So basically, to be really powerful as a necro, it’s a fairly complex dance?
In a way, yes. Not only for Necromancers though. Guild Wars 2 PvP is high-paced combat and highly skill-based. Personally, I think a scepter/dagger – staff condition build doesn’t have to be a fingerdance to be effective.
But perhaps you can lift the veil a little on where you put your limits. Are you having trouble to stay mobile while also activating skills, or do you just find it difficult to activate utility skills? Would you like to have a build where positioning is not as important or would you like a build that doesn’t require keeping all your utilities on cooldown?
Are you using the default key-binding? Changing this can do wonders for your skill level.
Your question made me think, “What is it that I find non-fun”?
I guess it is being overwhelmed by having to both: 1) discern what my opponents are probably going to do next, given their class, apparent build (buffs and animation clues)…but then 2) have to set up a complex set of actions to counter them as well that requires timing on my buttons and swapping weapons and utility cooldown management. I just get burnt out from that.
So I am hoping to have something a bit more straightforward on my character so I can mainly play the strategic game of counter the class opposing me, reading animations, and knowing their likely meta and plan for me.
(I do have custom bindings and have never been a keyboard turner)
Thanks for the info. This is a Build that I just made. I’ve never played this, and it’s up to you to test it.
I went for a trait setup that capitalizes on a lot of excellent defensive traits the Necromancer has access, without sacrificing too much in the damage department. It’s a condition damage build. Just make sure you open with the staff in hand, because even with the reduced cooldowns you don’t want to be stuck in Staff with your marks and weapon swap on cooldown. That’s instant death. That being said, all your utility skills as well as your elite can help you out of a bind.
Positioning Spectral Wall in the right place can give you a good chance to escape as well as using well of darkness on the right spot.
I think this sort of build is most effective helping out in fights. You won’t survive on your own for very long. Just make sure someone you follow someone or someone is following you.
I’m sure someone else can come up with a better build, I’m no expert, but this build limits you to using your weapon skills 90% of the time. The rest of your skills are big red panic buttons.
The only thing that might require some fingerdance is Death Shroud. Because this is a Terror build, you want to pop into DS, use skill 3, and pop back out for an interupt on a stomp or something. Just force it until it enters muscle memory (Fake it ’til you make it).
I actually think MM is the easiest. All of your utilities are on autopilot, for the most part. Put 20 into spite for 30% minion damage boost, 20 into death magic for minion master and flesh of the master, and 20 into blood magic for the vampiric traits. The remainder can go wherever you like. Use consume conditions for your heal and the rest of the utilities are minions. It is an uncomplicated, durable build. All you have to do is make sure your minions are out and activate their skills when you like.
Like Badjas, I recommend staff and scepter/dagger. You have to be practically looking the other way and at a different elevation for scepter to miss, unlike main hand dagger or even axe.
Vampiric builds are neither bad nor difficult to play (unless your running a trademarked mighty altroll’s mighty meta build, which are all meta by default). Personally i think a minion variation for vampiric builds works best rather then straight up, something along the lines of;
The idea being you act as a giant CC shield and let the minions do there thing. The thing about minions and vampiric builds is there’s alot of room for adjustment (more offensive or control ect).
Vampiric builds are neither bad nor difficult to play (unless your running a trademarked mighty altroll’s mighty meta build, which are all meta by default). Personally i think a minion variation for vampiric builds works best rather then straight up, something along the lines of;
The idea being you act as a giant CC shield and let the minions do there thing. The thing about minions and vampiric builds is there’s alot of room for adjustment (more offensive or control ect).
Power based Vampire builds are bad. I never said they were difficult to play, infact I said they were some of the easiest. Ascii, for someone that acts like he has alot of knowledge with Necro, you act like a child, far worse than you portray me.
By the way, since you’re directly going to insult me, I’m going to say that your builds are simply badly designed, if you’d like me to explain why, I’d be glad to.
Contact me ingame for Necro, Ranger, Mesmer, and Thief advice.
Vampiric builds are neither bad nor difficult to play (unless your running a trademarked mighty altroll’s mighty meta build, which are all meta by default). Personally i think a minion variation for vampiric builds works best rather then straight up, something along the lines of;
The idea being you act as a giant CC shield and let the minions do there thing. The thing about minions and vampiric builds is there’s alot of room for adjustment (more offensive or control ect).
Power based Vampire builds are bad. I never said they were difficult to play, infact I said they were some of the easiest. Ascii, for someone that acts like he has alot of knowledge with Necro, you act like a child, far worse than you portray me.
