Guild Wars 2

I was playing around with bunker builds earlier as I saw multiple people complaining about how necro is bad as a bunker.

I went 0/10/20/30/10 though the 10 in soul reaping could go some where else.

used dagger/warhorn and axe/focus

all utilities were wells (I know, cringe) obviously well of blood, corruption, suffering and power. plague form elite.

blood – i picked up wells recharge, 50% better siphoning and wells siphon.

death – lose a condi on entering DS and wells apply protection.

curses – ground targeted wells.

soul reaping – DS degenerates 25% slower.

clerics amulet and earth or grove runes.

I was a very effective bunker in pvp and had very good sustain in wvw, though killing stuff isnt easy, about 4% precision… was fighting a group of 4 for about 5 minutes before my CD’s were up and they killed me.

pvp is vey effective as a point holder.

siphoning is stronger than I thought now, try it out and leave feedback if you have the time (and the urge to bunker)

thinking about moving the 10 in soul reaping, I may put 5 into spite for the extra occasional heal (when you and your team/zerg kill something) and 5 more into curses for some much needed crit chance through fury.

any suggestions from you guys where the 10 points in soul reaping could be moved to?

would appreciate some feedback on this, have you tried this before? Going from 3k hp back up to 23k in about 5s is sooo satisfying when the opposition think they’ve killed you.

the siphoning ‘on hit’ ticks for 50, the wells siphoning tick for about 60 and the dagger #2 ticks for 410 and my well of blood ticks for over 710, I think that is a big improvement on before.

any thoughts are appreciated.

2 warriors and your bunker necro will turn into a ping pong. 1 guardian will throw you off node and then you will never step back. 1 thief will simply 2 shot you in your clerics gear thru ds while u sit in well of blood.

HiSaZul is right. You’re not really bunkering without foot in the grave unfortunately. Decap city.

Well, except for the thief thing. I’ve run across the map with 2 backstab thieves trailing along behind me trying to stop me from getting where I want to go before. Thieves are pretty ignorable for necro bunkers.

I know the lack of stability is not good for bunkers, but I fought 2 warriors yesterday (not stun lockers) and just sat there and ate their burst and healed through it.

the lack of stability is why I took plague form so when I do get in trouble I have a OH kitten button.

I did suffer from lack of stability but my ability to heal constantly and consistently was enough to compensate. in my opinion.

also smart use of wail of doom is a great counter to telegraphed skills. (im sure this isnt news to you)

do you have any other bunker necro builds that are effective in your opinion?

HiSaZuL.2843:

2 warriors and your bunker necro will turn into a ping pong. 1 guardian will throw you off node and then you will never step back. 1 thief will simply 2 shot you in your clerics gear thru ds while u sit in well of blood.

I had 4 people in a hot join trying to kill me for quite some time at ‘the mine’ including a thief, ranger warrior and guardian. I was far from 2 shotted and actually downed the guardian (mustve been a bad player)

give it a go before writing it off. bare in mind protection uptime is very good so 2780ish armor isn’t all that’s absorbing the damage.

It’s not about being stunlocked down. That’s the least of your worries as a high EHP necro, even guards are easier to spike down in a cc chain.

It’s about being knocked off the point and getting decapped or being unable to stomp and revive with stability. These are the basic bunker functions that you need to be able to perform. Being hard to kill is pointless if you can’t control the node or contribute properly to teamfights, because no one actually has to kill you if you can’t do those things.

I’ll be straight with you, I didn’t even look at the build properly yet, just because it has no stability, and stability is that important for a bunker. It could be very good in every other way for all I know. I made the same mistake when I first started playing around with necro bunker builds btw.

Mammoth.1975:

It’s not about being stunlocked down. That’s the least of your worries as a high EHP necro, even guards are easier to spike down in a cc chain.

It’s about being knocked off the point and getting decapped or being unable to stomp and revive with stability. These are the basic bunker functions that you need to be able to perform. Being hard to kill is pointless if you can’t control the node or contribute properly to teamfights, because no one actually has to kill you if you can’t do those things.

do you think a if I switched out well of suffering for well of darkness and picking up the chilling darkness trait that would go some way to resolve that issue? would help with stomps, mitigation etc.

Also thanks for your honesty.

any chance you could share the bunker build you find effective?

