Guild Wars 2

When I chose necromancer I thought it would be pretty fun to do conditions and marks but I found that the staff’s cooldown and autoattack are meager at best for combat but pretty good for supports.

After looking at this, I decided to move onto a power/crit build. So far I am using dagger/dagger with wells and signet of spite. The damage isn’t amazing but it isn’t great either. A lot of classes outdps be greatly and I find it almost impossible to survive when I get attacked by more than 2-3 mobs. I am currently only lv 20 and I want to ask if this improves over time because over the last 10 levels I seem to be struggling a bit in terms of damage output, unless I’m doing something wrong of course.

I am dodging a lot as well, particularly paying attention to strafing, kiting and the dodgeroll, but I’m finding that as soon as I get to 4 mobs I struggle a bit and have to get out of combat to recover. The d/d build has no particularly good AoE, 4 being a target-target-target move and 5 being ridiculously weak and having barely any condition damage.

I am popping death shroud often, usually to take advantage of Life transfer and Life blast, but ever with the bar above 3/4 I am still doing rubbish damage with DS.

Any advice or opinions about this? Or is necro just a broken, weak and rubbish class?

PS: I really enjoy necro and the death and stuff and I find it irritating that it’s not deadly enough.

Dagger offhand isn’t that great if you’re plopping down in melee range. Try using a focus.

andybmcc.8751:

Dagger offhand isn’t that great if you’re plopping down in melee range. Try using a focus.

I hear what you’re saying, but Dagger 4 skill is great for melee, especially with the Chill Trait added on Blind. Dagger 5 gives weakness too, so both help you avoid that melee damage.

personaly for pve i wouldnt use D/D. I preferebly use D/W for those events couse it gives me 2 cc’s that i can more or less spam. But the main problem with dagger isnt the somewhat low dmg (mind you its strongest we got imo) its the siphon skill witch should heal us but does a poor job of keeping us alive even with traits and passives. on the other hand i can keep my self alive via some utilitys that can siphon health and help me kite while my cc’s are on cd. Necros are not ’’broken’’, at least not as much as people say, we just have to work harder to make a viable build so do take that into account

I know that life siphon is still relatively weak right now, but the #2 drain has kept me alive in several clutch situations and allows me to deal sustained damage to fleeing enemies while regaining some health. I personally love the feel of D/D as it’s visceral and up close, but allows me some good ways to retreat and keep up damage and life gain.

I’d give axe/focus a go too. Vulnerability stacks get huge quick, you have a chill and an AoE cripple for kiting and also regen on a fairly low CD. You’ll get decent LF return from the #2.

i wouldnt go axes, altho its a nifty stack on vulnerability in a short time, but to sum it up so fpower/crit necro IS viable, but it goes long way from simple tweaking

Thanks for your suggestions, I’ll go take a look at d/w and d/f.

I prefer not to use axes because besides the fact that they’re relatively slow, have a short range and are weak if not for the AoE.

Two words for you.

Bone minions.

As a power/crit necromancer these bad boys are absolutely invaluable. Not only will they give you some nice burst when you decide to implode them, they’ll also serve as two combo finishers for your wells. Going into Spite you can also grab Training of the Master to further enhance their usefulness.

@fungalfoot

Are you sure that Training of the Master affects their on-use damage? I only was under the impression it was for the autoattack damage of minions.

I’ve tried the dagger/focus and it seems to be working relatively well, besides the fact that 4/5 are severely underpowered, it provides good vuln and regen as well as freeze. I’d just wish they made necro more viable, like how you can use shortbow with crits on a ranger.