Guild Wars 2

The other ‘Power Necro WvW’ thread made me think about the concepts behind different necro zerg builds. I want to start a discussion about the basic mechanics for us to help each other understand the options we have, and to enable new players set up their own build for their specific needs. Maybe we end up with a community-built guide for new wvw necros and can raise the level of competition and competence on the field :)

Purpose
The purpose of the wellmancer is to dish out aoe direct damage and aoe control while being able to survive zerg v zerg encounters. The wide range of gear, food and trait setups in WvW allows necros to build very offensively in an effort to just melt whoever is unlucky enough to be stuck inside the well spam massacre, or to build tanky to frontline with the big dudes and facetank whatever comes our way.
And altruism aside; it’s a great way to collect bags :)

Pros
- Well of Corruption: WoC and a mesmer’s Null Field are – to my knowledge – the best ways to strip the enemies’ boons (stability, protection, retaliation)! Those are one of the pillars of the pain train’s success.
- Plague form + chilling darkness in the enemy’s lines. Used to lower the pain train’s damage or to keep the enemy’s backline clustered and blinded. Let our big dudes do the dirty work.
- aoe burst with wells
- pretty well rounded tool kit for all things WvW zerg
Cons
- very cooldown based. The strength of the build lies in the frontloaded damage and utility of wells, plague form and few weapon skills and DS#4. The difference between having the core skills up and having them on cooldown is huge.
- relies on others for stability (unless we go 30pts Soul Reaping for Foot in the Grave)
- relies on others for protection uptime (outside of wells – if we even go for that trait)
- relies on others for sustained healing (no water field, ‘no’ blast finisher)
- we’re necros, everyone wants to see us dead

Skill set
Staff
Axe & Warhorn (alt: offhand dagger)
-
Consume Condition
-
Well of Corruption – the only MUST HAVE as far as I’m concerned
Well of Suffering – lots of damage
[to do]
-
Plague form

Sustain and Survivability

• Vitality and Toughness: see Stats and Gear section for my conclusions
• Siphons: Necro zerg combat generates a lot of single hits (well pulses, DS#4, Axe#2, Staff etc). Combined with a high crit chance and most of the hits being frontloaded, siphons offer survivability in the time when it counts most – the clash of the zergs.
• Life force: Warhorn 5, Last gasp, 1 spectral skill, wreaking havoc in the enemy’s lines. Sometimes it’s just best to hide in DS and wait for better weather. Tradeoff: no healing in DS baby :<
• Healing skill: Consume conditions as the go-to heal. I don’t like the well at all as it is a light field, so it is pointless for regrouping and healing up (it will block the water fields and negate more healing than it generates). Using it for a push (retaliation, condition removal) could be an option, I could never make it works though. ymmv. What was our third heal again?
• Water field + blast finishers: we better hope that our teams got those covered, because if not, we can do nothing but stare and watch the disaster unfold before our eyes. Oh, there’s Staff#4 if there’s an enemy in the water field to trigger our 20+ second blast finisher. Yay, that’s what being useful must feel like!
• Transfusion: I don’t care about no team mates. If your commanders actually happen to know about it just say it always gets interrupted .01 seconds in by a random stun.

Support and Control

• Damage. We bring the pain. Power-based pain. For you and your zerg to enjoy. You’re welcome!
• Conditions. Most notable: chill and blind, plus poison and weakness. The durations are short enough to not feed the enemy zerg conditions to convert into boons.
• Area Control. Wells, Marks, Plague radius. No one wants to stand in those, which leaves the enemy the choice to just live with it and buy what we have to offer, or to move to a more favorable position (think area denial + loosening their formation).
• Besieging walls. We are not grenadiers but our aoe still can bring the pain to those pesky castle wall campers.

Stats and Gear

• Vitality: a big hp pool helps survive condition bombs and damage bursts. Vitality scales better even for direct damage bursts (think effective HP a.k.a. eHP). The necromancer has a high base HP pool and there is the 2500 HP bonus in the wvw skill tree. Vitality is one of the best choices for increasing survivability.
• Toughness: becomes better than vitality when heals are considered, because it actually lowers the incoming damage. In a short burst scenario it’s all about eHP – you have enough eHP, you live. You don’t have enough eHP? Sucks to be you.
  The longer a fight goes on, the more important the ratio ‘incoming heals to incoming damage’ becomes – favoring toughness over vitality.
• Critical chance: The higher the critical chance, the higher the chance for damage spikes (frequency). Necromancers are in a weird position when it comes to critical chance for two reasons:
  1 The most devastating attacks are multi-hit skills, so the variance in damage is rather low between casts (compared to binary single hit skills, which either crit for a kittenload or hit for their non-crit damage).
  2 Necros can gain up to 70% bonus crit chance for a short amount of time in DS. 15 in Curses + 30 in Soul Reaping enables us to gear very defensively with a high critical damage stat (cavalier) to abuse the Wells>DS combo.
  Besides, it offers survivability through siphons (Blood Magic V) and Sigils of Blood.
• Critical damage bonus: The higher the critical damage bonus, the higher the damage spikes (intensity). kitten .
• Power: equals base damage. Spreadsheet it up to find out what combination works best for you if you care enough. Nerd.
• Boon duration: Meh. I just take what the DM trait line gives me. Axe#3 retaliation has 100% uptime even without it. Foot in the Grave lasts long enough for stability stomps, so yeah.
• Condition duration: Hmm, switching to pizza to combat some of the most extreme -conditionduration setups. With just 1 food slot we can double the effective condition duration against melandru/lemongrass targets (35% vs 75%). I consider Lemongrass or Roasted Lotus to be better.
• Healing power, condition damage: I rather go magic find for better loot ._.

Traits worth mentioning

• Spite
  5 healing for finished enemies – just like the popular food buff. ICD?!
  VIII for axe cooldowns and 10% overall (!) damage increase.
  XII for max damage builds.
• Curses
  5 cleansing fodder
  15 for fury (can be triggered just after wells are cast)
  25 damage
  III for super Plague (and Well of Darkness). Pulsing aoe chill goodness, yummy! Must have imo.
  IV Weakening Shroud. Let’s just see what the patch makes of this gem.
  VI ground targeting for wells. Must have imo.
  VIII Banshee’s Wail. 3 second daze plus pain train plus wells = bags. If only we had more trait points available.
  (XII completely butchered at the moment, hoping for a better future)
• Death Magic
  25 translates to upwards of 100 power in tanky builds
  IV Protection on well cast. I can’t bring myself to like it :/
  V Staff mastery, more marks! The enemies will love dodging through them.
  VII Greater Marks. +60 radius translate to +75% area covered. Making marks unblockable for good measure. This trait makes sure that every defender on the keep wall knows we’re there. (Real reason I take it: I suck at aiming, and baaaaags)

• Blood Magic
  5 bit of regen, nothing to write home about.
  15 armor piercing damage and regen.
  25 if that’s active for longer periods of time your zerg has probably already won. Still, damage.
  V more regen, more damage. With the multi hit skills it’s not as bad as it looks at first sight. Okay, it is.
  VI SUPPORT NECRO just kidding, I pretend this one doesn’t exist.
  VIII Well recharge. I’ve heard experienced necros swear by it. I can’t really make use of it in T1 random blob encounters. Few encounters last longer than 30 seconds. Yeah :/
  IX 0/20/0/20/30 maybe?
  XII Wells siphon health. 1500~2000 total damage and healing per well cast.
• Soul Reaping
  15 Last Gasp. One of the best passive survival mechanics in our kitten nal
  25 more damage as long as you don’t have to defensively DS.
  III more DS#4, more bags, happy necro
  IV honorable mention
  VIII to reduce the DS cooldown to 7 (6?) seconds. With all the zerg relevant skills that we can trait for this actually looks really, really good.
  XI Foot in the Grave. Amazing stability uptime on paper. Ingame I don’t really like it.
  XII for max lulz burst builds. When I feel like kittening around and there’s only boring commanders online, this is the go-to build. When commanders rant about rallybait, they have a picture of a level 2 thief in their head – or me playing 30/10///30.

Gearsets
[To do; Knight, Soldier, Cavalier, Berserker]

Food buffs
[To do; Lemongrass Poultry, Saffron bread, Roasted Lotus, Pizza for plagueforming frontline?]

