Guild Wars 2

So let’s pretend for a moment that while a necromancer with that fancy new great sword and elite specializations are all fine and dandy, but for those who don’t own the expansion, or maybe because there is still a demand for it, they want to fall back on our good old wellomancer WvW build. Let’s also assume that the current information on the new trait reworkings is at least similar to the final release.

With the rework on traits and ground targeted wells being baseline, here is the best I could come up with recreating the wellomancer. I must say, the result is a much more versatile build
http://dulfy.net/2015/05/02/gw2-specialization-calculator-that_shaman/#profession=necromancer&traits=“Blood Magic”,1,6,7-“Death Magic”,2,6,9-“Soul Reaping”,1,5,8

What is everyone’s opinions on what I’ve managed to make? Any changes that you would make to this? What other traditional builds can be seen as drastically improved/unimproved that you can think of?

Edit: Url is being a tad funny, you have to copy and paste the whole url to see what was made.

Why Blood Magic? Its so useless…. Why did you take Ritual of Life and not Bloodthirst if you taking the grandmaster that siphon health on wells? An why transfusion and not Vampiric Precision? Isn’t that the purpose of taking Blood magic to Siphon Life?

I would dump Blood magic and go spite. Death magic is ok, I guess, but I would take Curses over Death Magic

As far as necros goes in WvW, they are supposed to be run full zerker for the well bombs and be killing stuff. Leave the support for the other classes (looking at eles and guards)

This is closer to the WvW meta builds with the trait changes: (thats for GvGs , guild groups and zerg busting, not for solo roaming)
http://dulfy.net/2015/05/02/gw2-specialization-calculator-that_shaman/#profession=necromancer&traits=“Spite”,2,4,8-“Curses”,2,4,9-“Soul Reaping”,1,5,8

Would be nice for a grandmaster that better suits power builds in Curses, but feel free to take whatever you like.

#justmy5cents

No, the point of taking Blood Magic is for well CD reduction and Protection to allies on cast. The siphons are an irrelevant bonus. That’s also why you go for Ritual of Life: synergy with Vampiric Rituals (more Protection and healing for your zerg).

Why Transfusion instead of Vampiric Precision? I don’t know, how about the fact that Transfusion doesn’t suck horribly and is actually good team support?

Coffietire.2783:

What other traditional builds can be seen as drastically improved/unimproved that you can think of?

The power focused minion master build will be greatly improved by the up-coming changes as it allows party utility while also giving the necromancer access to more traits to buff himself up.

http://dulfy.net/2015/05/02/gw2-specialization-calculator-that_shaman/#profession=necromancer&traits=“Spite”,1,6,9-“Death Magic”,1,6,8-“Blood Magic”,2,6,8

-net gain spite line: axe training, spiteful spirit
Before you needed to use the master slot for training of the master, now that trait is merged into necromantic corruption, opening up the master slot for axe training. The new trait system gives you 3 GM traits instead of a max of 2, so taking spiteful spirit gives you access to more boon removal, AOE damage, and cripple.

-net loss spite line: none

-net gain death magic line: beyond the veil, *necromantic corruption
Beyond the veil gives you more survivability (at argueably the best time as well) and a way to increase your minions ability to survive on demand. This trait will be immensely helpful when you or your minions are the target of spike damage.

*Necromantic corruption is listed as a gain because it’s a combination of 3 traits into one (fetid consumption, old necromantic corruption, training of the master) all of which were good in their own right, and amazing together. Since those three were combined into this new trait, I won’t list any of them as losses for this build. Because you get a lot of boon removal from axe+focus, changing it from “removing a boon” to “transfer a condition” is a lot more beneficial as condition removal is sparse in the build without the staff.

-net loss: death nova, armored shroud
Before it was possible to take both training of the master and death nova, now you must choose one or the other. As a power based necro who is focused on bolstering his minions, death nova simply isn’t as useful. Especially since it now competes directly with the trait that now increases minion damage. Armored shroud isn’t a big loss when compared to what you gain from beyond the veil.

-net gain blood magic line: transfusion, unholy martyr
Now that vampiric minions has been merged into the minor master vampiric trait, the master slot has been opened up. This allows you to take transfusion giving you more party support and a way to heal minions on demand if you’re alone. now that you can take an additional GM trait, you can pick up unholy martyr. This gives you a way of staying in death shroud longer and a minor bit of party support (the 10% life force gain is more potent than removing a condition from an ally).

