Guild Wars 2

I’m currently leveling my necro(lvl 35) and gonna be primarily used for WvW…I want to use a well build as I love them so far and was wondering what are some of the common well builds out there?

dunnberry.2964:

I’m currently leveling my necro(lvl 35) and gonna be primarily used for WvW…I want to use a well build as I love them so far and was wondering what are some of the common well builds out there?

I’ve recently been running a power build 30/10/0/0/30 (Reaper’s Might, Axe Training, Close to Death, Focused Rituals, Vital Persistence, Near to Death, Deathly Perception).

The Blood Magic trait line has a lot of great well traits (Ritual of Life, Ritual Mastery, and Vampiric Rituals), however wells use power damage (and blood magic is the vitality/healing trait line) so I find it more beneficial to spec in power over blood magic.

I mostly use Consume Conditions over Well of Blood, but that is a personal preference. I bring Well of Suffering, Well of Corruption and Signet of Spite (I sometimes alternate Spite with Well of Darkness and Blood is Power). Elite skill is Lich Form.

I run dagger/warhorn and axe/focus. In PvE, it’s pretty easy to keep enemies in the wells you plant. It becomes a bit more difficult in PvP/WvW, but it is still doable. Dagger/warhorn has Dark Pact and Wail of Doom to keep foes immobilized. Locust Swarm also helps to cripple (slow them down). Axe/focus is a little less effective, with only crippling/chilling conditions from Unholy Feast and Spinal Shivers. I generally use Axe/focus first to stack vulnerability (Reaper’s Touch, Rending Claws), added with Signet of Spite, switching to Dagger to immobilize, and throwing Well of Suffering (and darkness) for added invulnerability.

Wellomancers are great in zerg fights in WvW, because you generally will always have someone within your well AoE. Smaller group fights do become more difficult because players can easy dodge out of your wells unless you immobilize them, and plant wells, quickly enough. Death Shroud and Lich Form are really great Necro skills for smaller WvW fights, so personally, I find it can balance out quite well.

I’m not an expert wellomancer, but it’s the only build I’ve found that I really, really can’t draw myself away from. I hope you enjoy it!

Edit: I forgot to add… Learn how to switch in and out of Death Shroud regularly… Tainted Shackles is an amazing addition to the Wellomancer.

Right now I use all wells and avatar of Grenth but probably gonna change that soon…I was thinking of epidemic I think it’s called which spreads conditions instead of well of darkness…but very interesting I think I’m probably going more tanks than that though…and very good point with death shroud that will really help a lot and ill get practicing on it…any other builds too would be appreciated from anyone else!

Wells can either be used with power for their damage, or condition damage for their utility. A solid Zerg vs Zerg build will be condition based and utilize wells for support much like my 0/30/20/20/0 build, with well/staff reduction and life transfer heals.

If you want a power based build then it’d be best to go down the SR tree for 100% crit, but be warned if your wells aren’t placed properly, your main damage CDs are pretty much gone for around 40 secs.

With a condition build, the wells are there for utility, but your conditions still allow 1000s of damage to tick away every second from the back of the group keeping more consistent pressure.

Both builds are satisfying to play, both tag players fairly well for bags, both combo well with DS 4,5, and both have their own very fun to play elite skills.

That sounds somewhat similar to what I was thinking, do you think a 0/30/30/10/0/0 would work well too or is the extra 10 in vit/heal that important for the build?

10 in Blood is definitely going to be Transfusion if you want to be really useful to your zerg, 20 in Blood will give you 20% Well CD Reduction, if that’s a selling point for you then yes you need 20 in blood.

From an global point of view, points can be shifted around these three trees to fit what you prefer and what you are willing to sacrifice. Starting with a 0/10/10/10/0 and working out what you really want is the best way to make your preferred build for a Support Wellomancer.

Thank you for the responses and will keep all this in mind!!!

When I ran a power/well build I went 30/15/10/0/15 that was pre-patch. Haven’t messed around with my power build after patch. I enjoyed this build a lot. With this build I ran axe/warhorn and d/d. I mainly do tPvP and I enjoyed charging into battle and axe #3 for cripple and retal. Then warhorn #5 for swift and cripple, then drop wells jump into DS for #4. Dropping wells would also give me protection and jumping into DS would drop weakening shourds and give me furious demise. It’s a nice burst damage on more then one guy. While your incoming damage has been minimized by protection and weakening shourds. But once your done, get ready to dance, you just became public enemy number #1 hahaahaa

Hey there !

Thinking about power well build, I agree that Curse 10, DM 10 and BM 20 are staples to the build but I’m not totally sure that 30 in spite are a no brainer.

The idea behind the build is to AOE with staff and wells and except close to death, no traits in spite really synergise with AOE (except spiteful marks, but the bonus seems to be pitiful).

However, the SR line seems to synergise much more: Path of midnight with Transfusion, near to death to maximize DS uptime and Deathly perception (need to comment ?).

I would run with staff, dagger, WH (as long as Axe is not upgraded and WH will provide swiftness, AOE and cone daze), CC as heal and 3 wells as utilities. I’m still debating for elite, plage is too good in zergs to pass but not synergize very well.

Stuff wise, I’d go for a mix of berzerker, soldier and Cavalier/Valkyrie to reach 50 % crit with food/oil and sigils with 21K health (arbitrary amount I feel comfortable with) and as much toughness as possible without lowering power.

Any thought on the Spite/SR choice ?

It seems most of the people in this thread like Power Well builds over Utility Well builds in WvW so i’ll give my input on that.