Useful necro knowledge
[To do; DS stomp, plague stomp, spectral wall to cheat falling damage, etc]

Final statements:
This is what I think about the state of the zerg necromancer. I’d like to hear your opinions and additions! Do you disagree with me? Got something to add?
(Jesus christ, that is one long post – who’s gonna read that kitten? o_O)

1. Going great so far! Can’t wait for the finish.

2. Adept Minor in Spite is pretty good considering how many we can tag. Why isn’t this in Blood, stupid devs?

3. I run a MH dagger sometimes because, honestly, selecting targets seems like too much work. Add dagger for the lazy necro. -_-

4. I know it was wrong but I once… threw WoB during a heal rally just to feel like I was contributing. I… killed a lot of teammates that day. =/ How the hell did we get a light field!??!?

5. You don’t like Foot in the Grave? Well, um… good! More for me, then!

Honestly dagger was made for the well necro. All of my well builds hinge on it. It has a immobilize on it…

Food: Consider saffron bread. Well necros spend a lot of time on their rump. With this you can now take 20% less dmg while eating dirt.

Don’t overlook Lich Form. It turns you into essentially a mobile ballista for 30 seconds. Also plague form isn’t so good if you don’t put any points into curses for chill, so then Lich is clear winner.

If you don’t stat precision, don’t stat crit dmg. Crit dmg is a sub optimal stat if you only crit while in DS.

Foot in the Grave is good IF you are a shroud dancer. 3 sec of stability on a 6 second timer is only true if you spend less then 1 second in DS at a time…which means for actual shroud fighting builds FitG is sub optimal.

Nagato no Kami.4980:

2. Adept Minor in Spite is pretty good considering how many we can tag. Why isn’t this in Blood, stupid devs?
> I’ve never paid attention to it. Does it have in ICD? Wiki states none. Will add that later!

3. I run a MH dagger sometimes because, honestly, selecting targets seems like too much work. Add dagger for the lazy necro. -_-
> Mh dagger for #1 spam, hoping something is in range? Sounds lazy and workable haha

4. I know it was wrong but I once… threw WoB during a heal rally just to feel like I was contributing. I… killed a lot of teammates that day. =/ How the hell did we get a light field!??!?
> so true. killing teammates doesn’t even give bags. the life of a necro

5. You don’t like Foot in the Grave? Well, um… good! More for me, then!
> It’s one of the traits that I wanna like but leaves me unimpressed whenever I actually take it. I will reword it to state its potential and me failing to make use of it

Lorelei.3918:

Honestly dagger was made for the well necro. All of my well builds hinge on it. It has a immobilize on it…
> 1 target immobilize in a zerg build. I just don’t see that worthwhile when the contestant is axe.

Food: Consider saffron bread. Well necros spend a lot of time on their rump. With this you can now take 20% less dmg while eating dirt.
> Will do. Makes sense as wells and marks are rather fire and forget and not actively channeled. Good call.

Don’t overlook Lich Form. It turns you into essentially a mobile ballista for 30 seconds. Also plague form isn’t so good if you don’t put any points into curses for chill, so then Lich is clear winner.
> Will add. It’s not for me but I can see the use in it.

If you don’t stat precision, don’t stat crit dmg. Crit dmg is a sub optimal stat if you only crit while in DS.
> and in lich form. I like it for cheesy burst but it’s a real one-trick pony. Wells + DS4 arguably is the biggest burst a wellnecro has, so cavalier + 70% crit chance bonus is my way of being sturdy and capitalizing that potential. Other opinions on this one? I will stress that it’s not a go-to build at least.

Foot in the Grave is good IF you are a shroud dancer. 3 sec of stability on a 6 second timer is only true if you spend less then 1 second in DS at a time…which means for actual shroud fighting builds FitG is sub optimal.
> I could see it work for something like 0/20/0/20/30 with lots of on-shroud and on-exit traits. I’ve never played that though, so waiting for more input

Good feedback, I will work it into the main post later (today?)!

Lorelei.3918:

Honestly dagger was made for the well necro. All of my well builds hinge on it. It has a immobilize on it…

Food: Consider saffron bread. Well necros spend a lot of time on their rump. With this you can now take 20% less dmg while eating dirt.

Don’t overlook Lich Form. It turns you into essentially a mobile ballista for 30 seconds. Also plague form isn’t so good if you don’t put any points into curses for chill, so then Lich is clear winner.

If you don’t stat precision, don’t stat crit dmg. Crit dmg is a sub optimal stat if you only crit while in DS.

Foot in the Grave is good IF you are a shroud dancer. 3 sec of stability on a 6 second timer is only true if you spend less then 1 second in DS at a time…which means for actual shroud fighting builds FitG is sub optimal.

Even without chill, the train still benefits from the continuous blind and poison (not to mention cripple and retal if you’re doing it right). This is far more utility to the zerg than Lich.

FitG is good if you use DS situationally. If you tend to drain it for might stacking or unnecessarily linger in it, it won’t work. It also prevents the need for niche food like saffron bread which has very narrow application and take broader utility food like Lemongrass. Oh, and lessens the need for Melandrus too as stun reduction isn’t a big priority.

Looking to use a Wellmancer build for WvW and could use some help. I only have 2 full sets: Soldiers and Berserkers. I want to be mainly on the front line, so should I mix Soldiers/Berserkers or is full Soldier viable? Also is 0/20/20/30/0 good?

Comparing vitality and toughness:
Asciis trait setup, full knight: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQFAWjMaV6haaa87JAZGX/8kCvHPmxwFD-jUBBYgAJQFRjtMqIasalYaYER1xAwE-w
Asciis trait setup, full soldier (not the ideal trait+gear combo imo, just to illustrate): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQFAWjMaV6haaa87JAZGX/8kCvHPmxwFD-jUxAofgsXR0YLjFRjVZjpeJiqjBgJ-w

Different people have different understandings of effective HP (in different games). I consider eHP the amount of direct damage a target has to do to down you from 100% HP. Thanks to gw2s super simple damage formulas you can just multiply your armor with your HP :>

Knight: 21k HP, 3130 Armor = 66m eHP
Soldier: 27k HP, 2850 Armor = 77m eHP

These numbers look huge, but just calculate the damage for your skills with an armor value of 1 and you will understand. Ingame armor values start at ~2k, and that’s where the huge difference to the damage numbers you’re used to comes from.

77m / 3130 = 24,500 HP
This is the equivalent of HP the Knight-geared player would have to have to have equal burst survivability to the Soldier-geared player. There is only 21k HP on full Knight gear though (3,500 HP short of that). That’s where the burst survivability advantage of the soldier gear comes from.

Conclusion so far:
Soldiers gear is better both for survivin condition burst and physical damage burst

Now to add healing:
I’m calculating the amount of healing you have to receive in a fight for both gear sets to break even in survivability, with X being that amount:
(21000 + X) * 3130 = (27000 + X) * 2850
=> X = ~40,000

What does that mean?
If you receive more than 40k healing during one encounter (Skill#6, siphons, heal on kill, water fields) full knight gear offer a survivabilty GAIN.

Inaccuracies and simplifications:
The calculation does not account for condition damage and siphon damage correctly. As those bypass armor they hit both players equally hard.
This is only problematic if you find yourself diing to condi bombs, which I have never experienced in a zerg with a necromancer’s natural HP buffer and potential condi transfers, plus condi cleanses from the zerg. I’ve only played for like 3 months, so it may have been ‘meta’ at some point to eradicate zergs via epidemic.

Anyone see any mistakes in that one?

Nagato no Kami.4980:

FitG is good if you use DS situationally. If you tend to drain it for might stacking or unnecessarily linger in it, it won’t work. It also prevents the need for niche food like saffron bread which has very narrow application and take broader utility food like Lemongrass. Oh, and lessens the need for Melandrus too as stun reduction isn’t a big priority.

I prefer to rely on others to bring the aoe stability. That way I can use Poultry Soup and hope to not be stunned all the time. Assuming stability stays up I am immune to stuns and conditions last 1/3 of their usual duration. Which I find ideal.
This is what makes Well of Corruption so strong (and important). From my experience the lack of stability breaks the whole concept of this equip setup.

Maybe it’s down to my playstyle and the groups I run with though, that I value the staff traits plus 200+ toughness more than access to stability. Never done serious GvG in guildwars.