-net lose blood magic line: none

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

No, the point of taking Blood Magic is for well CD reduction and Protection to allies on cast. The siphons are an irrelevant bonus. That’s also why you go for Ritual of Life: synergy with Vampiric Rituals (more Protection and healing for your zerg).

Why Transfusion instead of Vampiric Precision? I don’t know, how about the fact that Transfusion doesn’t suck horribly and is actually good team support?

Ritual of Life: not that usefull because, how often will you revive somebody in the middle of combat? Unless you already won the fight and are rezzing the dead, but in this case you wont’t be the only one rezzing. Or doing a mass rez on somebody near combat, which doesn’t happen that often, in my expierience.

Transfusion: its a nice trait, it’s just that I personally think it’s not that viable. I mean, the base healing is not that good in my opinion. And for it to be viable as a heal, you have to take gear with Healing Power, in which you will be sacrificing too much DPS for a single skill to be kind of viable.

I get that he went into Blood Magic for the grandmaster well trait, which is really good! Its just that the rest of the trait line is so …. meh. I can see that he’s taking the more usefull traints in the line, but in my opinion going into blood magic just for the grandmaster is a bit too much of waste, because the other trait lines offer better options, imho.

araskell.9018:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

No, the point of taking Blood Magic is for well CD reduction and Protection to allies on cast. The siphons are an irrelevant bonus. That’s also why you go for Ritual of Life: synergy with Vampiric Rituals (more Protection and healing for your zerg).

Why Transfusion instead of Vampiric Precision? I don’t know, how about the fact that Transfusion doesn’t suck horribly and is actually good team support?

Ritual of Life: not that usefull because, how often will you revive somebody in the middle of combat? Unless you already won the fight and are rezzing the dead, but in this case you wont’t be the only one rezzing. Or doing a mass rez on somebody near combat, which doesn’t happen that often, in my expierience.

Transfusion: its a nice trait, it’s just that I personally think it’s not that viable. I mean, the base healing is not that good in my opinion. And for it to be viable as a heal, you have to take gear with Healing Power, in which you will be sacrificing too much DPS for a single skill to be kind of viable.

I get that he went into Blood Magic for the grandmaster well trait, which is really good! Its just that the rest of the trait line is so …. meh. I can see that he’s taking the more usefull traints in the line, but in my opinion going into blood magic just for the grandmaster is a bit too much of waste, because the other trait lines offer better options, imho.

How often you rez someone should actually be very, very often in a zerg fight! The Well of Blood will spawn as soon as you start to heal them, so you can just do a quick touch to start it up and cancel.

Transfusion is fantastic. It’s a 2692 base heal to 5 allies with a massive AoE on a skill you will be using anyway in WvW. It is also field-less, so there is no chance of screwing up planned combos. If you happen to be below 75% health when you use Life Transfer, that will be 3232 healing without having any healing power on gear.

No, there is literally nothing wrong with his Blood Magic choices. What’s worth critiquing is the fact he used Death Magic instead of Spite. Wellomancers after the changes should all be Spite, Blood Magic, Soul Reaping.

araskell.9018:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

No, the point of taking Blood Magic is for well CD reduction and Protection to allies on cast. The siphons are an irrelevant bonus. That’s also why you go for Ritual of Life: synergy with Vampiric Rituals (more Protection and healing for your zerg).

Why Transfusion instead of Vampiric Precision? I don’t know, how about the fact that Transfusion doesn’t suck horribly and is actually good team support?

Ritual of Life: not that usefull because, how often will you revive somebody in the middle of combat? Unless you already won the fight and are rezzing the dead, but in this case you wont’t be the only one rezzing. Or doing a mass rez on somebody near combat, which doesn’t happen that often, in my expierience.

Transfusion: its a nice trait, it’s just that I personally think it’s not that viable. I mean, the base healing is not that good in my opinion. And for it to be viable as a heal, you have to take gear with Healing Power, in which you will be sacrificing too much DPS for a single skill to be kind of viable.

I get that he went into Blood Magic for the grandmaster well trait, which is really good! Its just that the rest of the trait line is so …. meh. I can see that he’s taking the more usefull traints in the line, but in my opinion going into blood magic just for the grandmaster is a bit too much of waste, because the other trait lines offer better options, imho.