Vampiric builds are neither bad nor difficult to play (unless your running a trademarked mighty altroll’s mighty meta build, which are all meta by default). Personally i think a minion variation for vampiric builds works best rather then straight up, something along the lines of;
The idea being you act as a giant CC shield and let the minions do there thing. The thing about minions and vampiric builds is there’s alot of room for adjustment (more offensive or control ect).
Power based Vampire builds are bad. I never said they were difficult to play, infact I said they were some of the easiest. Ascii, for someone that acts like he has alot of knowledge with Necro, you act like a child, far worse than you portray me.
Vampiric now scales with power.
6 points.
Dear lord have mercy, Vampires are viable and OP.
Contact me ingame for Necro, Ranger, Mesmer, and Thief advice.
Vampiric builds are neither bad nor difficult to play (unless your running a trademarked mighty altroll’s mighty meta build, which are all meta by default). Personally i think a minion variation for vampiric builds works best rather then straight up, something along the lines of;
The idea being you act as a giant CC shield and let the minions do there thing. The thing about minions and vampiric builds is there’s alot of room for adjustment (more offensive or control ect).
Power based Vampire builds are bad. I never said they were difficult to play, infact I said they were some of the easiest. Ascii, for someone that acts like he has alot of knowledge with Necro, you act like a child, far worse than you portray me.
Vampiric now scales with power.
6 points.
Dear lord have mercy, Vampires are viable and OP.
So what makes you think conditions are so much more superior then power for vampiric builds, judging from your meta setting “Condition Vampire” build you would actually go 30 points into Blood Magic just for the dismal chance returns on Vampiric Ritual and the almost 100% unusable Blood to Power.
Because it synergizes better. If you haven’t noticed, there is no decent toughness/precision/power amulet in PvP. Using Rabid’s Amulet, I can grant myself alot of survivability based on toughness and vampirism heals, whilst providing decent crit chance. It also synergizes with Undead runes. Lastly, Vampiric Rituals adds to your survivability, and is quite underrated. I’d advise you to test it out, say against pet builds.
Power Vampires do NOT work in tPvP, because Knight’s gear in PvE/WvW is different from Knight’s gear in PvP. If there were no difference, and it actually were Power, Precision, Toughness, then power Vamps would be quite effective.
Contact me ingame for Necro, Ranger, Mesmer, and Thief advice.
Alright guys, enough of this. Please take your petty squabble somewhere else. I doubt LaserBolt is interested in your personal feelings toward each other. I know I’m not.
LaserBolt, the vampiric minion master looks to me to be quite good. It could be the perfect fit for your playstyle. I put a little more stock in the suggestion of Anchoku to use scepter/dagger and staff, precisely because of the reasons he states; it’s easier to hit things with a scepter than with an axe or a dagger. I would just try out all suggestions and see which fits best.
As a fellow ’i’m too old for this’ gamer, this has worked for me: 30/20/20/0/0
Get necro runes, all staff/marks traits and increased condition damage/time.
Now here’s the best part: i don’t even switch weapons! Arthritis friendly!
3 minions, op fear wall and consume cond heal.
Play style is straightforward: drop marks.
For spvp though, playing smart is greater than teenage reflex. Support your team. objectives>ego and your 1vx kills. Know when to run and know when dying will help your team more than living (for example, kiting 3 people away from objectives, staying up as long as you can and keeping them busy and away for your team to take nodes). Chill enemies trying to get to nodes, fear them away from nodes and stomping. Raise your downed teammate if you cant rally them. Etc etc…
No vampiric build works in competitive tpvp, period.
With that post you’ve made me laugh at myself for ever thinking you knew anything about Necromancers. Stop implying you need precision for any kind of vampiric build because you don’t. Vampiric Precision matches enhanced Vampiric at 40% critical chance, and the difference in effective health is over 7k (and lets not forget vitality for DS-Health).
As a fellow ’i’m too old for this’ gamer, this has worked for me: 30/20/20/0/0
Get necro runes, all staff/marks traits and increased condition damage/time.
Now here’s the best part: i don’t even switch weapons! Arthritis friendly!
3 minions, op fear wall and consume cond heal.
Play style is straightforward: drop marks.