I’m one of the core necro’s in my guild’s raid team, so I run my variant of the well-bomber a lot. I love dagger, but I find it just doesn’t fit – Axe #3 basically wins it for the AoE strip/cripple/retal stack. It’s pretty kitten good. Axe #2 helps to mop up as well.

I typically run WoS & WoC, and the third slot is filled on an as-needs basis.

In my experience, Foot in the Grave has to be almost a mandatory trait. Irrespective of shared party buffs, if you get caught on the edge of a static or hit on the heels by the train, you’re stuffed.

The synergy between Near to Death, Foot in the Grave, the increased LF pool and crit damage that 30 into SR grants, as well as the amount of LF you are (hopefully) generating as you mow people down is a fundamental for how this style of necro play works for me.

I typically run Knights, although I have a set of Soldiers on hand which I’ve not felt the need to use for a while. Balancing the use of DS between offensive and defensive provides a buffer that mitigates the need to run the extra Vit, and allows you to itemise toward other desirable stats.

@Bawi
Actually, I take the points out of Blood and run 0/20/20/0/30 so my armor is not lacking (3100+); it’s the HP that takes the hit. While I miss the siphon, I figure the loss of HP is better counterbalanced by the additional DS uptime. The addition of Last Gasp also increases survivability.

Also, it should be mentioned that a real advantage of going knights over soldiers is the bonuses that proc on crit. Things like Sigil of Blood add a lot to both damage and survivability.

@Kreamy
Well said. This is exactly what I’m talking about.

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Actually, I take the points out of Blood and run 0/20/20/0/30 so my armor is not lacking (3100+); it’s the HP that takes the hit.

The only problem I see with this is running a wellmancer build without the cooldown reduction on wells is negating the build slightly. The cooldown on wells are long enough when traited never mind when you do not have the trait available.

I find in fights when I run a wellmancer build that those well’s do not come around quick enough and that’s with the reduced trait. So not having it means that depending on your traits they are being wasted for a longer period of time.

I then had to make a choice between having FiTG or if I took it running a Well build that feels less effective. I decided at that point to ditch the Well build as in large scale combat I spent more time flying through the air and in small scale combat well’s weren’t effective at all. I really was never a fan of FiTG until I took it one time and if I don’t have it in a build I realise just how good the trait is. Unfortunately finding a way to get it into certain builds just negates the effectiveness of a few builds.

You can just go berserker or berserker/valk with dagger or if you really want staff you can go carrion or rampager… without going details.

without condidamage it’s probably like 30/10/0/0/30 with some condi dmg it could be 30/25/0/0/15.. or if you really want to try something new (non condi) like 30/15/10/15/0 or 30/10/10/20/0 or kitten even 30/10/0/20/10 for some ninja hp.

You don’t really need stability just watch your steps.

Doing soldiers or knights is overtanking with sloppy dps. You can have a lot fun with some well traits and soldiers though and look how your buddies die horribly while you escape with 90% hp.

@jalmari: I can’t pretend to agree on anything you just said. I will disregard that post.

@trait setup:
Let’s talk heavy duty facetankmancer (not some 30/10///30 backline dps spec). As in frontline, you will get hurt, there will be blood scenario.
[Spite 0] With just 70 trait points to spend the first trait line I would cut completely is Spite.
[Curses 10 / 20] Curses 10 for ground targeting is a must have (WoC before the zergs clash). This one is actually not up for discussion for me. Curses 20 for either Banshee’s Wail or Chilling Darkness is really tempting. Although Chilling Darkness starts to feel lackluster to me with the ridiculously short effective duration (-65% by default on frontliners). The plagues’ pulsing nature is still strong against cleansing spam as it just reapplies conditions every second. With an uptime of < 1/3 you gotta start asking yourself though if it’s worth it.
[Death Magic 0 / 20] Staff Mastery: Real talk, the relevant skills are #3 and #4. Maybe #5 if you see them lacking stability to loosen the formation. Greater Marks: Good to get through the random block spam I guess.
I like that trait line for the passive toughness and for the bags it offers in random blobs. Being kinda point-starved I feel like the active traits’ biggest perk is the tagging comfort against scattered groups and are one of the easier ones to leave out.
[Blood Magic 0 / 20 / 30] Vampiric Precision/ Well cooldowns/ Vampiric Rituals is what I am really liking at the moment. I never thought I would say that, but given the amount of healing and armor piercing, uncleansable damage this offers that trait line looks really tempting. Wells can proc 3 siphons per pulse (on hit, on crit, on well pulse) even on non-damaging wells (well, 2 for those). Plus this line offers vitality as a passive.
[Soul Reaping 0 / 30] This line is all or nothing for me. Last Gasp is nice, but I would go just 15 in SR for a wellmancer build. This line offers stability on demand’ish and a bigger LF buffer and LF gain.

The build I run at the moment is 0/20/20/30/0 to see how much siphoning is worth if you go all-out. Next build I wanna try is 0/10/0/30/30. It goes against what I’m used to (staff skills + chill), but I can see potential and all the FitG love has gotten to me

What’s your take on heavy duty well builds? How do you rate the different different traits and trait lines?
//edit: Which skills do you consider MUST HAVE – NO DISCUSSION!, and which do you consider nice to have?

Well, (pun intended) I normally run 0/20/0/20/30. Trait selections for me:

Curses is Chilling Darkness and Focused Rituals. Banshee’s Wail is a very close second to running both of these traits – I just can’t quite let go of those two at this stage.

Blood is Vampiric Precision and Ritual Mastery. I only go into here for the CD reduction of wells, because bombing is the name of the game – a quicker turn around on this means more sustained pressure when you’re fighting a quality opponent. Vampiric Precision is far from fantastic, but in terms of what else is on offer, it’s one of the better options. Running crit chance into the high 40’s % range means you get something back from it, such as it is.

Soul Reaping is Path of Midnight, Near to Death and Foot in the Grave. Path is great for extra AoE dps from Life Transfer, but the sleeper here is Tainted Shackles. That paltry 1 second immobilise can be enough to peel people out of the enemy train, and make them vulnerable to yours. Worthwhile reducing the CD on those abilities in my opinion. Near to Death and Foot in the Grave just work too well together to be ignored.

That is what’s working for me at the moment. If you asked me what I could live without, perhaps the 20 in Blood, but there would need to be a compelling alternative.

Must have traits is dependent on what well’s you plan running with. If you are going to run with Well of Darkness then Chilling Darkness is a must. At the same time Chilling Darkness becomes less worthwhile without it as it really only gets used after that in Plague form or Dagger 4.

From the Curses line I find for myself I can live without Focused Rituals, but then im more like a Bull in a China shop and just charge right in, so its easier for me to cast my wells whilst im in the thick of it rather than micro manage them. As I said earlier Chilling Darkness is more dependent if im taking Well of Darkness so both the curses traits I find optional for me.

From Death Magic line Staff Mastery is a must on my list and altho Staff is getting the short end of the stick lately the blast finisher on staff 4 goes nicely with Well’s. Greater Marks is optional but its pretty high up there for me to take. Ritual of Protection is another optional trait, if your going 30 in SR I find that has enough damage reduction with reduced cooldown on DS and Last Gasp when things go south. But if your not 30 in SR the extra protection from Ritual of Protection does help.

For Blood Magic line, the must have trait for me is Ritual Mastery as without it the Well’s are just too long of a cooldown. After that optional is Vampiric Rituals I also like to throw in Transfusion as its one of our best group support traits. I used to use Ritual of Life instead of transfusion as it activated on downed allies, not sure if that’s still the case. In WvW zerg combat taking 2 seconds to rez a downed opponent when your in trouble to get over 4k heal on yourself was a nice life saver. But the light field on it can cause havoc in groups so in the end I swapped to transfusion.

If your going 30 deep in SR then ive made it clear before that im a big fan of FiTG so that would be a must for me. If you go FiTG then another must is Near to Death and after that Path of Midnight.

Utilities depends on what traits ive picked but Well of Suffering, Well of Corruption and Well Of Power is my normal pick. If ive taken Chilling Darkness I swap out the WoP for Well of Darkness. Well Of Power is useful when im trying to break away as I tend to find that’s when you get hit with an immobilize and rather than waste my CC heal or staff 4 skill to remove it, I use WoP as the other alternative is waiting out the immobolize and getting trampled by the zerg.

