Guild Wars 2

Hi All,

I have taken every class (except Engineer) to level 80 now, and am an avid WvW’er on all my toons. I leveled them all almost completely in WvW….. except my Necro.
Somehow i just felt super weak and didnt enjoy it, so for the first time i decided to PvE to 80 and enjoy the story and maps.

At level 80 i bought full Carrion exotic armor, trinkets and weapons, then i bought a full set of the Karma prec/tough/cond. I specced into a variant of the “fear me spec” with s/d and staff, and went straight to WvW. I have to say, im still not enjoying it for some reason.

I do realy well on all my toons in WvW, i even do much better than average on my ranger. But i just cant seem to get the Necro to work for me.

1vs1 i stick mainly to s/d and stack on the DOT’s (my cond damage is 1200) and try to wear them down, but it isnt working against 70% of classes i face.
In zergs i DOT up as much as possible and use Epidemic every time its off CD, however i seem to die so easily to splash AoE, even with 1.6k toughness.

Am i doing something wrong here? Any advice on a new build or a link to a particular playstyle that might help me would be awesome.

What are you aiming for exactly on your Necromancer, we excel at multiple roles in WvW, for example;

• Havoc squad
• Solo roaming
• Power zerg farming
• Bunker zerg control

Fear builds really aren’t effective in WvW, its mainly a SPvP thing. You would be better off going for full condition damage over duration and bursting down targets with the usual bleed rotation.

I use an almost glass cannon power build using mainly staff and the ground targeted wells in wvw.
The problem you might be having with dieing in zergs is down to scepter being shorter range than most classes. So to get in range you will pretty much be targeted by a large amount of people.
Also i cant stand condi builds in the current meta of almost everyone playing a thief or ele. Those classes have to be burst down or just leave and against zergs well, theres alot of condi removal and regen around.

Grab a staff, grab the greater marks trait, stick with your servers zerg and plant marks all over any walls your zerg happens to be attacking. Stay near the back of the zerg and be one of the first people to run when things go bad, otherwise you probably won’t escape. Use staff marks wisely and dont blow them all at once. Bathe in a torrent of loot bags from tagging so many enemies.

Thanks for all the replys guys.

@Ascii im more interested in roaming / small scale skirmishes.
I only realy follow the zerg when im bored, otherwise i take supply camp solo or 3 – 4 man keeps.

Ascii.9726:

What are you aiming for exactly on your Necromancer, we excel at multiple roles in WvW, for example;

• Havoc squad
• Solo roaming
• Power zerg farming
• Bunker zerg control

Fear builds really aren’t effective in WvW, its mainly a SPvP thing. You would be better off going for full condition damage over duration and bursting down targets with the usual bleed rotation.

In zergs the fear build is nothing special but in small scale fights it is great. If you string together a couple 2 second fears it changes a whole encounter.

What traits and utilities are you using? Are you using the food buffs? I run something very similar and I have a lot of success in small scale wvw. I usually run with corrupt boon/epidemic/flesh wurm and plague in a 0/30/20/0/20.

Although you’ve said you’re not a huge zerg man, make sure you play with plague form as your elite – just tearing into an enemy zerg spamming the blindness condition and having “Missed!” appear in a sea around you is awesomely satisfying. It is also on such a long cooldown that you won’t find youself getting bored of doing so, either.

There will be loot bags.

Check out Sheobix’s Juggermancer build. It will help you stay alive longer while laying down some support for your allies(you may need to alter some utilities) and doing sustained damage with your allies.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Juggermancer-Final-Blog-Link/page/6#post1480305

I’m loving 30/25/0/0/15 for my power build. I run a mix of Knights/Berserker/Soldiers gear so it’s not full glass cannon, but it MELTS people. The trick is to use your immobilize and fears to keep them in your wells and they’ll be down before they know it. Running Dagger/Warhorn with the traited 4s daze and staff. I initially thought survivability would be an issue but it’s really not as long as you play smart.

The one thing I miss is greater marks. I spent a long time trying to figure out how I could work it in, but I couldn’t find something else I was willing to sacrifice for it. For running with the zerg, you can swap out the warhorn trait for area targeted wells which helps to make up for it a little bit.

That and I can’t stand the jagged horror from speccing into Death Magic.

If you can link your build, that’d be good. Are you remembering to use consumables?

You talk about being unable to kill a lot of people. As skilled as you may be, about 15% of the people you run into out there will be impossible (or at least very difficult) for you to kill with conditions – namely certain specs of Elementalists, Guardians and Thieves. This is just an inevitability with the whole cleanse vs. condition binary. If you can recognize when your opponent’s are running these specs, you can either just CC and run away as the fight won’t go anywhere, or prepare some sort of burst.

In zerg vs. zerg combat, you’re better replacing the usual single-target dueling utilities like Corrupt Boon with wells and nothing but wells. Swap out one of your Curses traits to make them ground targeted, drop them in the enemy masses as you approach them. Use marks as well if distance permits, then switch to Plague Form and spam blind. Bonus points if you also slotted in the ‘chill on blind’ trait. Your role is basically area denial, boon removal/condition spam and one-off moments as a pestilence-ridden frontliner. You absolutely drown in loot bags if you do this in an organized group.

Epidemic sounds appealing in zerg fights, but people either die or cleanse conditions too fast for it to be useful.