Guild Wars 2

Hey fellow Necros! I know in a sense this is a rhetorical question because the best build for a character is the one that is most fun and appealing to YOU, the player, but I was hoping I could get a little bit of advice/thoughts/ideas from some of the veteran necros.

My necro is my main and I just hit lvl 80 the other day. I haven’t gotten into the dungeons much yet, and only have 2 exotics on me, so I have lots to go after still. I’m also trying to wrap world completion as well.

My build is currently a power/cond hybrid with blood magic for the life leech.

30/20/0/20/0 is how it’s set up.

basically, in the power trait line the perks I’ve chosen are

1) 50% more dmg while downed
2) Marks do 10% more dmg
3) Do 20% more dmg when opponent’s health is < 50%

In curses,

1) 20% longer bleed duration
2) Wells use ground targetting

And blood magic,

1) Siphoning health is 50% more effective
2) Wells recharge 20% faster

Obviously I am a full on wellmancer, and I typically enter a battle by dropping my 2-5 staff marks, using my utility Blood is Power (10 stacks of might!), dropping my well of corruption and well of suffering, switch to dagger/focus (currently), the dagger has the hydromancy sigil so it does an AoE freeze, F1 to DS, hit 4 for the “megadrain” as I call it :P, and normally everything close to me is dead at this point (1,2,4, 8, it doesn’t matter) and if they aren’t I use a round of my dagger abilities and switch back to staff (giving me 2 stack of might from sigil)

I am not having ANY issues killing things at all. I don’t do too much pvp (I’m rank 9 or 10 in spvp) and rarely do wvwvw (although when I have I have been able to kill things very well because I just run to a big group drop wells, DS, 4, etc) so for now my main focus is PvE. I will be doing dungeons etc in the future and when I DO do pvp, typically I switch BiP for epidemic (so OP in pvp).

So what do you guys think? I’m a GW noob (never played the first one) so any advice or comments would be appreciated! Thanks!

bump for any advice?

Sounds like a similar build to what I decided when I was first leveling. Not saying it’s a bad build at all, I just got bored and wanted to try different things. The great thing about your Megadrain (albeit slightly compromised) is that it’s viable with most specs, since Well of Suffering is a top tier utility.

I really like Dagger/Focus for PvE, gives you a lot of powerful single target debuffs, the thing is, depending on how much you like ground targeted wells that that you could move some points around there, to get more effectiveness out of your build overall. I feel as a necro you’re pretty up in people’s faces most the time anyway that ground targeting wells is a little redundant.

While the prec/condition damage stat gains are great for your spec, it might be fun to think about where you could free points up in your build to try other things. Something that comes to mind is dropping 10-20 points in curses and seeing what you can do with it. For example, if you moved those into death magic you could pick up greater marks or 20% staff recharge, to really get a lot more out of your staff usage since you already have some traits supporting that.

Personally 15 points in Soul Reaping has become hard to compromise for me because the spectral armor at 50% health is an amazing ability. I’m not sure how you use DS, but having the points specced into it may be a nice way to start becoming more well versed in how to be effective with it. I’m not sure what I like better for first tier traits, but there are solid buffs for it. 15% reduced cooldown is a powerful addition making you able to pop into Death Shroud for your abilities more often, Life Blast piercing/vulnerabiltiy is just great for farming. Move 15% faster can be a good niche one if you don’t have any other swiftness in your build. But certainly not ideal for a min/max build. More for quality of life.

But that’s just food for thought, it may be more or less effective (stat gains on death magic and soul reaping are more meh than Curses/Spite), but my primary advice, is to just encourage experimentation, you’ll learn things about the class regardless, and it will probably be good for your sanity to try different builds. You may discover aspects of the class you didn’t realize you liked.

Thanks a lot bro it was very informative and well thought up! I appreciate it!