Guild Wars 2

Questions:
- How can a necro get swiftness up as long as possible or as easy as possible (least amount of effort/traits etc spent)
- how can one improve the normal running speed and to which degree? (without swiftness)

Glossary:
WH5: means warhorns number 5 skill Locust Swarm which grants swiftness for 10 out of 30 seconds at default. Note: this skill can get you into combat if you pass an enemy
SW: short for the Spectral Walk utility costing 6 skillpoints which grants swiftness 30 out of 60 seconds at default
Banshee’s Wail: one of the first available major traits (adept) in the Curses trait line increasing warhorn skills duration and decreasing their cooldown (anyone got any numbers?)
Spectral Mastery: 20% cooldown reduction on spectral skills, adept trait in Soul Reaping
Spectral Attunement: increases spectral skills duration, adept trait in Curses

Swiftness
- WH5 + SW + Banshee’s Wail
- WH5 + SW + spectral walk build (Spectral Mastery & Spectral Attunement / Banshee’s Wail) – gives quite a bit more than 100% uptime, mostly useful if you use spectral skills generally
- WH5 + SW + increased boon duration from Death Magic trait line or runes (nearly or up to 100% swiftness depending on runes/boon duration)
- WH5 + Banshee’s Wail + speed duration runes (partial uptime)

Passives
- Signet of the Locust with passive 10% speed increase
- Quickening Thirst trait for faster running speed with daggers (10% MH, 5% offhand, nonstacking)
- Superior Rune of Speed for improved duration and efficiency (full set allows 100% swiftness uptime with 40% speed increase instead of only 33%), Superior Rune of the Traveler for passive movement speed boost (5%, nonstacking), Major Rune of Air & using healing skills

Conclusion
swiftness only comes from spectral walk or warhorn #5.
SW & WH5 together grant 50 out of 60 seconds speed if used just after cooldown.
For 100% swiftness you need some improvements from runes or the traitlines – either from skill improvements or just general boon duration.
there are several trait combinations allowing for 100% uptime which offers some leeway for the player to build around according to his/her taste.
passive effects are limited at a maximum of 10% it seems, because they don’t stack (why? they should stack and be limited at 25% or so)

Edits
thanks for all the answers guys! =) added these to my post
also removed the blabla I posted, just kept the facts ;-)

• 20 points in Curses for Banshee’s Wail (Warhorn effects recharge 15% quicker and last 20% longer) Warhorn off-hand and Spectral Walk utility skill is the bare minimum for perma-swiftness, best for power crit builds.

• 20 points in Death Magic for the 20% boon duration, Warhorn off-hand and Spectral Walk utility skill is the minimum for any build that scales off or uses Toughness.

Warhorn (with warhorn cooldown reduction trait) and Spectral Walk (with spectral cooldown reduction trait) will give you unlimited swiftness. Just watch out by yellow mobs or your locusts will smack them.

You have three ways of doing it with spectral walk + warhorn.

With a spectral walk build

With a warhorn build and + speed duration runes.

Just get spectral walk as a utility slot and warhorn on one weapon set. Put at least 20 in death match for the +20% boon duration and its near 100% uptime

A “spectral walk” build means you are traiting for spectral skills. This requires at least 10 points in Soul Reaping for Spectral Mastery (Spectral Skills recharge 20% faster) and at least 20 points in Curses for Spectral Attunement (Spectral Skills have longer durations and grant life force).

With these two traits, you will have 100% swiftness with spectral walk and warhorn (use warhorn once SW swiftness is done… Spectral walk will be up again before warhorn swiftness ends). I have a spectral build and don’t typically use the warhorn. Without it, I still have ~85/90% uptime on swiftness. I like this build as it allows my spectral walk teleport effect to last longer, so lets me go further before teleporting back (good for saving time in WvW when grabbing supply from a camp). The extra life force gain is also nice.

EDIT: You may just need the spectral mastery trait and not spectral attunement. I’d have to test that as I’m not sure if the attunement extends the swiftness boon in addition to the spectral effects. I just like the spectral build, so I have both.

If you just use spectral walk with 10 points in Soul Reaping for 20%faster recharge on spectral skills, and have a few points in Death Magic for boon duration, you can have your swiftness last around 36-38s, and have as little as 8-10s of swiftness downtime.

This isn’t too long to be without swiftness and you don’t have to use a weapon you don’t want that way. I personally never touched the warhorn until PvP

OR… you can just equip that signet which gives you 10% faster speed.

You can stack rune sets which grant 20% increase in swiftness duration.
I’m too lazy to look up the set names but you can get your (traited) spectral walk swiftness duration to be equal to skills cooldown this way. Heck, you can even have it on autocast.

updated the main post again, to reflect upon the new information. looked up a few names etc from the wiki.
thanks for your help, seems the necro can achieve 100% swiftness rather easily and with different builds. not quite as easy as an ele (which only needs 1 utility skill and the staff, no traits etc), but still very good ;-)

the passive effects don’t seem to be worth it – they cost too much. 1 lvl 10 trait to increase your speed by a maximum of 10% constantly. you can just increase warhorn with another lvl 10 trait and additionally get longer crippling/daze – or longer spectral abilities which also works for all abilities, not just passive speed. why would anyone use the 10% increase in speed? it should be at least 15% in a trait.

Yes you got it right… dont invest in the passive speed triat boosts they are a joke.

Spectral Walk is a great skill always on my bar. Warhorn is great for a power/crit or wells build… for conditions builds I think you are giving up to much dagger off hand is better.