power build, and dagger melee is the stronges dmg weapon for necro atm? lol

Wrong. The strongest damage “weapon” for necromancer is Death Shroud’s Life Blast and it is also ranged! Unless you want to get in close range and dump all the snares Necromancer has (chills and cripple), than you should use ranged skills. Also Life Blast frees you a weapon slot you can use for a more defensive weapon like Scepter or Axe.

You can still use daggers, but I really don’t want to get in close range to spam autoattack, expecially when there are such an overpowered melee builds running around.

I find it impossible for someone to convince me that they are right about something when they obviously don’t know the difference between “than” and “then”. Show me that you’re competent enough to proof read your work, then present your argument. If you can prove a basic level of literacy, it will be easier to take what you say seriously.

English isn’t my mother language. I write in English, also quite in a rush to be honest, only when writing in this forum and rarely when playing Guild Wars 2. If you think that my argument is completely invalid only because I wrote a letter instead of another which doesn’t compromise the understanding of the post, I don’t think that your contribution would be so helpful to the matter.
I think that grammar nazi aren’t helpful in any way.

Do not start a grammar-nazi war game in my thread, kthx.

This is for constructive discussion only. I don’t care how you type.

The conditions in WvW are a little hard to gauge, some people trait for condition removal which can really suck, most others don’t which can guarantee you kills in under 24 seconds or less. I personally rock a power/cond hybrid to squeeze effectiveness from both worlds (because when in groups i swap in some wells or spectral utils) and go full d/d

the weakest part of the vamp build is truly plague signet which can be better slotted for power signet for the extra mainhand damage from d/d.

I really want to redo my toon eventually and try the high power based crit dmg focused spectral D/D necro which sounds amazing.

Sheo, I really think you’d like my build. Give it a shot if you haven’t. I explain the gear and sigils that I use.

I do not use runes in my armor, I use Ruby Orbs. They are better for my playstyle type.

Hey danni, trying out the build and really like it. I’ve been trying to figure out a power-based lifesiphon build for some time. I like your approach of depending upon your gear for the damage while focusing your traits elsewhere (not in Spite). I used your build in WvW for some time today and it works really well.

I made some minor changes. Instead of Quickening Thirst, I opted for Greater Marks in Death Magic – I really like the larger marks for defending towers in WvW and it makes them much easier to land against single opponents. I also swapped out Well of Suffering for Corrupt Boon. With WoC I felt like I was trying too hard to set someone up for the big combo, whereas with CB I feel like I have more flexibility in fights.

Thanks for the post!

Awesome Lettuce!

Yeah, I have tinkered around with the build vs other traits and ended up settling in on what I have. I found that the speed boost in pvp was invaluable being melee… and getting away when needed. :P The marks are good, I just wish they did more, or were worth taking (for me).

Corruption Well is an awesome swap, for sure. You can’t go wrong with your utilities (well, I guess you can…).

I also just grab people with Spectral Grasp and move them INTO my well of suffering.

Very awesome, I am glad you are enjoying it!

@danni
just tried your build today! good thing i have the money to test out the rubies.
It’s really good for long standing battles due to the points in blood, which allows me to use Knight’s armor or Berserkers if i want to go glassy.

But for WvW specifically, I dropped the blood traitline entirely and pumped full spite and the last 10 points into Death magic for Dark Armor.

The reason I made that change ONLY for WvW is because i end up using dagger2 much less out there since there is really no time to waste 4-5 seconds only yanking 4k channeled damage. With the full soul reaping line, Blood sigil on my malefec dagger, and Tuning Crystal+Omnom running, I was still maintaining great passive siphoning.

It really comes down to play style. the +200 power and condition duration really help with poison or chills plus adding another 100-200 dmg per hit (and provides a larger base for criticals)

I dropped the rubies (preference, its perfectly viable imo for the build you listed) and used Sup Runes of Rage (Although i really want runes of strength for stacking might on crits)

So the build i crafted from yours (credit goes to you, good explanation) for WvW centric with dungeon alternatives: http://www.bit.ly/Vnzss0

Just go knights/berserkers with runes of strength and blood sigil on main dagger and Sigil of accuracy (+5% crit chance) on offhand. w/e is your choice for staff

in the end, with the soul reaping line and the berserk set, crit dmg is up at + 70ish% and with all the power adds (runes of strength, berserker sets, could even slot out Spite Master trait for the blast might procs…)
it increases the damage base very quickly and exponentially, whilst keeping a static high crit damage multiplier +75% last time i calculated my gear)

of course, less siphoning, but with spectral utilities and soul reaping line with the grandmaster trait i listed, DS can recharge within seconds, and let you pop back in so fast its not even funny.

BUT survivability wise, your build is more balanced. Necro has been designed for longer battles, not powerful ones. So far, these are both turning out to be kitten-thieves.

I wish i could show you some WvW action with the build i described, doing fantastic 4-6k crits constantly off my auto (dropping foes in about 7 seconds each, farmed about 25 badges in a couple hours yesterday) and even though it is technically a glass cannon build, i was running with spec.walk and spec.armor away from a ranger chaser using axe/shortbow and said “why am i running?” turned around at only about 8k hp and bloodied him to death and popped DS twice in the course of 14 seconds because he decided to burst again and it was easy to anticipate. overall, i only dropped 5k hp from the time i turned around and by the time i downed him i was already 100% hp.

WvW probably isn’t the absolute sole focus for your build, but it proves super useful in a jam when you can just dagger3, dagger 2 to regain 30~% hp and pop ult to run

I really like your build though, it has some interesting strengths that unfortunately, all of my ideal max dmg builds can’t retain.

Hi Sheobix;

I’m really glad you’re enjoying it! That was the whole point of making this thread. To show that you can have fun playing Necro at 80, with some adjustments if necessary.

I really like your adjustments that you made too! I like some of the traits you took and the route you took with your runes and utility skills is an interesting alternative.

I also decimate people in WvW… it’s pretty amusing. Of course, I run headstrong into people, and never really run away. The build just makes you into this aggressive unstoppable force. You want to constantly find a new target.

When I saw this thread I LOL’d

Huge dagger fan