@jalmari
If your team dies while you have 90% HP, your team is made up of a bunch of guys running glassy, rally-bait builds.

@Bawi
I’ve run that 0/20/20/30 build and it’s very solid. I especially love the numbers that fountain up from wells when dropped in a good spot. And, with all the passive condi removal well builds run, I’d occasionally take WoB to add to the well bomb.

If you ever get tired of this, a sort of odd point variant is 5/20/25/20/0. The Parasitic Bond is underrated as a heal and the bonus (20 kills = 20000 HP) from Death 25 is nice considering the amount of toughness we roll.

@Kreamy
I understand the idea about getting wells off CD ASAP but I have a difficult time making that call. While well CDs and siphon traits add to sustain, the necro’s light armor always gives me pause. Thus, (at least at the moment) I opt for the extra toughness and staff traits in Death. Besides, most of the time I run only two wells and SWall so it mitigates the absolute need for the well CD.

I like your point about the added peel potential of Path of Midnight. I’ll replace Unyielding Blast and see how it works for me.

@Nagato

Fair call. As I mentioned the 20 in Blood is the only change I would look at making to my current setup, and I would put those points into Death for the added toughness if I did change.

I think I’ve gotten used to the CD reduction too much, and for me the difference isn’t so great that I feel it’s compulsory to put those 20 points into Death or Blood either way.

Depending on how well they un-kitten Death Magic on Dec 10, I could be making the change after all…

Here’s my take on Wellomancer traits/skills (two parts):

Traits:

Focused Rituals – This gives your wells invaluable flexibility in WvW and allows “well bombing” either allies or enemies within 900 range. Not using this you will always find yourself in a situation where you’re not where you should be for allies/enemies to get the full “benefit” of your wells.

Ritual of Protection – Overlooked in a lot of Well builds when it really shouldn’t be. I wouldn’t bother on more offensive well builds, but on any support builds this adds a lot of self and team attrition. At 30 Death Magic the protection duration is automatically 4 seconds. That’s a total of 16 seconds of area protection. 12 seconds if you choose to have a non well utility or go without WoB.

Ritual Mastery – You wouldn’t think it but this trait is the difference between a well build working and not working. I don’t know how many times I have switched back to wells and forgot to put this back on, only to find myself get totally destroyed as my wells are always 5-15 seconds too late in CD. The 20% Recharge Reduction puts all wells into the higher CD sweet spot of 26 to 40 seconds rather than 35 to 50 seconds.

Vampiric Rituals – It doesn’t look like much and I didn’t even use this trait once until about 6 months after release. I never believed necro guildies that this added a lot of sustain to Well builds. I was wrong and when I did some calculations, the sustain from the siphons can turn every one of your wells into a heal skill. How? Well as of right now Vampiric Rituals at minimum siphons 50 health. It automatically triggers Vampric for another 30 health for 80 health per well pulse hit. On a maximum of 5 targets that’s 400 health per Well pulse. While fighting an enemy zerg and always hitting 5 targets this means WoB will siphon 4000 health, WoP/WoC/WoD 2000 health each and WoS 2400 health for a total of 10000-10400 extra healing if you equip and use 4 wells.

In Summary – The traits alone might have issues, but if you take all four of them your Wells become potent skills with multiple functions: Ranged utility, damage, damage mitigation and self healing.

Skills:

Well of Blood – If you don’t have high healing power don’t bother unless you have lots of well traits and even that’s a slight maybe. You will be better off with Consume Conditions especially in zergs. If you do have high healing power, are going support well and have well traits than you should take this and never look back in WvW. With about 1350+ healing power and all Well traits, this skill can self heal about 6600 health, heal you/allies inside the well 700 health per tick for 7000 health total, heal you 4750 health from siphons, deal 4000-4750 damage and give 4 seconds of protection, all on a 32 second CD. The light field can be used for condition removal or retaliation. Even if you cast it into a stacked enemy zerg at range, you will still heal yourself 11350ish from self heal + siphons alone if placed correctly. Never, ever use this when a commander calls for water fields. This is a sustain heal not a spike heal and you will only mess up the combos.

Well of Power – Very useful anywhere in WvW. To me it’s a must have especially with the stun break and brief stability. Before that you were 90% certain to die to stun locks and immobilization as a full wellomancer, because Well of Power happened to be your only way other than DS to get out of CC alive (converting lots of those nasty conditions into boons), but was disabled due to stuns. Now the stun break followed by condition conversion to boons gives you lots of protection aegis, switfness etc. to help get out of harms way and/or cast more wells and other skills to counter.

Well of Corruption – Very useful in taking down boons on enemy forces. Even deadlier on a condition based necromancer. If you’re condition based and know you’re going up against booned enemies (which is all the time in WvW), this is pretty much a must have. In very large zergs it’s usefulness deteriorates, except for when the enemy is on it’s last set of condition removals/heals. It can be the difference between an enemy zerg recovering or downing if placed right.

Well of Suffering – The most damaging AoE skill other than Life Transfer in a Necromancer’s repertoire, is unblockable and stacks vulnerability. A must have for offensive, power based wellomancers period. Condition based well necros can skip this skill in WvW. The added DPS doesn’t hurt though (but there’s other things you can take like WoD, Epidemic etc.).

Well of Darkness – This is a great damage mitigation skill vs. melee due to the spamming of area blinds like Plague skill 2. Even better with Chilling Darkness. However, I change it out the most on my personal build for other utilities when i’m not zerging or fighting melee.

In Summary: Once you know what wells to take, when to place them and where to place them, they can become fairly pivotal in WvW fights accross the board. Power based necros have a much easier time getting the most out of well DPS in zerg fights, but suffer in all other aspects of WvW compared to a condition based wellomancer. Only because the power builds rely on doing damage with wells (which enemies can easily run out of in non zerg fights), daggers or axe (which are non-cleave) and staff (very low base skill damage). Condition well builds do potent/versatile area condition damage with Staff/Scepter/Dagger with very little stat investment, but suffer greatly from condition removal in zerg fights until one zerg or the other breaks.

Kreamy.1946:

Well, (pun intended) I normally run 0/20/0/20/30. Trait selections for me:

Curses is Chilling Darkness and Focused Rituals. Banshee’s Wail is a very close second to running both of these traits – I just can’t quite let go of those two at this stage.

Blood is Vampiric Precision and Ritual Mastery. I only go into here for the CD reduction of wells, because bombing is the name of the game – a quicker turn around on this means more sustained pressure when you’re fighting a quality opponent. Vampiric Precision is far from fantastic, but in terms of what else is on offer, it’s one of the better options. Running crit chance into the high 40’s % range means you get something back from it, such as it is.

Soul Reaping is Path of Midnight, Near to Death and Foot in the Grave. Path is great for extra AoE dps from Life Transfer, but the sleeper here is Tainted Shackles. That paltry 1 second immobilise can be enough to peel people out of the enemy train, and make them vulnerable to yours. Worthwhile reducing the CD on those abilities in my opinion. Near to Death and Foot in the Grave just work too well together to be ignored.

That is what’s working for me at the moment. If you asked me what I could live without, perhaps the 20 in Blood, but there would need to be a compelling alternative.

I run exactly the same build, vampiric presicion I find useless tho so I instead I use transfusion, that 2-3k heal on party members > a few hp steal imo. Also good with path of midnight.

Bawi.9541

wall of text

You can play what fits your playstyle though By all means. It’s just that toughness stat, considering all variables, is maybe not the best thing ever.

jalmari.3906:

Bawi.9541

wall of text

You can play what fits your playstyle though By all means. It’s just that toughness stat, considering all variables, is maybe not the best thing ever.

Your experience may vary to that of mine, but I’d argue that a decent chunk of toughness is exactly what we need to be able to dice in and out of the kill zone.

A lot of our tools are not able to be used from the safety of the backline. You need to be able to eat some punishment to deal yours out, and mitigation from toughness lends itself to this.

Finding the balance between your damage potential (power, precision, crit chance, crit damage) and survivability is key. IMO toughness is a well bomber necro’s #1 survival stat.