For spvp though, playing smart is greater than teenage reflex. Support your team. objectives>ego and your 1vx kills. Know when to run and know when dying will help your team more than living (for example, kiting 3 people away from objectives, staying up as long as you can and keeping them busy and away for your team to take nodes). Chill enemies trying to get to nodes, fear them away from nodes and stomping. Raise your downed teammate if you cant rally them. Etc etc…
‘teenage reflex’. Love it. Do you not switch weapons at all? Because you could always just use two staves and switch for some extra endurance with sigil of energy.
yes i do switch. very rarely though. i use axe and focus. but they’re mostly there because i used them playing minionmancer. i switch to them in 1v1 vs tanks for the vulnerability and as an ‘oh kitten’ when i’m running away and i’ve used up all my cc – one weapon has hydromancy and axe 3 for slow.
a lot of the playstyle revolves around, as you’ve said, placement. For example, the map with the trebs (yes i’ve got memory issues too lol) if i’m not on the trebs, i’m jumping on structures. stay up on those things, you can move between protecting your treb, the clock tower and 1 more node. I try to stay up there as much as possible because it is safe. You are hard to reach and if they get to you, you can just fear them off.
As I try things, I really like the automatic life-siphoning minion master. With the build I am using from minion-build expert Sikari, I have an effective health in the mid 30,000 range and good toughness. This buys me TIME to grasp the situation strategically, “read” what’s going on in the fight, and apply the right CC and debuffs and keep my minions going, while positioning myself effectively.
The minions hit hard and I just replace them as necessary. I can support my team pretty well, and can 1v1 take/hold a point pretty well.
No vampiric build works in competitive tpvp, period.
With that post you’ve made me laugh at myself for ever thinking you knew anything about Necromancers. Stop implying you need precision for any kind of vampiric build because you don’t. Vampiric Precision matches enhanced Vampiric at 40% critical chance, and the difference in effective health is over 7k (and lets not forget vitality for DS-Health).
If you want to do damage/crit procs with sigils, then you need critical chance. Vampirism will never be good for any sort of bunker build, therefore it has to be a sustain build. What is a sustain build without damage?
Contact me ingame for Necro, Ranger, Mesmer, and Thief advice.
Now that AI doesn’t require a ton of work, Minions are probably the easiest thing to do. You have a lot of CC to counter other people’s builds, but you can pretty easily do the offensive work (that isn’t based on countering things) by keeping minions up, and rotating through a few skills every time they come off CD.
There are plenty of builds for you to use, Sikari’s is a solid one, and it will probably work for what you want.
Now that AI doesn’t require a ton of work, Minions are probably the easiest thing to do. You have a lot of CC to counter other people’s builds, but you can pretty easily do the offensive work (that isn’t based on countering things) by keeping minions up, and rotating through a few skills every time they come off CD.
There are plenty of builds for you to use, Sikari’s is a solid one, and it will probably work for what you want.
I would definitely agree, Sikari’s build is probably one of the best MM builds available for tPvP currently, with the added benefit of being easy to use.
Contact me ingame for Necro, Ranger, Mesmer, and Thief advice.
Adobo’s strat of using staff is solid. You can build for power or more conditions or both, whatever you chose make sure you have decent toughness. This is actually a base point for many of my WvW builds faster staff recharge is useful. In a large Spvp server with 8 v 8 its gets zergy at times laying down marks all over in the chaos works.
Otherwise I highly recommend conditions minions for a solid spvp build.
I dont know why people think minions are not viable with a group of wvw players that never do tpvp I ran a pure minion condition build got to around 300 rating beating some really beast teams and players that live tpvp. Are there better options for close point holder? Yes…. however playing a class you know like the back of your hand will always end in better results then rolling fotm this becomes evident when you start beating people in 1 v 1s that they should win.
Basically you sit in soldiers gear so you are as tanky as you can get. Generate lifeforce fast, use 2 wells to do damage/strip boons while using daggers 3 to immobilize. Best part is when you swap to DS suddenly you have around 60sh% crit chance. Every blast grants you might also every crit possibly gets you even more might. As long as you are shooting your #1 you will maintain at least 10-14 stacks of might. You also shoot anyone in line and stack vul with every shot.
To give rought damage with soldiers amulet… well above 50% hp you will be doing ~3k hits. Below 50% ~4k.
Its not uncommon to reach 25 stacks of might on your own. Life transfer with this spec can spike up to 6k rather easily. And thats with aoe factor.
Hell you can switch to berzerker gear and still maintain fairly tankish attitude. But it won’t be the same. If you are getting hit your DS will fall off FAST. Which translates into less hard damage and more stable consistent damage. Soldiers version provides tankiness with spike damage.
