Guild Wars 2

What Necro build are people using for fractals these days?

I’m using 20/0/20/0/30 DS LB build, but with minions to tank and overall make fractals a lot easier. Not optimized at all for good group play, but makes grouping with pugs a lot easier.

RochelleFreeman.5603:

What Necro build are people using for fractals these days?

This an nothing else. I switch slotskills often to support as much as i can.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Guide-DPS-Necro-for-PvE/page/2#post3510900

I go 30 Spite for Dumbfire, 30 curses for fear damage and scepter condition duration and 10 death magic for staff cooldowns.

I just blow them all with my sweet conditions <3

Xamin.6895:

I go 30 Spite for Dumbfire, 30 curses for fear damage and scepter condition duration and 10 death magic for staff cooldowns.

I just blow them all with my sweet conditions <3

Conditonbuilds are not rls stronk in Dungeons/Fractals. Rampager Hybrid OK, but all other builds have bad dps and no other useful suppport.

Norjena.5172:

Xamin.6895:

I go 30 Spite for Dumbfire, 30 curses for fear damage and scepter condition duration and 10 death magic for staff cooldowns.

I just blow them all with my sweet conditions <3

Conditonbuilds are not rls stronk in Dungeons/Fractals. Rampager Hybrid OK, but all other builds have bad dps and no other useful suppport.

You’d think that, but everyone is just running zerker, so i can get my 25 bleed stacks on the enemy very easily without having to share the bleed cap with other people. I then use epidemic for AOE, my bleeds tick for around 2k per second on average (sometimes more, sometimes less). Terror normally procs 2 times (2 and 3/4 sec duration) when I fear (DS 3 and my staff AOE fear), that’s an additional 1.2k damage every now and then per enemy. This all excludes damage from burning, poison, a bit of torment and my main attack hits.

The damage can be surprisingly good if you have the right gear for it. I definitely do more damage than my zerker guard simply because of the AOE and range/safety i have with conditions.

As for useful support, the only useful support you have atm is stacking might and dealing damage, this whole zerker fest thing made support roles useless atm.

Conditions don´t deal much dps. Do some math, 5 or 6k conditodps is not strong. And u´ll never have this. Because of the condtiocap. U have to subtract normal burning dps (a guardian/ele will add enough burning) and 5-10 stacks of bleeding (other classes add bleedings with crits or some skills).

“Good” DPS is 8.000 and more.

Bhawb.7408:

I’m using 20/0/20/0/30 DS LB build, but with minions to tank and overall make fractals a lot easier. Not optimized at all for good group play, but makes grouping with pugs a lot easier.

Just a suggestion. But you would probably be better off with 20/0/0/20/30. Gives you more support options and minion lifesteal. The extra hp on minions isnt going to make much difference in fractals. If they survive well enough with 20 in death magic they probably survive well enough without.

Anyway to answer op. If were going for a flexible build for fractals and dungeons you could have a look at my guide. You can build it a bit more tanky if you need to and use different weapons to suit your play style and experience. You can also adapt it to a more supporty style if thats what you want (20/25/0/25/0). 25 in blood magic gives you plenty of lifesteal sustain and lower cd wells which helps keep you alive and support your team at the cost of a bit of dps.

The focus in dungeons and fractals is dps so you always want to keep your damage as high as possible. Condi dps is very lack luster and suffers from many problems. Even with a full beserker group you will struggle to keep the bleeds. Warrior, mesmer, engi and necro all stack bleeds passively with their beserker builds which will ruin your damage if you spec condi.

spoj.9672:

Bhawb.7408:

I’m using 20/0/20/0/30 DS LB build, but with minions to tank and overall make fractals a lot easier. Not optimized at all for good group play, but makes grouping with pugs a lot easier.

Just a suggestion. But you would probably be better off with 20/0/0/20/30. Gives you more support options and minion lifesteal. The extra hp on minions isnt going to make much difference in fractals. If they survive well enough with 20 in death magic they probably survive well enough without.