That would definitely help somewhat, although you wouldn’t be forced into taking chilling darkness. Your well of darkness would be under a lot of pressure for such a long cooldown though, as you would be using it for mitigation, stomping, reviving, and pressure if you took chilling darkness.

I think the best two necro bunkers right now are Xelfers old build (which was very close to what I was using but his had stability), or the deathshroud flash build I was testing for some thread here the other day, I’ll see if I can dig that thread up. You could find some of the other stuff in it interesting too.

The other thing I’d say is that vital persistence is pretty underpowered. Your deathshroud won’t last long anyway, and a shorter recharge on DS skills will do more for your survivability. Every DS skill except 1 has some defensive application, but shorter recharge on doom is the one that you’ll really notice.

Here’s the thread with the DS flash build:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Post-Patch-Necro-Bunker-Build-viability

And Xelfers well bunker looked something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjQah6daaa87JAJFPj9kivHn6R5sfOA-TsAg2CrIASBkDIDQSgsAN+Y9xsBA

The well bunker is definitely easier to play, and imo, more rewarding. Neither are as effective as a guard, the well bunker simply because the healing isn’t there, and the deathshroud bunker because although the healing is there, it’s impossible to use it all. I played a few games on guardian earlier and the difference is night and day.

yea I was looking to move that 10 points somewhere else. maybe 5 more curses for fury and 5 in spite for heal on killing opponents.

though the chilling darkness is not necessary it would be great for plague as well. Would definitely miss the extra damage from suffering though.

I might look at making a spectral bunker build too as I love the spectral skills and that would enable me to pick up stability while having multiple stun breaks.

thanks for the input.

I run vampiric / wells builds similar to this in both WvW (0/30/10/20/10, used to run 0/20/10/30/10) and PvP (0/10/10/20/30). For both I choose to run pretty much all PVT gear, so I don’t run well of blood.

In WvW, vampiric is nice; it ups my damage by about 5-10% and gives a reasonable trickle of heals that is noticable and helps compensate for incidental damage. I don’t think 30 points for siphoning wells is worthwhile, considering their cooldowns. The 10 points in soul reaping is again noticable – the gain in life force and the reduced life force decay is nice. The lack of stability from not going 30 points into SR sucks however. I often wonder if I’d rather play 0/30/10/0/30, but then I think I’d miss the heals from vampiric, so it’s a catch-22.

In PvP, I need to caveat that I am a rabbit newb that runs solo hotjoin and then tries to bunker points, rather than roaming around in a zerg. I initially ran without 30 points in SR (0/10/10/30/20 if I remember right), and the lack of stability was terrible so I had to adjust. The 10 points in spite are for Weakening Shroud; for sitting on points targeted wells doesn’t seem to me to be required. Originally I ran with 3 wells, and am playing around with dropping one for Spectral Armor… it’s a work in progress.

Thanks to Mammoth for the build posts, I’ll be looking at those closely.

sas.6483:

I run vampiric / wells builds similar to this in both WvW (0/30/10/20/10, used to run 0/20/10/30/10) and PvP (0/10/10/20/30). For both I choose to run pretty much all PVT gear, so I don’t run well of blood.

In WvW, vampiric is nice; it ups my damage by about 5-10% and gives a reasonable trickle of heals that is noticable and helps compensate for incidental damage. I don’t think 30 points for siphoning wells is worthwhile, considering their cooldowns. The 10 points in soul reaping is again noticable – the gain in life force and the reduced life force decay is nice. The lack of stability from not going 30 points into SR sucks however. I often wonder if I’d rather play 0/30/10/0/30, but then I think I’d miss the heals from vampiric, so it’s a catch-22.

In PvP, I need to caveat that I am a rabbit newb that runs solo hotjoin and then tries to bunker points, rather than roaming around in a zerg. I initially ran without 30 points in SR (0/10/10/30/20 if I remember right), and the lack of stability was terrible so I had to adjust. The 10 points in spite are for Weakening Shroud; for sitting on points targeted wells doesn’t seem to me to be required. Originally I ran with 3 wells, and am playing around with dropping one for Spectral Armor… it’s a work in progress.

Thanks to Mammoth for the build posts, I’ll be looking at those closely.

nice post sas thank you.

sounds interesting, I have been thinking about 2 builds focused around wells, 1 being with stability the other with serious protection up time.

last night was the first time in game I tested something and went and bought the gear straight away. for me I think clerics is awesome with all the siphoning well of blood etc.