When i did run Power Wells for the time that i did, i went into SR tree because i wanted my DS to be up as much as possible and to do the most damage. This was because i wanted decent burst damage when my Wells were on CD, so my build i guess was a DS/Well build you could say.

I didn’t really see the point of specing purely for Wells alone because they last 5 seconds, so the rest of my build was aimed at keeping consistent filler damage. This works the exact same way with my Condition based Well build in that even though i used many Well traits, my conditions in between were still fairly top notch with 95% bleed duration, full rabid gear and condition duration weapons/food.

Going back to the power build, axe and dagger are both pretty average in WvW, so i went with DS damage for my filler, DS synergizes with wells and is power based, so ye.

If you want to run wells, first decide on play style. That is, whether you want to get in close and deal a lot of damage, or prefer to hang a bit back and nuke the line like an arrow cart.

In either case, if you run wells, take Ritual Mastery for the CD reduction. If you want to bomb the fighting front from a little behind the front, then you will also want Focused Rituals and might as well put 20 into Death Magic for Staff Mastery and Greater Marks. If you prefer max damage and standing in your wells, then put the remaining points into a power/crit build.

The main competition for utility slots is from Corruption skills. The curse tree’s Master of Corruption CD reduction will tempt a well build toward conditions. The Necromancer profession has a lot of build variation, though PvP rewards power/crit builds more than condi, minion, or tank. WvW leans heavily toward power builds but hybrid and condi-bombers have a place, too. Condi-bombers are great for sieges.

Wells work for both kinds of builds but require you sacrifice other great utilities – just as it should be. Try everything! Despite what you may read on the forum, most of the Necromancer’s skills work pretty well but you need to design your Necro around the skills for best results and different builds are better or worse than others depending on the situation. There is no Everything build and no Easy Button. The challenge is part of Necromancer’s fun.

Sorry just saying WvW does not reward power/Crit builds… They die and fast lol

I was meaning pretty much straight zerker yes…any guild groups who have too many of those melt quick too…2250 toughness is anything close to focused power/Crit build that’s a solid defense

I’ve found 30/0/10/20/10 as a good ‘all rounder’
Reapers Mark & Close to Death are hard to give up, but you can swap Spite’s master from Minions (if used) to Marks (If staff/aoe) to Axe.

Greater Marks 99% of time, tho I have had times when I’ll swap it to 20% faster Staff CD (to keep 100% up time of Regen on buddy) and Ritual of Protection might have it’s ‘golden times to shines’.

As for blood, Ritual Master for 20% faster wells is kinda cool for wells ;-P
Transfusion is a very nice big aoe heal on aoe burst situations. It sadly doesn’t heal you as your in deathshroud. So you might find Ritual of Life, or BloodThirst more helpful.
Dagger Mastery also shouldn’t be overlooked. You get to immobilize someone in your wells 5sec faster CD.

Path of Midnight for Soul. (Particularly if using transfusion).

You can also throw on some magic find gear, and swap in 30% minion dam, 20% faster CD, Minion heal you per hit & 50% stronger heals from it. For a very decent ‘farming spec’ without having to respec.

As for gearing. My default kit is a “knights” (Power/Pre/Tuf) ‘Superior Rune of Divinity’ are quite nice, as it’s all stats, so Pow/Pre/Crit Dam aswell as some Condi Dam, Heal Power/Vit/Tuf. (Well of Blood & Transfusion scale very nice with Heal Power)

It’s also nice to have a ‘glass cannon’ set of gear, Bezerker (Pow/Pre/Crit Dam) with Eagle Rune (5% dam to pplz under 50% life stacks with your trait)

As for weaps, I use Pow/Pre/CritDam Dagger/Axe/Focus and a Power/Pre/Cond Dam Staff. (Iceing as staff adds Bleeds/Poison)

As for Sigil’s in Weaps.
Bloodlust on staff (10pow per kill)
Force on offhand (5% dam)
Blood on Main (Heal on Crit)

Not vital to build, just my pref. The rules for them are:

Passive = Only 1 active.

On kill = Only 1 stacks.

On crit = Only 1 type proc’s

On Weap Swap = 5 or 7 sec CD on all types. (So may be wasted at times putting on both weap sets)

I’ve tried a few variants.

It might seem tempting to do something like 0/30/10/0/30 as you can really just take people down with life blasts but you also die to like everything so if you’re not careful or are lagging I wouldn’t recommend it to someone that just started out. I recommend trying it at least once just for laughs though. 30/10/10/20/0 is nice if you use an axe, otherwise I find 0/30/20/20/0 or 0/10/30/30/0 to be most well rounded. The last two have very high survivability because you have so much utility (protection spam, siphon ability, and the later can even take vampiric wells). And wells. And there’s DS on top so you don’t need to worry that much. From experience, dagger is quite nice thanks to the immobilize skills. In larger fights I tend to just stick with staff.

I like target the weak though. This is because people almost always have conditions on them (or you can force it with corruption) so that 2% really stacks up.

As a necro, you will rarely die to direct damage thanks to DS. Your primary killers are going to be running out of life force, conditions, and stuns. Note the first is usually caused by the other two. Thus, well of power is a very critical component. Spectral walk can also be really useful. (Last is obviously suffering)

I like using dagger offhand for some reason, mainly for aoe weakness, and the condition transfer blind comes in handy. I also trait withering precision for some extra weakness on people. Warhorn is nice for running faster though.

In any case, most balanced wellmancers can bring a lot of stuff to the table. In zerg or tower situations where you can just stand back and unload skills, this becomes very easy for you to really screw up the opposing side.