Anyway to answer op. If were going for a flexible build for fractals and dungeons you could have a look at my guide. You can build it a bit more tanky if you need to and use different weapons to suit your play style and experience. You can also adapt it to a more supporty style if thats what you want (20/25/0/25/0). 25 in blood magic gives you plenty of lifesteal sustain and lower cd wells which helps keep you alive and support your team at the cost of a bit of dps.

The focus in dungeons and fractals is dps so you always want to keep your damage as high as possible. Condi dps is very lack luster and suffers from many problems. Even with a full beserker group you will struggle to keep the bleeds. Warrior, mesmer, engi and necro all stack bleeds passively with their beserker builds which will ruin your damage if you spec condi.

20 in DM is better then 20 in BM, tested that out, minion siphon does nothing if you run full zerker.. + 50% of the extra hp can actually be useful..

Like Falcon said, the minion siphoning is worthless. 50% HP is a fairly large boost to their ability to tank damage for you.

Well ok, but why minions in fractals. And why 20 traitpoints too buff them?
With 20 Bloodmagic u get a bit more dmg, and u can heal yourself a little bit.
Seems much better then wasting 20 points to buff 1 kind of bad utility skills. All other traits in Death Magic are weak.

With bloodmagic u can switch traits too support your allies a little bit. And u can use all other utilitys. With 20 points in DM not.

Thats why I suggested it. Its more flexibly and gives you some better options. Personally if i wanted to run a supporty build in fractals I would go 20/25/0/25/0. Otherwise I would use 20/25/0/0/25.

Norjena.5172:

Well ok, but why minions in fractals. And why 20 traitpoints too buff them?
With 20 Bloodmagic u get a bit more dmg, and u can heal yourself a little bit.
Seems much better then wasting 20 points to buff 1 kind of bad utility skills. All other traits in Death Magic are weak.

With bloodmagic u can switch traits too support your allies a little bit. And u can use all other utilitys. With 20 points in DM not.

Its for running with pugs, people who may or may not be so mentally handicapped that you wonder how they log in to the game every day.

Minions will tank most bosses for you. You won’t want them 100% of the time, but the majority of the time having minions makes things far easier on your group. It makes it a lot easier to take out bosses when your players only have to handle half of the boss’ DPS because it is more commonly hitting the minions instead of the players.

You don’t bring siphoning because it isn’t worth it. You don’t need the healing, not to mention you are in DS the vast majority of the time.

Untraited:
BloodF – 22k HP every 20s
SF – 17k HP every 30s
BoneF – 17k HP every 30s
FW – 17k HP every 40s
FG – 22k HP every 60s

20 in DM
BloodF – 33k HP every 16s
SF – 25.5k HP every 24s
BoneF – 25.5k HP every 24s
FW – 25.5k HP every 32s
FG – 33k HP every 48s

Notice that your minions go from 95k total HP per round, to 142.5k HP per round, and can be summoned 20% faster. That is far more helpful for your team than a 15k total healing from Transfusion every 40s, and far more helpful than 100HP/s from vampiric (most of which, again, won’t help you).

This isn’t a full support build. Its a DS/LB build that dropped 20 points and utility skills for a massive meatshield.

I typically run 20/0/20/20/0 in fractals for its broad range of capabilities. I switch armor and weapons depending on which fractal and sometimes on which part of a path I am on. It is really difficult to have a one-size -fits-all build for fractals. The utilities for 20/0/20/20/0 are the most reconfigurable but not always best. Yes, there is an extra 10 to put wherever. With that set of stats you will never have good dps but pugs can be unforgiving.

Probably this kind of builds are the reason why nobody wants necromancers at scale 49/50…..

Minions can “tank” because most Boss AoEs have a five target limit too. OK, but if the gruop is not stacking, they will not do it. A Melee warrior/guard will have a hard job, even with all minions.