@Balekai
Good analysis of well trait synergy. I have to disagree about Ritual of Protection, though. Given how you need to be in the AoE of RoP for the protection to actually proc, it’s a bit at odds with Focused Rituals’ ground targeting. While it’d be nice to grab RoP for the occasional protection (the only wells that you would consistently throw on yourself is Well of Power and Blood), I’m not sure this is worth taking, given the intermittent use and especially when Staff Mastery and Shrouded Removal are available. The ability to get staff skills off CD helps in every phase of necro play and Shrouded Removal can be the difference from staying on tag and getting peeled.

Nagato no Kami.4980:

@Balekai
Good analysis of well trait synergy. I have to disagree about Ritual of Protection, though. Given how you need to be in the AoE of RoP for the protection to actually proc, it’s a bit at odds with Focused Rituals’ ground targeting. While it’d be nice to grab RoP for the occasional protection (the only wells that you would consistently throw on yourself is Well of Power and Blood), I’m not sure this is worth taking, given the intermittent use and especially when Staff Mastery and Shrouded Removal are available. The ability to get staff skills off CD helps in every phase of necro play and Shrouded Removal can be the difference from staying on tag and getting peeled.

I completely agree with your staff arguements and have to agree when it comes to certain builds, especially more offensive oriented ones, you’re not going to have 30 invested in Death Magic probably ever to take Staff traits and RoL. In that case it would be very hard to pass up Staff Mastery or Greater Marks. Shrouded Removal i’m not to keen on if you happen to have staff and a dagger offhand. In addition to WoP or consume conditions, a necro should easily handle conditions throughout an encounter.

It’s easy for my condition based support wellomancer to go 0/10/30/30/0 though. I take Staff Mastery, Greater Marks and Ritual of Life for Death Magic. The damage mitigation of combined protection + weakness + 2920 armor + lots of regen can make enemies cry for 10-15 seconds as their DPS characters do 50-150 dmg instead of 1000-3000+ to you and any other heavy characters proced with RoL. Then you can pop a WoD to cover another 5-6 seconds, then DS and start repeating the process within 5-10 seconds.

That said any heavily armored necro doesn’t “have” to cast wells on themselves for sustain if they’re smart about staying at range. For example many times when under heavy condition pressure from a zerg, I will only cast WoP on myself and the rest of my Wells (even WoB) on them. That way I get the benefit of life siphons to combat condition damage while…tactically retreating towards allies.

However, having all the well traits definitely gives you many options for keeping yourself and others alive. Allies nearby need help at 800 range? WoP and WoB on them for 8 secs of protection, 700hp per pulse and condition conversion to boons. Enemies stacking to buff themselves at the same time? I will throw an WoC on them to convert their boons to conditions. Some hammer toons trying to flank me? I will throw WoD on top of myself for 4 seconds of protection and spam blinds, apply weakness and other CC from staff/scepter/dagger. Best part is that you can do that all at once within 3-5 seconds of casting and without moving an inch from the safety of 900-1100 range.

Kreamy.1946:

jalmari.3906:

Bawi.9541

wall of text

You can play what fits your playstyle though By all means. It’s just that toughness stat, considering all variables, is maybe not the best thing ever.

Your experience may vary to that of mine, but I’d argue that a decent chunk of toughness is exactly what we need to be able to dice in and out of the kill zone.

A lot of our tools are not able to be used from the safety of the backline. You need to be able to eat some punishment to deal yours out, and mitigation from toughness lends itself to this.

Finding the balance between your damage potential (power, precision, crit chance, crit damage) and survivability is key. IMO toughness is a well bomber necro’s #1 survival stat.

I have to agree. Toughness is a very good stat for Necromancer especially for Wellomancer. Necros pretty much have the highest hp pool in the game and there are many cases where higher health won’t help you (except vs. conditions). 2800-3000 armor on the other hand can easily mitigate 35-40% of incomming damage alone from all non condition sources. What people miss in comparison to vitality is this:

-Damage reduction from pure toughness improves the effectiveness of healing on a player, since source damage is reduced and the gap between damage received and damage healed closes.
-Extra health from pure vitality does not improve healing effectivess. The damage dealt to you will always be same, but it just has to eat through more health. Healing won’t sustain you anywhere close to toughness synergy as the damage dealt will far out weight any reasonable access to heals.

It’s interesting to see other people’s Well builds.

I’ve been using this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAod7djQaV6haOb8bKiJFebcQKcPuiUQMkRVocA-TkAifU/4+x8j8H7PDMWYMdA

It’s a Vampiric Well build – tons of life on hit and fast Lifeforce gain for DS. With some Chill to catch victims. Works wonderfully so far.

Funny thing about this build, is that I actually originally chose it just to put something skeletal/skull/reaper on my entire toolbar – it just turned out to be really powerful. The health gain is ridiculous.

ipan.4356:

It’s interesting to see other people’s Well builds.

I’ve been using this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAod7djQaV6haOb8bKiJFebcQKcPuiUQMkRVocA-TkAifU/4+x8j8H7PDMWYMdA

It’s a Vampiric Well build – tons of life on hit and fast Lifeforce gain for DS. With some Chill to catch victims. Works wonderfully so far.

Funny thing about this build, is that I actually originally chose it just to put something skeletal/skull/reaper on my entire toolbar – it just turned out to be really powerful. The health gain is ridiculous.

This is kind of a strange build. The traits are really all over the place.

You put 20 into spite and took CoD and SR. SR is one of the silliest traits I can think of. I mean, condi removal should be used when the situation calls for it. This proc on kill so there’s no way to know. CoD can be good but is really a single target skill.

20 into Curses for Hemophilia and Reaper’s Precision. Hemophilia is fine for 1v1 condi builds where condi duration can really put the hurt on. Reaper’s Precision is not very good at generating lifeforce. If you’ve got 33% crit chance, it only has a 1 in 9 chance to proc. Considering you run wells, it’s odd that Focused Rituals wasn’t taken. Unless this is a pure melee build, this really harms the versatility.

Nothing weird in Blood but siphon traits, like wells, work best when there are a lot of targets (i.e. zerg fights). The more targets, the more hits, the more siphons. This said, your weapons (dagger and scepter) are not really suited for this task. Well, the dagger is fine (if you have enough power) but the scepter is, in general, not a good choice.

The 10 in SR is fine.

It should be mentioned that the offensive wells work best with power builds as condis do nothing for them. Thus, if this build is a condi, (because there is no armor, trinkets or weapons traits it is impossible to tell) Well of Suffering is pretty much wasted. If it isn’t then Plague Signet is wasted.

All in all, this build seems, IMO, very confusing. Sorry.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSvTTTjfPBIp46nnew94iHVYYA-jUxAZvioxqXw0lLqW9C4BY0qlC4ilRA-w

Wondering if you guys could help me out here. Mainly for front line zerg, hence full soldiers. Not sure what to do with last 10 trait points and was wondering what sigils and runes I should use.

Grandmaster Lee.9568:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSvTTTjfPBIp46nnew94iHVYYA-jUxAZvioxqXw0lLqW9C4BY0qlC4ilRA-w

Wondering if you guys could help me out here. Mainly for front line zerg, hence full soldiers. Not sure what to do with last 10 trait points and was wondering what sigils and runes I should use.

I see 2-3 good options for your last 10 trait points:

- Go another 10 points into Curses for another 6% critical chance, Furious Demise for 6 seconds of Fury when entering Death Shroud and either Banshee’s Wail for Warhorn or Weakening Shroud for some added damage mitigation when going into DS.

- Go another 5 points into Curses for Furious Demise and 5 points into Spite for 50 extra Power and Parasitic Bond, since there’s a lot of enemies to kill in zergs that will trigger the 991 healing per kill.

- Go 10 points into Spite for 100 extra Power, Parasitic Bond and either Reaper’s Might for self might stacking or Spiteful Spirit for 3 1/2 seconds of Retaliation on entering DS.

Edit: 4th and 5th option:

- Go another 5 points in Death Magic for 50 more Toughness, Deadly Strength for an additional 90 Power and then choose either 5 points in Spite or Curses for Parasitic Bond or Furious Demise.

- Go 10 into Death Magic for 100 more toughness and either Shrouded Removal, Death Shiver, Dark Armor, Spiteful Vigor or Ritual of Protection in your last GM trait spot.

