Guild Wars 2

I had to move, found a new job, made it to step 11 in mmo-recovery rehab, sat on my kitten and got married at the same time. 6 months later I am back from the offline exile.
finally – wahey – single, between jobs, happy as ever and extremely confused.

Instead of going back to my comfy zone (Warrior, Mesmer and Hunter at level 80) I thought it would be neat to explore my Necromancer.
I had a heap of gold and that level 20 scroll which pushed him to level 80 in one sitting.
My question is, before I put on my fancy spending panties, what attributes should I ‘aim for’; that’ll suit my play style?

I thoroughly enjoy my mesmers various support abilities and I’d rather be resilient than burst things down. I don’t, how ever, enjoy having my screen cluttered with an army of minions; although 1-2 or 3 is fine.

I normally play with my brother and – truth be told – we kinda suck at staying alive. We are, over all, in the “below average at playing n’ stuff” side of the player base (which, come to think of it, represent 50% of us,… So don’t judge….;-)

Sooo… the question is;
Consider that I don’t know much of the current attribute values, pros and cons and that my Necromancer, Dr Dielittle (yeah, I know, I’m witty as frack) is in level nothing-rags atm. I love all supportive abilities and being able to heal both myself and my friends. I don’t do much WvW or PvP – only occasionally – but I would love to have a setup that’ll work there as well.

Any ideas, thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated. It just feels overwhelming at the moment and I don’t feel like spending a ton of gold on gear, just winging it.

Much <3 // Me

I’d love to help, but I do almost exclusively WvW.

That being said, I believe there’s an Apothecary (Healing Power primary, Toughness/Condi Dmg secondaries) Necro build that focuses on supporting through wells in addition to life siphons and some group healing traits (ie. Transfusion in Blood Magic, which heals allies when you use Life Transfer). The Toughness will help you survive, and Condi Dmg is all you need for Scepter/Dagger+Staff in order to still dish out respectable pain.

Other than that, a lot of a Necro’s support is indirect, in the form of debuffing and generally crippling (not just the Cripple condition) the enemy.

There are a few users floating around who know a lot more about such a supportive/healing/condi dmg Necro build than I, so hopefully they pop in to help steer you in that direction.

If you ever want to completely change directions and go more of a glassy Power Necro WvW roamer, I have a whole slew more thoughts. Until then, I hope you enjoy yourself!

Thank you Cogbyrn! What really helped me, reading your reply, was reminding me that ‘supportive’ isn’t as cut and dry as the old mmo’s I grew up with, in this game.

I don’t see myself doing any WvW roaming just yet. I forgot to mention that I’m something of a nervous wreck in any pvp situation…. It’s not even cute.

I might be wrong but I seem to recall that ‘toughness’ does not prevent condition damage and I should look in to how the healing and ‘siphon’ mechanics work; I figure if it’s based on % I should benefit a lot from vitality…but then again; I don’t remember how much beating I took was from “various afflictions” and how much was direct damage (out in the PvE world)
Haha! Its weird how much I’ve forgotten in only half a year!

Its cool how I just found a ton of items without attributes selected yet, collecting dust in my bank – and not to mention the exotic sentinel insignias stack that might be useful :-)

As far as I know, nothing in the game scales with Vitality. The general idea is that Vitality increases your ability to absorb condition ticks and overall damage, while Toughness reduces the effectiveness of direct damage but not conditions.

The kicker to remember is that as you gain more Toughness, your heal inherently becomes “better”, as each point of HP calculates to a higher amount of Effective HP, since you can absorb more punishment. With Vitality, you just increase your bare HP, but the value of HP remains the same. Which reduces the general effectiveness of your heal.

That being said, Necro is in a very unique position with Vitality, as your LF pool is a percentage of your total health. Also remember that the direct damage you take while in Death Shroud is halved. That makes Vitality much more valuable for Necros than… basically any other class, as far as I’m concerned.

Siphons are just raw numbers (no scaling on Vitality), and though I think they are supposed to scale with Healing Power, they basically don’t scale with anything at all. They are very small gains, but over time they add up if you don’t mind thinking long-term/big picture. It’s mostly a toy for Minion Master Necros in my limited experience with Necro builds, but the Blood Magic tree can give you some fun supportive toys in general.

I just love Necros, as it turns out, so I can talk forever about little things like this. Instead of actually talking forever, I’ll stop for now. Hopefully it sets you up on the right track.

