Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently hit 80 so I’m looking to invest the tokens that I’ve gathered in some gear. I’ve been using a power based build utilizing dagger/focus, staff and death shroud http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAodWjMaV6ZaKbM8JApCPH944hZm6x6sjOA. I love the theme of the build and I’ve had moderate success in dungeons with it but I’m not sure if it’ll hold up in fractals.

I don’t mind scepter condition or hybrid builds too much but I worry about its effectiveness in PuG’s with the bleed stack and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stay alive in fractals with the relatively low survivability of most decent hybrid builds.

What’s everyones experiences with power builds in facials, condition builds in PuG’s, and hybrid builds with general survivability?

Note: WvWvW and PvP are not huge concerns with me.

I use a condition build in fractals (mostly with pugs) and it’s been relatively good and has enough survivability up to my current fractal level (26). I don’t know about higher levels.
I like your decision to use death shroud for survivability as it has been a life saver for me in more than one occasion.
I haven’t tried high crit chance/crit damage (which I believe your build essentially is) in pve so I can’t tell you how it will work. But I guess there’s one way to find out: Try it.

I use what’s more or less a glass cannon power necro at frac 30, no problems. It more depends on you and your party members not being bad.

War Mourner.5168:

I use what’s more or less a glass cannon power necro at frac 30, no problems. It more depends on you and your party members not being bad.

^ This. While my necro isn’t glass cannon per-se it does lean a little more towards it and I have no problems, but like War Mourner said, if your team is just horribad, it doesn’t matter how good your build is. If you run with a solid, competent team regularly and are confident and proficient in your build you’ll have no problems. :-)

Thanks for the advice everyone! I think I will go with the power build then. I was thinking of grabbing the P/V/T dagger and focus for from AC (death shroud scales well with both vit and toughness) and then have the rest of my gear as a mix of berserker from CoF and knights from the TP. I’m curious as to what staff to get though. the skills seem to have quite a bit of condition damage on them so perhaps Pow/Cond/Tough from TA?

I see a lot of power and hybrid build necros in high level fractals w/my main doing just fine even glass power setups seem to do decent due to the high baseline HP.

The extra 100 or less condi damage isn’t worth it on a weapon IMO. Go with p/prec/toughness. Try not to drain ur life force from 100% to 0. Go ds, at 60% hop out and fill it back to 100% and go back.

Omnitek.3876:

The extra 100 or less condi damage isn’t worth it on a weapon IMO. Go with p/prec/toughness. Try not to drain ur life force from 100% to 0. Go ds, at 60% hop out and fill it back to 100% and go back.

This was a lesson hard learned for myself and I’m sure many other necros too. Rarely will it ever benefit you to run DS the full duration of your life force. Get used to poppin in and out throughout the fight and only using as much as you need. If you get really good at it, you can pop in, use a skill or two, pop out, and barely have used any life force.

If you really want to bring something to a fractal group, the most important thing is AoE Cripple (Scepter 2 + Epidemic). At higher levels you really can’t tank mobs, they hit too hard. Cripple is not blocked by Defiant and makes everyone’s life easier.

The problem with power builds is that you want to use Dagger, but you can’t get in melee with this stuff. You wan to invest in the Power tree, but you need 30 in Curses (Scepter +33% condition duration) for the cripples/weaknesses and will probably want some points that buff wells. So now points are becoming short.

Also, Epidemic on its own is devastating v. groups of mobs whether or not you are condition spec. 5 people will stack conditions very quickly and then Epidemic spreads them all. Spreading 20 stacks of bleeding from 1 to 4 mobs is the fastest way to move through packs that I’ve seen. Assuming bleeding ticks for 100, if you spread 20 stacks to 4 other monsters, you just added 8,000 dps (20*100=2,000*4=8,000). A condition build may seem like a waste because stuff dies before you can stack, but at later levels stuff lives for a long time and the stacks do tons of damage.

So in my opinion, Necros can bring 2 main things: outstanding aoe damage on a short cooldown, and fantastic condition variety (weakness, cripple, chill, etc.).