Guild Wars 2

Hi Rikan here,

I’ve been playing my necro up to level 12 and have really been enjoying it. I tested the other weapons and skills that goes with those and have decided that I love daggers. Attacking with blazing fast attacks and lifedrain is really fun coupled with Well of Suffering. I know that I still have a lot to learn, but I would just like to ask. What is the best dagger build that will allow my toon to survive melee battles in PVE and also PVP?

Thanks in advance

Maximizing survivability is probably most important if your going to be a clothy and fighting up front. WE do have some luxury tho being a necro as we’re beefier than other light armor characters and have a higher innate health pool.

One route I liked using 2 daggers is the minion route. Granted the A.I is horrible but with “Vampiric Master” on top of the healing you get from attacking yourself and life drain skills….you should be able to keep a constant flow of green numbers flowing your way to keep your hp up. That typa build tho suffers as you go against more people as the damage isnt concentrated on one target as much so your constant hp flow is diminished.

Another route would be Wells to lay down as support. Given your going to be in close range you dont necesarely have to get the Well targeting either…so you can save yourself some trait points. Given the Lf gain from Daggers…you could instead trait up in Soul Reaping and invest in Near Death for the pop in/out builds. being in close range…you’ll have wells to drop where you stand…then traited in Death Shroud and Near Death…spec in causing conditions or giving yourself boons poping in Ds and Out around a opponent. Could prove useful:)

If you’re not keen on having ground targeted well’s I’d probably say 30/0/0/20/20.

30 Spite for obvious reasons, power build and closer to death trait so you actually do dmg.

20 Soul Reaping for some extra dmg/beefiness and DS traits. You’ll want to jump into DS to do some good life blast ranged dmg.

Then 20 Blood for obvious reasons too, you have some decent options to choose from there, lifesteal traits which are kinda meh, but the 50% better lifesteal trait affects the heal on dagger #2. Faster well recharge, faster dagger recharge, aoe heal on life transfer, whatever you prefer.

And if you would like to go for a hybrid ish build like this I’d definately suggest Well of Blood with some healing power as that’s basically where all of our healing comes from, and it gives you some time to get into melee and do some dmg while staying alive, DS for any burst, then stand back and channel to heal back up, etc.

Clarification: by “dagger build” do you mean you’d favor using dual daggers?

In that case, dual daggers is very short-ranged, as with Elementalist D/D builds but without gap-closing tools that Elementalists have. So perhaps you’d swap D/D with Staff (for range), but even then you don’t have many gap closers to really get in faces and use D/D fully.

Just a thought. (Personally, I love the off-hand dagger skills and use S/D and Staff.)

RE: “Best Dagger Build” – there’s really nothing yet that anyone could point to and say “this is the best dagger build”. There are some popular build choices for complimenting daggers, however, which would include Staff and dmg Wells, as all three (dagger/staff/wells) benefit from Power stacking, and also play into the strengths and design of the class, giving you the option to start a fight at range and finish with melee (or the opposite if you get the jump on someone and they make a break for it), which for a light armored class that lacks impressive burst (it’s not bad, it’s just not OMGWTFBBQ kind of dmg) is probably a safer way to go about handling some engagements. Personally, I opt for the warhorn OH with MH dagger for some extra utility to cover my kitten while in melee range, as most dmg will be coming from dagger #1 spam and the wells anyways, but all three OH weapons are perfectly viable and bring something different to your build.

Hope that helps. Have fun!

In PvE I found the dagger offhand to be the best choice – at least for me. It had an aoe (well three target) blind which can be a life saver, and another AoE attack which is pretty nice.

Well of darkness was what made it all possible though. Coupled with a few minions and you’re laughing

I prefer to lean more towards offensive stats with a scattering of vit/tough on jewels, at least for leveling. I’d rather annihilate things fast and use DS/dodge/CC/minions/regen to soak the big hits or some of the damage and cruise along faster. Necro’s have a lot of ways to avoid damage inherently if you play correctly, so it’s easier to focus on more damage oriented stats/traits for general pve. I have a couple different variations I use, but I’ll share one less common build that works well for me.

Minion build (sub Spectral Walk for the Wurm minion in more stationary fights): http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/necromancer#3|15|1201|1194|1199|9243|4693|30|1255|1563|2242|10|2324|0|0|10|2243|0|0|0|0|0|0|20|1257|1256|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Lots of CC, AoE, and Mobility for scooting around faster with this build. It’s great for leveling.

30/30/0/0/10.

Dagger/Focus Dagger/Warhorn

Sigil of bloodlust/Hydromancy

Rune of the Ice/everything else “of the knight”.

Pizza in WvW, along with oils.

Generally WoS/WoC/SW, but switch as the mood/situation takes me. Great mobility from almost permaswiftness (Banshee’s Wail is cool, but I like the 15% cooldown reduction on DS abilities), +50% chill overall (changing weapons WHENEVER you can, including while in DS gives nice PBAoE chill and a 1k hit).

In 1v1 I tend to wait until the enemy has blown a few cooldowns/dodges and then do the root/dual wells thing; it’ll kill most enemies. Keep dipping into DS for Dark Path and Fury buff, and learn to use Spectral Walk. If it’s off cooldown, it’s almost literally impossible to not escape a 1v1 you’re losing.

In keep sieges, learn how to pull off keep walls and root. So much fun.

In PvE, you’ll get decent damage boosts form everyone else’s conditions (2% per condition is quite a chunk, considering there are 11 conditions in the game and your group will throw out quite a few).

Lovely weakness debuffs (slowing vigor is as important as 25% non-crit damage reduction), permachill your enemies and you’re tough as old nails so you can afford to kitten up a few times.

Thank you awesome people for the answers and suggestions. I will do a lot of experimentation on the builds and play styles you suggested. One thought that I haven’t occurred to me is using DS more. So I’ll probably do that. Keep the posts coming and know that. I will be reareading this thread a lot and find out what works for me. Again, thank you for the input. Have an awesome day!

Don’t be afraid to use DS more! Try picking up the trait to make Life Blast pierce, and use Life Transfer every time it’s off cooldown. Just by using Well of Suffering and Life Transfer you can take on huge groups of enemies at once

I am using 10/5/25/30/0 on my D/D necro.
For my secondary I am not entirely sure yet, its either Axe/dagger or staff. The axe provides vuln for my teammates, but the staff is really usefull for lures and some more control with fear.

I am specced into life siphon which is definitely the most effective with daggers. Though it is more of a pve build, I don’t think it works really well in pvp since you won’t heal enough.