You got me here. That new grand master trait is a whopping 3 old traits merged into one. I figured since we are forced to go all the way into our traits, I may as well put them grand masters into higher consideration. Since targeted wells are now baseline (for now) and traits no longer grant stat bonuses, I figured that curses are no longer relevant in the well build and death magic might be more useful. With unholy sanctuary plus vampiric rituals, you are now regenerating a little bit of health weather you drop wells in death shroud or not. There is also deadly strength which now doubles your power when in death shroud, synergizing well with death perception and buffing our well+death shroud burst.

I can understand your need for reapers precision, but I figured that, in a zerg battle, you’re gaining tons of life force from bodies whether you are winning or losing not to mention NPCs getting in the cross fire (rip bunnies).

I figure that now that we must fully commit to three trait lines over mixing things up, we all got to revisit our old builds and how these new rules change how they operate.

striker.3704:

Coffietire.2783:

What other traditional builds can be seen as drastically improved/unimproved that you can think of?

The power focused minion master build will be greatly improved by the up-coming changes as it allows party utility while also giving the necromancer access to more traits to buff himself up.

http://dulfy.net/2015/05/02/gw2-specialization-calculator-that_shaman/#profession=necromancer&traits=“Spite”,1,6,9-“Death Magic”,1,6,8-“Blood Magic”,2,6,8

-net gain spite line: axe training, spiteful spirit
Before you needed to use the master slot for training of the master, now that trait is merged into necromantic corruption, opening up the master slot for axe training. The new trait system gives you 3 GM traits instead of a max of 2, so taking spiteful spirit gives you access to more boon removal, AOE damage, and cripple.

-net loss spite line: none

-net gain death magic line: beyond the veil, *necromantic corruption
Beyond the veil gives you more survivability (at argueably the best time as well) and a way to increase your minions ability to survive on demand. This trait will be immensely helpful when you or your minions are the target of spike damage.

*Necromantic corruption is listed as a gain because it’s a combination of 3 traits into one (fetid consumption, old necromantic corruption, training of the master) all of which were good in their own right, and amazing together. Since those three were combined into this new trait, I won’t list any of them as losses for this build. Because you get a lot of boon removal from axe+focus, changing it from “removing a boon” to “transfer a condition” is a lot more beneficial as condition removal is sparse in the build without the staff.

-net loss: death nova, armored shroud
Before it was possible to take both training of the master and death nova, now you must choose one or the other. As a power based necro who is focused on bolstering his minions, death nova simply isn’t as useful. Especially since it now competes directly with the trait that now increases minion damage. Armored shroud isn’t a big loss when compared to what you gain from beyond the veil.

-net gain blood magic line: transfusion, unholy martyr
Now that vampiric minions has been merged into the minor master vampiric trait, the master slot has been opened up. This allows you to take transfusion giving you more party support and a way to heal minions on demand if you’re alone. now that you can take an additional GM trait, you can pick up unholy martyr. This gives you a way of staying in death shroud longer and a minor bit of party support (the 10% life force gain is more potent than removing a condition from an ally).

-net lose blood magic line: none

Seeing your build made me rather happy, actually. I’ve already looked at the trait builder, and the only difference I have from yours is that I chose 4 and 8 in Spite instead of 6 and 9 (4 for more boon denial, particularly under the health threshold when they’re going to be used to attempt to live, and 8 to add even more punishment under that same 50% health threshold.

As I minion master, I got really excited when I saw these new traits. I mean, hell, some party support, however minor (or minion support with the healing if you’re soloing) as well as condis being able to just about slide off my shoulders and boons being even more difficult for enemies to keep hold of. There’s great synergy between traits for MMs now as opposed to moderate synergy. I love it

Transfusion is Necromancer’s best group utility. As long as your allies are in range, the heal tracks them. It is not hard to get 2k heals per DS, per person. Because few people need Putrid Marks and wells only work good on a stack, Transfusion is a prime support trait and cheap as an Adept.

Transfusion / wells is the only group support build that works for now. Cripples, chills, and blinds are distant runners up. It is the fields on wells, the wells themselves, and Necromancer’s poor ability to use fields that handicap it in group utility.

Transfusion is Necromancer’s best group utility. As long as your allies are in range, the heal tracks them. It is not hard to get 2k heals per DS, per person. Because few people need Putrid Marks and wells only work good on a stack, Transfusion is a prime support trait and cheap as an Adept.

Transfusion / wells is the only group support build that works for now. Cripples, chills, and blinds are distant runners up. It is the fields on wells, the wells themselves, and Necromancer’s poor ability to use fields that handicap it in group utility.

Life blast ahold be a blast finisher and Dark Path should count as a leap.