Guild Wars 2

I’m a returning Necromancer, looking for an efficient way to level up and spend skill points. I played Necro in the beta and for the first few weeks of launch, but I switched out of frustration with the state of the class (and rolled a Thief… joke is on me, I know). Necro seems like it’s in a better place now, but things have changed so much in a year that I’m a little overwhelmed with the choices (traits especially), and looking for a bit of advice. Already been there done that, so I want to minimize the level-up portion.

I have a level 80 main and plenty of resources, so staying in level-appropriate blue/green gear is no problem, and I have a grasp of the basics of play as a result of doing backflips for a living over the past year. But I don’t know what to buy or what to spec for PvE. I am not concerned with WvW or expensive endgame gear at the moment, so I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

Any suggestions? The gist of what I’ve been able to glean is that Power setups centered around Dagger main-hand seems to be the du jour build, but what about offhand? Utility skills? Are minions any good now, or are they still garbage?

Thankee for whatever tips people can provide.

In my experience minions are the most reliable build for rolling over most PvE content. As they’re essentially free sustained DPS and meatsheilds. They’re certainly a lot better than they were at launch and it’s rumored they’re getting a big health buff in PvE soon so there’s that.

On the other hand power based builds that focus on wells are the most popular power based build, at least from my understanding. They have a better “burst” than minions but longer downtime so while MM is probably better for plowing through hordes of trash wells will take down tougher enemies faster.

Hybrid Power/Condtion builds have also become popular although I’m not really familiar with how they’re set up or what they use.

Weapon wise I think the most common weapon sets for MM is Axe/Focus and Dagger/Warhorn for wells.

This is just all what I’ve observed on forums and in game and I’m by no means a build expert but this is at least the basic ideas.

From zero to almost hero (I mean, from lvl 1 to lvl 60 or something like that), I had found the minion master (why not minionmancer?) build to be the best for PvE (well, not really the build, since you still have very little traits to spec, but the play-style).

Minions are a huge advantage on dps and tanking, and also taking away the aggro from you, even with their current limitations and problems. You can even spec yourself with another build, and still your minions will help you a lot.

When you reach something around lvl 60, you already will have enough traits to respec into something else. You can keep the minion master build, but you will find that the minions are not so helpful against big bosses or another players, so if you start going to dungs, fracts, PvP or WvW, your build will not shine at its best.

If you switch to any powermancer build (the tankly one, or the glass cannon, or even a vampiric build) you will do some good direct damage. Normally you will use Axe/* or Dagger/* (what is * depends on you and your build. The most used ones are Dagger/Warhorn, Dagger/Focus, or Axe/Focus. I use Dagger/Dagger), and the wells, and the DS will be another attack form.

If you switch to any condimancer build (all-conditions, or focused on only one, as the terrormancer) you will be using arguably the most necro-ish build, and the one better suited for PvP. With conditions, Scepter/Dagger is the most used weapon set. The drawback of this builds is the condition-level cap that makes some condition-based chars redundant.

For last, but not the less, you have an hybrid build. The hybrid mixes the best of the power- and condition-based builds, all in only one build. With it you will do roughly 65% of the damage the powermancer does, and 65% of the conditions the conditionmancer does (thx Nemesis for the %). So, you are good on both aspects of the necro, and you are best suited for any enemy, but you don’t outrun the specialist builds.

(for me, the staff is an all-around weapon that you can use on any build. Is not mandatory, but very useful).

I had found the conditionmancer too slow to kill the mobs unless very specific situations, and with the minionmancer on dungs I normally are alone after the first big AoE, so I prefer to use a powermancer and hit directly my enemies, but that is just my opinion.

Basically I don’t care about level 80 content yet; I need to get to level 80 first. I’m not going to be doing up-leveled WvW and getting pasted like a booger. If I want to take a break and pwn some people, I’ll play my Thief in the meantime. I just want to make the “reach level 80” process as painless as possible.

It seems like Dagger/something with Wells or Minions and a Power focus is the way to go. I’ll start with minions first, I think. Hate pets, but what are you gonna do.

Thanks for the feedback!