Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRBHhhu1IHNF32aj5Ns3moWogsODgIPhWg65oNqWA-T1iDABcquDUKDcVJoBPBAAMBRlSjnUi9h+nd2fIiTCAMqEQIABjBA-w

I wanted it to be a little tankier than the norm but still deal respectable damage. The build only has 30% crit chance, but Pack runes and the 15-point minor trait in Curses provide fury uptime for 50% crit chance. Death Perception takes care of the rest.

The build has perma swiftness from warhorn and the warhorn trait, negating the need for Traveler runes. Unfortunately I had to sacrifice the 20% damage trait to achieve this. I’m not sure if that loss of damage will be a problem or not. To somewhat offset the loss, I chose Axe Training over Chill of Death.

Thoughts?

Edit: This will primarily be for solo roaming. I know necro isn’t the best choice for that, but I still find it really fun and challenging.

There is room for improvement. First of all, perma swiftness from warhorn and using spectral walk? why not wurm or spectral armor. Secondly, the combination dagger/focus and axe/wh is.. difficult. Axe doesnt work so good with warhorn, with axe you want your distance and with warhorn you want to stick on the target. Focus 4 hits hard, but is hard to get it to hit, so is focus 5. Staff+ d/wh is much better, you have your swiftness, you have your ranged damage and chill/poison, and a condi clear(which you lack). And you get chill of death

You sacrifice way too much for the warhorn trait

Without it you have 19.5 seconds of swiftness from horn and 39 from Spectral Walk – considering you will use locust swarm twice before walk is off cool down you have 100% swiftness uptime

Close to Death is too good to give up – Use Chill of Death instead of Axe Mastery it is more reliable as it will proc if you have dagger or axe and the timing is so very nice with Close to Death for the bursties!

Alternatively if you take strength runes and spectral mastery you can get more damage while maintaining nearly 100% swiftness uptime – just throw in a battle/strength sigil somewhere for might

i tend to opt for more precision in place of crit damage. out of ds damage is just as important, and dagger auto hits really kitten crits. also you dont really need any extra vitality as a necro, your base is high and condi control is easy but its your choice.

warhorn with axe is fine depending on who youre fighting. against someone with heavy melee pressure like a s/d thief you dont want dagger warhorn because you have other snares for that. ranged damage is only useful if you can stay at range while negating their damage.

dagger focus can work with the immob and long cast times of focus, but it is kind of a strange combo. again i guess it depends on who youre fighting, if the person (class&spec) has a reliable ranged and melee weapon and tends to back off when you dagger spam then i say go for it. depends on what works for you in the situation youre in. obviously if its not working then change it up. if youre not going to use focus then i suggest grabbing chill of death, but not both unless youre up against a big booner.

yeah like others are saying i wouldnt sacrifice close to death for warhorn trait. something ive been messing around with is grabbing spectral mastery or dagger mastery with dual daggers, but that gm trait is a lot of damage.

if youre not using staff then i suggest keeping that warhorn for melee pressure. if youre adamant about using it though then i suggest daggers over axe. you dont want to be stuck with ds as your only source of damage. lastly you will probably need some condi removal, dont rule out offhand dagger for this.

Thanks for the responses!

Lol, I forgot that Spectral Walk gave swiftness. I’ll scrap the warhorn trait and grab the 20% damage one (and swap Axe Mastery for Chill of Death as well). That’ll lower my crit chance though, so I’ll have to make some tweaks to get it back up. I don’t think I can do that without losing a lot of toughness though, so I’m considering just going yolo mode with full zerker and Strength runes. Is solo roaming as a full zerker necro feasible, or should I add some toughness just to be safe? How much toughness should I aim for?

I think I’ll use dagger/warhorn as my first weapon set. It seems like a good life force builder and the weapons synergize with each other. As for the other set, I think I’ll go with staff like some of you suggested. I’m new to necro, and I thought staff was only useful for condi builds, but I did some reading on the forums and it looks like staff is also a must-have for power builds due to the utility it brings. I guess staff is to necro like shortbow is to thief?