I will play around with different traits etc and keep you posted idf I find anything to be a major success

I was experimenting with a well/siphon build a while ago. Check my sig for the “watch the health bar” link. It’s very effective at staying alive, but like Mammoth said it lacks stability so at higher levels of play (which I don’t play in atm) it could be difficult to hold the point. There are a few clips where I get bounced around quite a bit.

If I ever try it again I would ditch the 10/0/30/30/0 build for something like 0/0/10/30/30, get boon duration runes, and flash DS while siphoning as much as possible. Solider or Cleric ammy.

Anyway, give the vid a watch and see if it helps you.

lettucemode.3789:

I was experimenting with a well/siphon build a while ago. Check my sig for the “watch the health bar” link. It’s very effective at staying alive, but like Mammoth said it lacks stability so at higher levels of play (which I don’t play in atm) it could be difficult to hold the point. There are a few clips where I get bounced around quite a bit.

If I ever try it again I would ditch the 10/0/30/30/0 build for something like 0/0/10/30/30, get boon duration runes, and flash DS while siphoning as much as possible. Solider or Cleric ammy.

Anyway, give the vid a watch and see if it helps you.

thanks for sharing the link lettuce, some impressive fights in there! I have improved my build a little bit by going 5/15/20/30/0 though the 5 in spite could probably be better used in curses.

the lack of stability is a real pain but I love the other traits so mich (targeted wells, lose condition when you enter DS etc) that I cant go that deep into soul reaping without ruining what I found works for me.

ive gone full clerics and 5 runes of the grove with 1 of water for extra healing.

the siphoning has improved so much since that video was posted, just think if we had more acces to stability we’d be unkillable.

To me there’s big issues with synergy in the traits around bunkering

Flashing for stability is going to make a big cut into the only two pseudo-bunker utilities you might spec for [spectral armor/walk], which reduces your EHP by big amounts. Other than that we have wells, and if you end up using wells then you are doing yourself a poor service by not running with a well-based bunker build.

The well build has much better synergy, but like others have pointed out, trying to bunker without stability is going to neutralise a point quickly. Taking the spec which gives us stability cuts away big amounts of EHP, limits our utility choices and takes away five damage/utility abilities.

Bunkering just isn’t our thing currently, for bunkering with deathshroud we’d need; healing in death shroud, access to utilities/heal in deathshroud, stomping/ressing in shroud. And honestly, I wouldn’t bank on those coming any time soon, or likely ever. Non-bunker specs do fine without them.

We do have some pesky/hard to kill builds using wells but there’s stilll currently no reason to want one over say a guardian who would also bring massive group utility or an ele who could put out big aoe healing and cleansing, both of which are infinitely better at ressing/stomping

azuzephyr.7280:

To me there’s big issues with synergy in the traits around bunkering

Flashing for stability is going to make a big cut into the only two pseudo-bunker utilities you might spec for [spectral armor/walk], which reduces your EHP by big amounts. Other than that we have wells, and if you end up using wells then you are doing yourself a poor service by not running with a well-based bunker build.

The well build has much better synergy, but like others have pointed out, trying to bunker without stability is going to neutralise a point quickly. Taking the spec which gives us stability cuts away big amounts of EHP, limits our utility choices and takes away five damage/utility abilities.

Bunkering just isn’t our thing currently, for bunkering with deathshroud we’d need; healing in death shroud, access to utilities/heal in deathshroud, stomping/ressing in shroud. And honestly, I wouldn’t bank on those coming any time soon, or likely ever. Non-bunker specs do fine without them.

We do have some pesky/hard to kill builds using wells but there’s stilll currently no reason to want one over say a guardian who would also bring massive group utility or an ele who could put out big aoe healing and cleansing, both of which are infinitely better at ressing/stomping

the synergy in traits is exactly what im struggling with. I mean the synergy is great if you don’t want stability. but that is what seems to be necessary for bunkering.

trying to find a good compromise is proving difficult.

ive not ‘given up’ on the bunker necro, but ive tried to make a very resilient debuffer and support build, 1500 healing power without stacks and an ‘ok’ amount of damage.

15/15/10/30/0

we’ve mentioned stability but you have to sacrifice too much and the whole idea around the build breaks down when we put 30 into SR.

the only difference in this set up is that ive taken consume conditions over well of blood. The extra condition removal is priceless.

anyways ill continue to try make a bunker but for now im having fun with this and annoying the hell out of everyone by being very hard to kill.