Edit 2: Didn’t have time last post to figure out the Runes/Sigils, but this is what I came up with for an optimal version of your build (switched the rares/exotic trinkets to ascended and used ascended weapons), focusing on damage, vitality and toughness:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSvTTTjfTBIz46nnew94iDLIqwwA-j0xAofBZCCMJKQZvioxWGLiGryGT9SEVLFwFLjA-w

Runes should probably always be Melandru for zerg front line builds due to the -25% condition and stun duration against you. If you plan on switching weapons a lot, Sigils of Battle + Bloodlust. If not then Sigils of Force + Bloodlust.

Balekai’s done a nice job finishing the build. I’ve run this before and it will tank like no tomorrow. 5 in Spite gives nice heals to make up for the lack of Vampiric Precision.

The only thing I’d suggest is that you run either SWalk of SArmor in place of a well for the stunbreaker. WoP has its uses but it’s not a true stunbreak.

Thanks Belekai for helping me out! I’m definitely gonna test out the build when I play next. And thanks for the suggestion Nagato, I will try to test it out!

Scarran.9845:

Must have traits is dependent on what well’s you plan running with. If you are going to run with Well of Darkness then Chilling Darkness is a must. At the same time Chilling Darkness becomes less worthwhile without it as it really only gets used after that in Plague form or Dagger 4.
> Yeah, I’m starting to feel the same way. Chilling Darkness Plague looks so boss on paper, but feels increasingly lackluster. Your mindset of ‘linking’ WoD and Chilling Darkness might be spot on!

From the Curses line I find for myself I can live without Focused Rituals, but then im more like a Bull in a China shop and just charge right in, so its easier for me to cast my wells whilst im in the thick of it rather than micro manage them. As I said earlier Chilling Darkness is more dependent if im taking Well of Darkness so both the curses traits I find optional for me.
> WoC alone is reason for me to take Focused Rituals. Sometimes you have to retreat to stay with your zerg (aka alive), and ranged WoC can MAJORLY kitten up the enemy zerg’s regroup. Maybe I’m weird but FR is not even up for discussion to me. Other opinions on the necessity of FR?

[…] so in the end I swapped to transfusion.
> I’m trying hard not to like transfusion I could see myself taking it in a FitG build for uninteruptable aoe healing, as going into DS for DS#4 would provide you with the stability you need. I would argue it comes down to personal survivability, team survivability and your chances of getting a full channel off. Anyone disagree completely?

Balekai.6083:

Focused Rituals – This gives your wells invaluable flexibility in WvW and allows “well bombing” either allies or enemies within 900 range. Not using this you will always find yourself in a situation where you’re not where you should be for allies/enemies to get the full “benefit” of your wells.
> word

Ritual of Protection – […]
> Food for thought. The decision might come down to team setup, and your personal goal (offensive, support) as the two main decision criteria.

Vampiric Rituals – [Math says it owns]
> Yup, pretty much the conclusion I came to.

Well of Blood – [healing power as the decision criterion]
> I will add it, and keep it up for discussion as I have never tried it myself. I don’t have the gear for it and I’m ‘afraid’ I will be caught in a situation where I need a heal and can’t put down a light field.

Well of Corruption – In very large zergs it’s usefulness deteriorates
> I’d argue it’s down to boon application rate in the enemy zerg vs. number of wellmancers in your zerg, but I definitely see your point! Adding that.

Aphix.9846:

[…] transfusion […] path of midnight.

>Transfusion really seems to shine in SR heavy builds. Interesting

jalmari.3906:

Bawi.9541

wall of text

You can play what fits your playstyle though By all means. It’s just that toughness stat, considering all variables, is maybe not the best thing ever.

>A desperate attempt at throwing a punch back, and a suggestion that goes against math, experience and common sense. I would insult you properly but there’s only so many hours in a day.

Balekai.6083:

-Damage reduction from pure toughness improves the effectiveness of healing on a player, since source damage is reduced and the gap between damage received and damage healed closes.
-Extra health from pure vitality does not improve healing effectivess. The damage dealt to you will always be same, but it just has to eat through more health. Healing won’t sustain you anywhere close to toughness synergy as the damage dealt will far out weight any reasonable access to heals.

> That’s another way of saying what this mathy post of mine was about. Once you’re out of the danger zone of getting overwhelmed by burst the benefits of vitality start to diminish. 100% agree!

Balekai.6083:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSvTTTjfTBIz46nnew94iDLIqwwA-j0xAofBZCCMJKQZvioxWGLiGryGT9SEVLFwFLjA-w

> That build wasn’t even on my radar. Gets put on the list of builds to try. Looks really good.

/edit: Due to the abysmal forum software, I’m keeping an up-to-date version on my laptop. Every once in a while I will update the OP with the ongoing discussion. I like the input so far; lots of good points and I can see structure where I couldn’t make sense of traits before

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmODbkRrSvTTTjfPhMzgbGn4DDD1jyBd+QA-jUyA4OBZiBMZBK5psm+EELjFRjVXjpcFSVxRWKgJWGB-w

thats what I run with my guild.

Bawi.9541:

Scarran.9845:

From the Curses line I find for myself I can live without Focused Rituals, but then im more like a Bull in a China shop and just charge right in, so its easier for me to cast my wells whilst im in the thick of it rather than micro manage them. As I said earlier Chilling Darkness is more dependent if im taking Well of Darkness so both the curses traits I find optional for me.

WoC alone is reason for me to take Focused Rituals. Sometimes you have to retreat to stay with your zerg (aka alive), and ranged WoC can MAJORLY kitten up the enemy zerg’s regroup. Maybe I’m weird but FR is not even up for discussion to me. Other opinions on the necessity of FR?

I understand where you are coming from Bawi and I realise for you and other people Focused Rituals is a good trait. But for me and my play style I run with Well Of Power both as a stun break and getting rid of immobilize and other conditions off me if needed and I find I play better without it.

With me being a key presser and running with the zerg I find its easier when I get stunned or knocked down or immobilized to quickly press WoP key than it is to hit it and then click on the area around me. That extra timing altho it isnt very long is enough for me to either get split away from the group or put me in range of getting caught with the stampede. I would normally use FiTG and I am a big fan of FiTG but I find that with my current build im sacrificing too much to fit it in.

So I had to make a sacrifice to either half hearted charge in whilst casting my Well’s in front with FR at which time you tend to die or find myself getting knocked about enough you end up near the back and dead again. With my key press skill, position target and click to cast being too slow for it to be effective I decided just tapping a key and cast where im standing was far better. And when im sent flying use WoP to get back up quickly and get back in formation whilst casting wells and after that if im getting knocked about again use DS and Plague to absorb it and attack.

As for Transfusion currently im getting between 3.5 to 4k area heal and to me when your in a group that’s a pretty helpful heal. I also find that when your team at the door on rams or face hugging it are under fire its good to run in use it to give them a top up heal and get back out again.

I run 0/20/0/20/30. Curses uses Weakening Shroud and Banshee’s Wail(sometimes I use targeted wells, but normally I don’t like them). In Blood I take Well cd reduction and either transfusion or mark of evasion. In SR I switch those traits a lot, but generally I use cd reduction, +50% crit in DS, and DS cd reduction.

I use mostly Knight’s gear with a little berserker and cavalier. My final stats with food is 2100 power, 51% crit, 73% crit damage, 20500 HP, 2800 armor.

Works pretty well for me. Sometimes I choose to drop 20 in Blood and put them in Death for Staff traits and condition removal on DS(I like this trait a lot for removing random cripples or weakness).

On Dec 10th I think I will run 0/15/25/0/30. With my armor level, Death 25 point will give me 290 power, which is pretty awesome and worth dropping 20 Blood.

@Scarran
While I run Focused Rituals myself, I believe that a legit well build can be had without it. Well builds are frontliners and encounter a great deal of the enemy in melee range. While you will miss the versatility that ranged wells give (blowing defenders off walls, taking down siege, bombing from the high ground), this loss does not make them useless. It can make perfect sense, especially if you’re running PVT gear and have little use for the precision stats. I think I would, however, insist that such a build run Ritual of Protection to help make up for the loss of flexibility and add group utility. (Unless your crits are good and you’re running Vampiric Precision, then the well siphons are probably better.)

Lastly, I like the idea of running Transfusion when PvD but switching to Mark of Evasion when fighting. The burst heal is good but in combat, MoE provides more easily accessible healing (1000 on 10 sec CD) as well as small condi pressure.

@Stx
I think every well necro will be running 25 in Death at that point but 290 power? Isn’t that 3000 toughness? I don’t think that’s possible.