They won´t help a the Archdiviner/grawl shaman melee for example. I can´t see the point spending soo much traitpoints for minions.
Better traited Transfusion and this “DS Healtrait”. These are helpful things. Minions not, not more then untraited ones.

Range, DS/Axe/Scepter and so on. No need for a traited staff.

If you are set for MM, you can switch to wells. Between those two semi-builds you have enough flexibility to handle any fractal but what matters most is being familiar with your build and the fractal so you know what to do. I do not remember ever going 3 or 4 fractals with the same utilities and trait skills. I only run minions under water on fractals where they can be handy . Most often I run axe/focus, dagger/focus or staff with wells

Norjena.5172:

Well ok, but why minions in fractals. And why 20 traitpoints too buff them?
With 20 Bloodmagic u get a bit more dmg, and u can heal yourself a little bit.
Seems much better then wasting 20 points to buff 1 kind of bad utility skills. All other traits in Death Magic are weak.

With bloodmagic u can switch traits too support your allies a little bit. And u can use all other utilitys. With 20 points in DM not.

I don’t think you get it at all, it’s not because you think that minions are weak , that they actually are. You have to try around and practice on playing with them b4 you know how they are.. If you are a MM you won’t swtich to other utilities in most cases, almost every fractal can be done with full minion run.. The role of a necro is not to heal your allies, it’s to DPS the mobs down while you can survive (unless you want to run a supportive well build, but offensive would be way better in fractals) , with minions you can easily survive + they deal damage to & got some nice abilities aswel It’s like this: if you’re really good in a way of playing (in my case MM+Condi Dam) and you can survive + able to damage the mobs then you’re fine, doesn’t even matter what build you run o.o
Dem. I love those little braindead minions, I dislike playing without them these days..

Falcon.8713:

Norjena.5172:

Well ok, but why minions in fractals. And why 20 traitpoints too buff them?
With 20 Bloodmagic u get a bit more dmg, and u can heal yourself a little bit.
Seems much better then wasting 20 points to buff 1 kind of bad utility skills. All other traits in Death Magic are weak.

With bloodmagic u can switch traits too support your allies a little bit. And u can use all other utilitys. With 20 points in DM not.

I don’t think you get it at all, it’s not because you think that minions are weak , that they actually are. You have to try around and practice on playing with them b4 you know how they are.. If you are a MM you won’t swtich to other utilities in most cases, almost every fractal can be done with full minion run.. The role of a necro is not to heal your allies, it’s to DPS the mobs down while you can survive (unless you want to run a supportive well build, but offensive would be way better in fractals) , with minions you can easily survive + they deal damage to & got some nice abilities aswel It’s like this: if you’re really good in a way of playing (in my case MM+Condi Dam) and you can survive + able to damage the mobs then you’re fine, doesn’t even matter what build you run o.o
Dem. I love those little braindead minions, I dislike playing without them these days..

If you dont switch utilities you are no better than a signet guardian. All classes and builds should be changing utilities to fit the situation. Every run can be done with MM just like every dungeon and fractal can be done without dodging. That doesnt mean thats a good strategy.

You are right about offense being important in fractals. But what you fail to realise is that minions are not the best offense. They are more useful in defensive builds especially as you decrease your own dps by traiting them. For many fractals they die too much to be useful. They also dont cleave so they are pretty useless for trash clearing. Even if you dont trait minions and run the highest dps build 30/25/0/0/15 running full minions is still less single target dps than taking other utilities. Plus its much less aoe damage aswell.

A wells build can still deal max dps while also providing support. You dont need blood magic to do this. If you do take blood magic you lose some dps but aslong as you keep trait points in curses and spite and put 25 in blood your overall dps is still pretty decent.

Im not saying dont use minions. But you should be aware of the flaws in using them and be aware of how you can be a lot more useful without them. Traiting them pigeon holes you quite a lot. Which is something I would never recommend for a fractal build.