Edit: In any case, this is my tweaked build. Full zerker with some knight’s trinkets. Not sure I’ll be comfortable running around with only 2k armor, but maybe the offensive pressure and Death Shroud will suffice for survival.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBIhZakjmibbtx8G2bTgLUQ/mBQLEVIQ9WcGPLA-TVSDwAs2fgqSjDPBgnKzSoE8l6Pg03AwEkkTBAZAynAA-w

I disagree about Vitality not being that worthwhile for Necromancer, especially roaming one and Power.

It not only boosts up your survival vs. Condition spammers (who you will face 90% of time in T1 EU roaming for example), but also affects the amount of Life Force you get. It’s not minor, believe me. If you rotate right, that Vitality will give you more defense than Toughness in 1v1s and roaming.

Many ask me why do I run Runes of Speed in PvP. Well, that’s the reason. And I save my skills for when they’re necessary.

As a bonus I will tell you that Staff isn’t necessary for Power necro at all, it all comes down to your playstyle. I like fast-paced Necro with high single-target burst so I run Axe for example.

when i face condi specs its a simple swap to plague signet and well of power. assuming thats not possible there is still consume conditions, deathly swarm, death shroud itself, not letting confusion and torment do its full damage, and avoiding big skills and outnumbered situations.

i see what youre saying about vitality granting more life force thus being doubly effective. im probably wrong here, but here goes anyways.

having low armor vs zerk roamers makes you more susceptible vs damage that is either unable to be dodged or is considered not worth it, even if that not worth it damage hits hard. over time if your enemy either has decent rotations or outplays you, having extra vitality wont matter because of how much pressure you would be getting and the fact that you would be unable to regain that lost hp in time. high vitality also assumes perfect conditions where every enemy burst is dodged and every high life force generating / damage mitigating skill hits said enemy. having more vitality, and this is based on the way gear stats are prioritized, its most likely that you will be sacrificing precision. at 50% crit chance with fury, your out of death shroud damage takes a plunge, mainly dagger auto attack. more reasonably put, the last strike of the hard hitting dagger auto only crits half as much. as im sure youre aware that attack does generally around 3.5k damage. that adds up to a lot assuming you are able to land it. now that may seem fine to you, being at 30% crit chance with fury + deathly perception youre at a perfect 100% crit chance in deathshroud and dealing good ranged damage. this assumes death shroud is either up or isnt being actively avoided with kiting or high evade builds. lastly, based loosely and generally on what ive heard and seen, some people tend to camp in death shroud for long amounts of time and pewpew life blast. combined with the last sentence, this is a really bad way to go about it because the more you camp in death shroud the weaker you become, again assuming youre not actively hitting your enemy again and again. if youre not, then your primary defensive mechanic is slowly but surely disappearing as well as your chance at avoiding a good executed spike.

all that said im a noob who cant dodge haha.

Agreed with Stand The Wall that camping in DS is generally bad for your damage output.

The build ive been running lately is abit more tanky than what i usually run but surprisingly versatile.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAoYWjc0UbbxNm3wfbCkhS6O4B22IDgCgymIKA-TFDEABPpMSQlgYqWBBPAAmUaolSk+0C0mugc2fAgjAQjqq8wpAgUA6pMC-w

Excuse the celestial items, borrowed from my ele.
I find this setup good against most specs, you loose some dmg output from the missing spite line, especially Close to Death and Chill of Death. But i have really come to like the Death Magic line. With a few trait/utilities switches it becomes quite a good small team/zerg spec aswell.

Shrouded Removal is often switched to Staff Mastery
Reaper’s Precision switched to focused rituals for small team/zerg
Spectral Mastery often switched to Unyielding Blast

Spectral Armor/Corrupt Boon switched to Well of suffering and corruption for small team/zerg.

With Furious Demise, pack runes and 58% base crit Death Perception with this setup becomes rather useless.