When it comes to minor traits, I’d favor 5 in Spite rather than 15 in Curses. Personally, I’m not all that impressed with 5 seconds of Fury and would opt for 1000 heal per kill (most sustain 5 points can buy, IMO).

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBHhZakRLbvSTTjfPBIz46nnU494xMKeZA-jkCBYfCiEGBiIAM5pIaslRFRjVbDT5CQFbR1mzDRzgO1yAwsAA-w

This is the build i’m running with my guild. With this build, i can provide some serious damage for my team while i maintain enough survival for myself. Hope you enjoy.

Ps: using bloodlust on stacking weapon.

Rodyan.9241:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBHhZakRLbvSTTjfPBIz46nnU494xMKeZA-jkCBYfCiEGBiIAM5pIaslRFRjVbDT5CQFbR1mzDRzgO1yAwsAA-w

This is the build i’m running with my guild. With this build, i can provide some serious damage for my team while i maintain enough survival for myself. Hope you enjoy.

Ps: using bloodlust on stacking weapon.

It seems to me there’s no reason to not run Focused Rituals on this build. If the points had been allocated elsewhere, there might be cause but you have 20 in Curses and neither selected trait is superior to it. Further, you passed on the synergy from Ritual of Protection. Siphon traits are good but this could come in handy because your armor is very light considering this is meant to frontline and will have to stand on target in order to well bomb.

Nagato no Kami.4980:

@Scarran
While I run Focused Rituals myself, I believe that a legit well build can be had without it. Well builds are frontliners and encounter a great deal of the enemy in melee range. While you will miss the versatility that ranged wells give (blowing defenders off walls, taking down siege, bombing from the high ground), this loss does not make them useless. It can make perfect sense, especially if you’re running PVT gear and have little use for the precision stats. I think I would, however, insist that such a build run Ritual of Protection to help make up for the loss of flexibility and add group utility. (Unless your crits are good and you’re running Vampiric Precision, then the well siphons are probably better.)

Lastly, I like the idea of running Transfusion when PvD but switching to Mark of Evasion when fighting. The burst heal is good but in combat, MoE provides more easily accessible healing (1000 on 10 sec CD) as well as small condi pressure.

I like the Transfusion idea swapping it in and out and I definitely need to give that one a try see how things go.

I do infact use Ritual of Protection to give me that extra survivability when in the front lines and it is very noticeable when you do not have it. The only problem I find that without FR you really need to be aware of your position and what the rest of the group is doing as your less likely to get alot of wiggle room when it comes to making a mistake and can end up dead but I quite like the flying by the seat of my pants approach.

Armour wise I was going to use PVT but it was a choice of do I replace all my runes on my current set that I use for other purposes or go with my Cleric set and see how the extra healing power performs. I already have Rune Of Speed on my Cleric armour and I like the speed boost too much to run without it or try switching out on the fly. As there are times when you will get blind sided and I would rather have 3 well’s available at that moment.

Build wise I run this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAnYWjQaV6Zaea87JCpHX7ZYb6R3Gn4gK4eA-jEyAoLBRCUg4AgZxioxWMLiGrqBTpSEV7SKiWtQAIHDA-w

I don’t normally post my builds because quite simply its designed around my playstyle and what ive found works for me probably doesn’t work well for others. So it may not be the most optimal build for other people but ive tried a good few well builds and I ended up with this one. The only issue I have is my off hand sigil I was not sure wither to move hydromancy to it and have one of those +stat bonuses on kill or another more beneficial sigil.

@Scarraan
Ah, I see. You’re running a heal tank. Very useful.

Notes:

I like the choice of traits but I’d drop Spiteful Removal. It removes condis on kill which may or may not help you. A great deal of the time, it removes inconsequential conditions so there’s not a great deal of utility here. If you need condi cleanse, take Cleanse Conditions instead of the well heal. I know you’re traited for wells and it seems like the best use as it also pulls offensive duty but you need reliable condi management and it’s on a shorter CD. I’d opt for Reaper’s Might to help make up for your lack of damage.

The Runes of Speed… there are more useful choices, IMO. Melandrus would really shore up your durability and condi management — to be honest, you don’t have all that much in the way of armor and considering the melee wells, it would behoove you to get as much as possible. Besides, you’ve got a tremendous amount of HP in this build and don’t really need any more. With Melandrus, you’ll be at 3000 armor with 23000+ HP. With cleric armor, decent cleanse, Parasitic Bond and siphons, that’s basically unkillable. To make up for the loss of speed, consider running warhorn instead. It’s short-range move set synergizes well with this build, tags by the dozen and gives speed. It’s not a perfect replacement but it’s better than blowing your runes for a bit of speed. You could also run SWalk to travel and swap it out for combat.

As for sigils, I’d personally drop the Hydromancy and run Renewal instead. I figure, if you’re going to run that much healing, you should try to proc it as much as possible. And, yeah, you’re probably good running Bloodlust. As I mentioned before, with so much going into defense, you should be unkillable so those 25 stacks are well protected.

Lastly, consider a power/toughness. Seriously, you have a ton of healing and more than enough vitality.

The core of this build is quite strong. Nice job.

@Nagato

Thanks for the advice Nagato I definitely have food for thought in terms of tweaking it.

Spiteful Removal I think for some reason I have what I think it does and what it actually does do mixed up in my head. For some strange reason I thought if I do enough damage to an enemy and he ends up dying not by my killing blow it proc’s it. But im trying to remember if its stroke of luck it procs for me and im getting the killing blow in.

I will try switching it out as you suggested to reapers might to give me a little bit more oommphh in the build. I selected WoB heal more so because im using Cleric armour and not only does the big heal help but the on tick heals add up nicely alongside the Vampiric Ritual, the only issue is I try to watch when I cast it so not to interfere with any water fields as then im more a hindrance than a help to the group.

It was a flip of the coin wither I went Melandru or Speed, I knew with my Dagger, Staff and Spiteful Removal that I had enough condition management so in the end that’s how I opted for them. Sometimes I change my food to allow for the -40% duration wither it be Lemongrass or Roasted Lotus Root depending on the situation im heading into.

The only problem I do have if I switch to Melandru is Warhorn, its never been my goto weapon and I find it causes more problems than anything else. If WvW never contained any critters then it would be ok, but ive used Warhorn before and all it takes is for you to run past one critter with locust swarm on and your bumped back down to combat speed which is sloooowwwww. I also find that unless im going into the reduction skills for Warhorn the cooldown on them is just a tad too high. Spectral Walk I do like but again im back to having to predict the situations more in order to swap out the utilities on the fly and I would rather not do that.

I like the sigil of renewal idea and will look into it and see how that goes, the reason I chose Hydromancy was more so when im in the thick of it and casting wells, I can swap and hit them with chill, axe 3 and be ready to swap back to staff when its avail so that when I swap weapon the chill pretty much is ready to proc again. It allows me to try and slow down some of the incoming train and hit them with movement reductions, so that if one gets cleansed another is coming straight in. The more clustered a zerg is together the harder it can be to kill them, so if I can try and split the herd up slightly I was hoping it would help in picking some of them off. But again the hydromancy sigils more so came over when I was trying out a chill build and just so happened to be in the weapons I wanted to use so I stuck with the sigils I already had.

The heals in this build really are good and it keeps me going, when I was trying to create the build I was trying to make sure I didn’t sacrifice too much Vit or Toughness as I knew I was going to be front line. In zerg combat I find there are other classes that can do more damage for less of a reduction than the Necro class, therefore I tried to make myself not be a rally bot for the incoming zerg and at the same time try to bring something to the zerg. The only issue is that it is a zerg build and you need to watch out if your caught away from the zerg as Well’s are just too easy for people to dodge out of. In a zerg environment with all the flashy effects you can get away with it as no-one really notices what is going on.

Thanks again for the advice, I shall go tweak it a bit and see what happens.

@Scarran

I like the idea of Hydromancy —> Wells. If you have enough survivability, then this is actually a nice choice. I stand corrected.