Don’t bother with siphoning. It is useless in anything wvw related. I’d bet that it sucks in pve too but I don’t do a ton of that so I’m not sure.

I’d imagine you want a condi build if you are looking at a necro. Those builds are pretty tanky naturally and you can’t go wrong with either dire or rabid sets.

What kind of wvw do you want to try? Zerg builds are easy to roll with and they work all the time. If you want to roam and survive we can give you other builds.

Are you open to swapping between two different sets of traits or are you set on only using one? If you don’t mind switching we can get two really nice sets lined up for you and you will enjoy your time more. Most wvw builds will work in pve but not as well. The same is true in reverse.

Thanks again Cogbyrn. It’s neat that this community have eloquent, passionate and friendly people like you, eager to help out. My Engineer is named Cogtail – so we have this mystical, intertwined connection that only cog-people would understand.
I get what you’re saying with the toughness — I just don’t remember how much direct VS dmg over time I encountered in PvE and how many ‘healing abilities’ was based on % returned (over time and with channeled spells (other than the siphon…thingie) – both mine and from others) in which case vitality would be on pair with or outweigh ‘healing power’ (if not even ‘make obsolete’) and how to balance the whole shabang! Toughness in PvE seem to favour slow and channeled spell-playstyle over mobility… And I haven’t even considered the minions and what role they will play in soaking up damage! Dont even know if they get effected by my toughness! Meh… So many variables! ;-) But you’ve cleared up a bunch of my questions – thank you again! I

Ynot; Thank you for replying!
Yes, I would love to have condition build with high survivability and I don’t mind swapping traits and gear. The only thing I got going for me in this game is my stack of gold. I’ve lived out of my backpack for a while and manage to get the game rolling on a laptop with shoe-box-seconds-per-frame prestanda; so I played the lowly trade post game ;-)

I ran a Condi build for a while that was pretty tanks. If you run dire gear, you can get high Condi damage while running with about 25-30k health and about 3k armor if specced right. You can run rabid gear too (precision, toughness, and condition damage), this will be slightly squish ire but the precision will be good for stacking on crit conditions. Staff and scepter/dagger are optimal weapon sets. The staff ape is great, but when all skills get set on cool down, it is imperative you switch to your scepter. I, similar to cogbyrn, come from a primarily stand point, with this specific build. I have leaned away from conditions recently and have run a full zerker build, which takes work, but is the most fun I’ve ever had on this game.
Feast on conditions is going to be the best heal for you, as it provides a much needed condition cleansing. I’m not sure how epidemic runs in PvE, but I would use that just to experiment as it’s condition spread is godly, and can kill very effectively (at least in WvW). Other than those two, I’m not sure what you will want in PvE, but I could imagine signet of spite to still be effective, especially when dealing with large amounts of trash mobs. Plague is a very good 0 skill, infact, all of the 0 skills are pretty good.

If you do want to run a well Condi build, rampagers, as stated earlier, is the way to go. I ran that same build for about a week, and while it was good, it wasn’t my “cup of tea”. However, I can recommend some wells to use. First, DO NOT USE HEALING WELL! It isn’t as good as feast on conditions primarily because the Condi cleanse isn’t there.
Well of suffering, well of corruption, and well of darkness are the best, IMO. Well of suffering provide good dps and vulnerability, while well of darkness allows you to stand in the middle of everything and not be hit. By everything, I mean everything, because it constantly applies blinds. That is a major factor in PvE, and yes, I did run this well build in PvE, primarily dungeons, and it is very helpful in any boss fight, stacking or not. Same weapons would be applicable in this build too. It is important to remember that this build will be much more squishy than the condition build as the gear applies no toughness or vitality, though it still has decent sustain because, after all, you are a necro.

If you want a direct damage build suggestion, I can give that too, but you said you are more interested in those two, so I’ll leave it at that.

I would run something like this for wvwhttp://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMad7tbib87JApCXH9g4gVm6B8sfOA-j0BBYhCy0Cwk0Q0HApoFRjVJjIqWpETKAYmDA-w

That build has pretty awesome dps for its survivability. That comes from a ton of life force regen. Just remember to not spam your cc. Use chills cripples and fears at different times and it allows you to keep distance. Hit people from range and spam scepter #1.

I don’t run dire for all the armor because the toughness scales better with all the life force. Either sets work or a mix of sets. The sigils are good because the scepter/dagger will stack condis but also give you increased damage(6%) while you have it equiped. The staff sigil gives you an added dodge which helps in a sticky situation.