This is like all the utube videos where people show off their amazing melting people builds. Against people with no clue and underleveled people. Some at least are honest that they pick off underleveled players because its safest.

Grandiose scenarios that people love to throw around how they solo 3+ people/the whole team etc. Yeah great… I also had moments when team balance went to kitten and in my team next lowest rank after me was 50. On other side highest was 6. And I managed to kill half the team solo next to their spawn then the rest moped up the ones that tried to go after nodes and entire game was basically 1 team killing the other at their spawn. Yeah… must mean necros are op.

If a competent thief that goes for max damage wants you dead in wvw you will die. Unless you are with a zerg and even then a good thief can manage to wreck you in the middle of zerg then stomp you and leave. We nether have stability nor enough spamable escapes to deal with a good thief solo.

If you are having fun trying to make this work thats good. Just don’t confuse people and give some bizzare idea thakittens going to be viable in spvp where you can’t outgear/outlevel people. Like I said a proper warrior with hammer will toss you around entire map and w/o stability you are nothing but a punching bag to him. And a proper guardian will simply move in, throw you out and you won’t budge him from there ever again.

Azure summed it up… anything you can “possibly” do a guardian,ele and even engineer can do infinitely better as far as bunkering and survivability solo in spvp goes.

Also… wells… are the biggest checks in this game if person you are fighting knows what they are doing or not. Someone that knows better will never get scared or even pressed by wells. They are the easiest aoes around to avoid because they are FLASHY as hell and have a gigantic cooldown while they don’t last nearly enough to justify their use in spvp. Its like a condition staff mesmer. Great… except when you fight someone that can tell the difference between a clone and not a clone. Then it instantly turns into not so great spec.

HiSaZuL.2843:

This is like all the utube videos where people show off their amazing melting people builds. Against people with no clue and underleveled people. Some at least are honest that they pick off underleveled players because its safest.

Grandiose scenarios that people love to throw around how they solo 3+ people/the whole team etc. Yeah great… I also had moments when team balance went to kitten and in my team next lowest rank after me was 50. On other side highest was 6. And I managed to kill half the team solo next to their spawn then the rest moped up the ones that tried to go after nodes and entire game was basically 1 team killing the other at their spawn. Yeah… must mean necros are op.

If a competent thief that goes for max damage wants you dead in wvw you will die. Unless you are with a zerg and even then a good thief can manage to wreck you in the middle of zerg then stomp you and leave. We nether have stability nor enough spamable escapes to deal with a good thief solo.

If you are having fun trying to make this work thats good. Just don’t confuse people and give some bizzare idea thakittens going to be viable in spvp where you can’t outgear/outlevel people. Like I said a proper warrior with hammer will toss you around entire map and w/o stability you are nothing but a punching bag to him. And a proper guardian will simply move in, throw you out and you won’t budge him from there ever again.

Azure summed it up… anything you can “possibly” do a guardian,ele and even engineer can do infinitely better as far as bunkering and survivability solo in spvp goes.

Also… wells… are the biggest checks in this game if person you are fighting knows what they are doing or not. Someone that knows better will never get scared or even pressed by wells. They are the easiest aoes around to avoid because they are FLASHY as hell and have a gigantic cooldown while they don’t last nearly enough to justify their use in spvp. Its like a condition staff mesmer. Great… except when you fight someone that can tell the difference between a clone and not a clone. Then it instantly turns into not so great spec.

if you think this is one of ‘those’ YouTube videos boasting about how epic I am (which i am pretty epic :P) you are sorely mistaken or I have maybe not explained what I wanted to to the right effect.

I am trying to say how durable this build is, not how much DPS it has, so me holding 3 players attention for 3 minutes is great for my team so they have an easier time with the other 1 or 2 players. I never mentioned my raw DPS output wiping entire teams.

and the point about wells is irrelevant in my opinion as im using them as survivability tool, the only damaging well I take is corruption and if they want the point im sat on they’ll have to stand in it.

im not sure I understand what you’re saying in your post, I mean I get that you (and everyone else) thinks that eles and guardians are better bunkers, but it doesn’t mean necro cant bunker. if my spec was played by a very competent player it would be great. I am better than your average player and do well with it and im no pro.