Guild Wars 2

I have been saving up my laurels and guild commendations and I’ve been thinking of spending them on giving some ascended gear to an alt, since they have changed the WvW WXP to being account bound. I started leveling a guardian and had a lot of fun playing a more support like role in a zerg and had a blast, although I don’t always enjoy playing in melee in zergs.

I thought that I could potentially make a good support build for my necro for mainly zerg warfare. So far I have been looking at making this build with mainly apothecary gear:

5/20/10/20/15

5 – health on enemy death
20 – blinds cause chill & terror
10- Wells give protection
20 – transfusion heals allies & reduced well cooldown
15 – reduced DS skill cooldowns, spectral armor at 50%

Well of blood, well of darkness, spectral wall, spectral walk, plague

(Forgive my lack of a link, typing this on break)

What I am thinking with this is still being functional on a damage dealing basis, but also having the ability to drop some awesome team support if necessary every 30 seconds or so. I’d also do OK with self sustain with spite 5, blood 15 and SR 15, and I’d provide some good debuffs through weakness, cripple, blinds and chill, as well as the damage dealing conditions.

I’d imagine the playstyle in a zerg would be to sit roughly right behind my own front line, giving heals and making the enemy we clash into less effective.

So I wanted to ask, does anyone run a similar style build in WvW? If so, how do you play it? I would love to know more about this playstyle before I up and buy the gear for it. I’m also up for any constructive thoughts on this build.

Hi Roe,
I run a build similar to what you are suggesting (but I’m going to give you a mixed response).

I am running in Celestial stats (with some settlers as a temporary solution, till I can fill those with remaining Celestial).
I run a 0/30/0/20/20, staff & Dagger+Dagger.
Well of Blood, spectal wall, locust signet, plague
(the 3rd utility I swap around, and dont feel anything really stands out as useful in zerg vs zerg).

now that you mention of the spite 5 minor, I suspect I’ll rebuild to fit that in.

in zerg vs zerg you will definitely find plenty of uses for spectral wall to protect your allies, or CC your enemies.
I have avoided wells because I have gotten frusterated when I notice an ally is in trouble and I drop a well of blood and they dodge roll out of it.
I like the other Necro healing abilities, (transfusion, and leave DS), it just heals what ever is around whether they want it or not, and it happens when I am doing what I usually would when fighting.

In a zerg vs zerg, I will generally use plague early (at the front lines) blind enemies, then when that runs out I’ll go DS and use 5, and 4 (heals) while I am dropping back to the rest of the ranged. Then fight with the ranged group. Then when I leave DS I will get another area heal.

I will say this though:
Since my gear is mostly Celestial, healing is soemething that just comes with it.

you are suggesting itemizing apothecary (primary heal, secondary Cond dmg and toughness).
I think you might be a bit dissapointed if you itemize primarily for healing. I also say this because you mentioned you wanted to do this because you liked support on a guardian.
my warning is that necro healing and support will be nowhere near what a guardian can do.

i use 20/0/20/30/0 cose minion condi drain and life shypon

@Roe

If this is for zerging, I’d drop Terror. Either Banshee’s Wail or Focused Rituals are better choices. If you don’t like either option, consider moving the points to Death to grab Staff Mastery which will help maximize your support and offense.

I wouldn’t run Well of Blood. It’s a poor heal for allies and can’t be used in rally stack situations as it will interfere with water fields. CC is a better option. If you want to help with healing, a weird idea is to run Bone Minions to blast water fields. Your build doesn’t really come into play here but it will drop a TON of heal (x2 blast) so it’s truly in the theme of support.

Anyhoo, there’s some discussion of heal builds here.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-healing/

This is what I run. Still the same build from the link provided by Nagato:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjQad6Zaub07JApHXj9zTP+ecxjKMMA-jUCBYiCyINJjWQZm8IQ5RFRjtaqIas6ZER16jYGxFRrWIgFrBA-w

Switch Epidemic utility out for Well of Darkness (anti melee) or Spectral Grasp (for 1v1 range fights vs mesmers etc. …if the skill worked properly 50% of the time) when necessary.

Switch out Mark of Evasion trait for Transfusion (when in zergs/groups) or Ritual of Life (mostly for dungeons when you know someone is going to go down and it will be hard to revive them without some healing afterwards) when necessary.

I won’t go into a lot of the math etc., but what the build allows you to do in combination with Apothercary set (as opposed to Clerics), is go full and utter necro support while still dishing out on average 1000+ tick area bleeds and about 250-500 tick of other conditions for an entirety of a fight. Enough to weather lots of incoming damage while still dishing out 20-35K condition damage on multiple enemies.

I have to disagree with Nagato on Well of Blood though (even though Nagato is right about the downsides). It’s key to the build working because while Consume conditions is very powerful when you have loads of conditions on you (thus healing 70%-100% health), it doesn’t heal a lot with little to no conditions on you.

My Well of blood self heals 6613 health, up to 4750 health damage from siphoning on 5+ targets, 7000 health from the well pulses and protection for 4 seconds. That’s a possible 18350 health healed in addition to 33% damage reduction for 40% of the duration. Although all this healing is over 10 seconds, this can serve you better than a healing spike, since healing over time is more efficient while being damaged over time. In addition to regeneration proc from MoB/MoE, other wells/siphons, you can easily heal 35107 health in the first 32 seconds of a fight against 5+ enemies.

Again as Nagato alluded to, allies do run out of WoB 95% of the time, you can be controlled out of it or will willingly move out of it 25-40% of the time, and it can interfere with water field combos. However, the combo issue can be avoided by not using WoB over water fields and using it in between them. Well of Blood in regards to ally support, should be treated like an “elite” sustaining version of regeneration rather than a heal spike. Two different uses. Our version of a heal spike for allies is Transfusion.

The build works anywhere. I use it successfully in SPvP, all of PvE and all of WvW. High damage mitigation, good crowd control, great group support and adequate area condition damage. It needs the food buffs in PvE/WvW to be effective though. Without them the damage just isn’t there.

I agree with Balekai (who, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is pretty much the resident expert on heal build necros) that CC isn’t great at healing when not cleansing condis but even so, it does the same base healing as WoB without pulses and has 7-15 seconds less CD. However, when fully traited, he is correct: it can become something rather ungodly. It is perfectly suited for those situations in a zerg engagement when the driver stops and calls for mass AoE damage on his tag. The combination of damage, protection, heal and combo fields (both dark and light) makes the area devastating for enemies but fun for you and five friends! In sum, if traited for properly, it’s very good (with some drawbacks), if not, CC is superior for the cleanse and shorter CD.