I totally agree with WH 5… Hitting critters is a pain and can drop you back very quickly. You really have to be selective about where you run it. Personally, I just switch to SWalk when I need to travel (I always have it and Locust on in swim mode) and I switch to another skill when I’m back with my guild. SWalk is also great because it allows you to jump from everywhere. Say, you need to run supplies for siege at Hills. If you’re in north Hills, you can just ignore the path and jump from the cliff. Saves a lot of time. And, while we’re on the subject, you can also jump from the south outer wall lookout (the highest spot in Hills) into the water if you need to get to the SE camp quickly. You need swiftness, though.

I will point out that one of the good things about warhorn on siphon builds is that because it hits so rapidly, it procs a metric ton of healing making it the perfect skill to use as you cut through the enemy zerg.

I like the idea about switching foods for the condition reduction if you really need the speed however, I find it pretty tough to turn away from the 160 toughness and stun reduction on the Melandrus. How about Locust? If you grab Signet Mastery in Spite, you can have speed plus it works as a AoE/heal in case things get dicey. I would hate to sacrifice a well, though…

I look forward to hearing about any testing you are going to do with this build. I think the build is underutilized but can be very effective. I own a set of clerics but haven’t found a build that works for me as well as my main set of knights does. I would love to get more information about cleric builds and play style so I can occasionally switch them out and run an effective build with more team support.

Not my current gearing but this will probably be my end game final build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAoY4djMad6Vaaa87JEpCYz0jsZc0GqHlz68hA-jECBofDimsIQEBhO7pIasV1FRjVZDT9iIq2grIa1SBonwI-w

Very tanky PVT well necro with an extra 50% crit in DS. That plus crit food and exuberance pre bonus gets me 76% (96% with fury) crit chance in Shroud. I’m giving up crit dmg since it does me little good outside of DS where toughness benefits me in or out of DS.

Brings solid group utility via Well of Power and Protection Wells. Can also run well of blood when doing stationary siege fighting. Really helps the rammers out. Also ofc plague form for mass blinds.

Combined eHP+DS eHP is 67616 not factoring protection or plague form. Also 3k effective power in DS.

I will be zerg commanding with this build.

@Lorelei

Random observations:

The massive investment to get Deathly Perception is really nerfed by having low base crit and crit damage. I can see the reason for this, though. That being said, this is further exacerbated by not traiting for Reaper’s Precision — normally a mortal lock for DS spam builds (along with Unyielding Blast). DS builds really force you into a certain style of play so not maximizing your core skills is crippling.

Honestly, Quickening Thirst seems like a pretty bad selection. First, if this is a zerg command build, it really doesn’t need speed. All you will do is outrun your front line. Secondly, at the GM tier, this is an extremely high price to pay. Running Locust would get you the same ability as well as an emergency heal. It’s a slot but those 10 point could be used elsewhere such as the aforementioned RP trait or to grab well siphons for more sustain.

Running daggers in both weapon sets is a bit limiting. Running axe would at least give access to some Retaliation uptime. Focus is more of a 1v1 weapon. Given that you are basically a melee class, warhorn seems like a perfect weapon.

The build has a glut of HP to tank with only mid-tier armor and no passive condi management. As a commander, I’d opt for Melandru runes or Lemongrass food (optimally both) to help round out the defense. I do, however, like Ritual of Protection on these necro command builds. It adds lots of survivability, especially when you need to stand on ground zero to call for concentrated damage.

Interesting build!

@nagato

My random observation is that you don’t understand the play style of this build. I don’t need help playing necro, I smash faces all day long with my builds and have been doing so since launch. I post them to help others. However I understand your confusion, after all many people have a hard time seeing the method in my madness. So I will address your concerns.

1. Step back a moment. What is crit damage. It’s a percent modifier to crit dmg. Well crit dmg modifier starts at 1.5. 100% crit dmg is a 2.5 modifier. That’s only a 75% improvement over base but the sacrifice needed for it is pretty extreme. Now just by traiting into reaping I got a 30% modifier for free. So my crit modifier is 1.8. On it’s own, most people would consider 50% crit chance and 30% crit dmg respectable for a more balanced build. I get those things for free from traits. I drop wells then enter DS. I then spam DS till it’s empty. Usually I will have about 10 seconds after that to get my LF bar filled back up before its time to drop wells again.

2. Quickening Thirst is a convenience I’ve learned to love. I have no personal source of swiftness, and its not like I command all the time. I’m a offhour commander when no one else will tag up. This trait gives me a kind mobility that can’t be ripped, doesn’t take a utility slot and best of all, works in DS (unlike locust signet).

3. Now since I’ve established why QT is awesome, dagger/dagger becomes more obvious. Running d/d lets me fully leverage Dagger Mastery. Ask Ascii what he thinks about d/d wellomancers. Now the choice between focus and warhorn is a tough one I will give you that. In a zerg setting yes I can see the value of Warhorn. Though that boon rip is unbelievably clutch also. Most zergs are led by some boon tanking guardian. Being able to target the enemy commander and rip his boons, chill him, drop WoC on him and bust his tank early on can be a game changer. Let’s face it, zerg-nooblings stupidly focus tanks because they are big, almost always a norn, and very flashy and aggressive. Rather then yell at noobs, I’d rather leverage one of Necro’s key strengths and simply break the lead tank early on. Though just so you know I do carry both warhorn and focus with me. Staff too.

4. The Melandru + lemongrass option is so overdone. It’s also a expensive waste on a necro. I got 2 full cleanses (one on a 20% reduced cd…hint) and WoP takes care of 5 more. Believe me I have no issue with conditions at all. I like Saffron bread, its cheap and helps cover one of Necro’s most glaring weaknesses.

Lorelei I think you are a bit defensive hehe. Your build works well, but everyone has their opinion and it didn’t seem to me that Nagato was being too overly critical.

I also would like to say I play a build that is the same as Lorelei’s except for 10 points, and I love it.

Balekai.6083:

Edit 2: Didn’t have time last post to figure out the Runes/Sigils, but this is what I came up with for an optimal version of your build (switched the rares/exotic trinkets to ascended and used ascended weapons), focusing on damage, vitality and toughness:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSvTTTjfTBIz46nnew94iDLIqwwA-j0xAofBZCCMJKQZvioxWGLiGryGT9SEVLFwFLjA-w

I tried the trait setup today with my gear and I gotta say, I think I found my favorite wellmancer build right there. kittening love it! Parasitic Bond + Omnomberry Compote makes for a veeeery fun experience in Plague Form :O
Without Chilling Darkness I find myself using Plague#3 more than Plague#2, which has its own benefits I guess.

Bawi.9541:

Balekai.6083:

Edit 2: Didn’t have time last post to figure out the Runes/Sigils, but this is what I came up with for an optimal version of your build (switched the rares/exotic trinkets to ascended and used ascended weapons), focusing on damage, vitality and toughness:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSvTTTjfTBIz46nnew94iDLIqwwA-j0xAofBZCCMJKQZvioxWGLiGryGT9SEVLFwFLjA-w

I tried the trait setup today with my gear and I gotta say, I think I found my favorite wellmancer build right there. kittening love it! Parasitic Bond + Omnomberry Compote makes for a veeeery fun experience in Plague Form :O
Without Chilling Darkness I find myself using Plague#3 more than Plague#2, which has its own benefits I guess.

Glad I could help.

I’m thinking on Dec 10th I will be making a soldiers set for my Necro in search of 500 Tailoring. Might give the build a go myself.

Also if the Signet of Vampirism turns out to be good/true, it might even be better.

Stx.4857:

Lorelei I think you are a bit defensive hehe. Your build works well, but everyone has their opinion and it didn’t seem to me that Nagato was being too overly critical.

I also would like to say I play a build that is the same as Lorelei’s except for 10 points, and I love it.

Eh. It gets under my skin when people pick apart builds with stuff like “oh you could have picked that and why didn’t you take this.” When every single build in this game is a compromise. You can’t have this and that you have to make choices. Claiming your preferred choice is better then another without any real hard evidence is just like, your opinion, man. Ya know?

I respect that other people value different things in a build. That’s why I don’t say anything unless I see a glaring issue, like running valk gear without a way to generate LF to stay in DS for instance. Guess I’m just a bit fed up, I take the time to write up posts and punch stuff in a build calc and share it and instead of “cool build man” its “Ah this is bad, thats nerfed, why did you pick this you should take this instead its bla blah” Hell you could just phrase it as a question like “So help me understand why you chose ______” That would be way more tactful.

Not that I’m being very tactful myself, but that’s only when I’m feeling kitteny.