Guild Wars 2

Hi

i just want to get some opinions in on my daggermancer minionbuild and present the thoughts involved so if you just want to see the build skip to the TL:DR section.
Since i like the melee aspect of the necro but found it kind of difficult to maintain pressure on other classes (if you get bursted you got to go defensive and can’t put out enough pressure with dagger autos to keep them from just finishing you) i took a look at some utilites.

I started out with some of the more obvious choices like BiP, wells or even spectral skills and while the damage increase from BiP and the direct damage from Well of Suffering are really nice, they come with the downside of beeing easily avoided, suceptible to kiting and overall they are more on the DoT side of things. Wells take 5 secs to deliver their dmg and BiP is a percentual dmg increase.

Spectral skills on the other side serve a more defensive purpose, protection on Spectral Wall and Spectral Armor, increased Life force on Spec Armor and Spec Walk and while the kiting possibilities through Walk are really fancy, thats pretty much all there is to it. The stun breaker aspects of those skills would be a welcome addition if their cd’s wouldn’t be so horrible and the skill effects would be more useful.

So what i wanted was some necro build with a more bursty feeling to it coupled with enough survivability to deal with the glass cannons roaming pvp land.

Utility wise i settled with Spectral grasp, bone minions and signet of locust for movement/healing. The heal of choice is obviously Consume Conditions and Flesh golem as elite.
For weapons i use dagger(rage)/warhorn(force) and staff(energy), a valk amulett with a zerker gem and lyssa runes.

While Spectral grasp is still kinda hard to hit it just synergizes really well with Dark Pact (dagger 3) and putrid explosion coupled with dagger autos. In a 2 sec window you can expect around 8k damage and some nice follow up stuff like flesh golem charge/ wail of doom.
The stronge side of this build is a crapload of hard cc (3sec immob, 2 sec area daze, pull, 2 sec line knockdown, 1sec area fear, 1 sec single target fear) while delivering some serious pain coupled with decent survivability.
Lyssa runes and Flesh golem summon/charge grants much needed stability and allows you to deal with team fights and cc heavy speccs.
Death shroud grants fury and retal and functions as either a furybuff for dagger autos, nice longish range damage tool (if over 50%), or your “oh kitten, better fear that pesky thief/warri/ele that is whooping my kitten #8221;-button.
Since bone minions are more or less "shatter"fodder their survivability is not an issue.

So, i got two versions which fulfill my needs. The first one got 30 in spite for the 20% dmg under 50, the second one(which i like more) gives a poison field on minion down.
This works with jagged horrors and putrid Explosion.

Version one 30 spite
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBIhZakRravUTZjePBIz4Zqhesr0OHf4YA;TsAA0CnoKyUkoIbRuikFt+YMysAA

Version two 30 death Magic
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBIhZakRravUTZjePBI94ZqnGSxuSHp44lB;TsAA0CnoKyUkoIbRuikFt+YMysAA

About the Traits:
Spite
Retal on Death shroud: is kind of a filler but has it upsides, like the obvious one that you enter DS when you get bursted so it is ok but in no way necessary.
30% minion damage: More dmg on Putrid Explosion, more damage on Flesh golem charge and autos, profit.
Close to Death(build1): This one looks so nice on paper but the necro is not a thief. Also it does not increase minion damage including putrid explosion which is why i decided to take it out.

Curses
Weakening shroud: This is pretty much the only useful option (and a good one too) on your way to fury on DS.
Banshees Wail over Spectral Attunement: I prefer the 5 sec cd reduction on the warhorn skills over 6 secs on your pull since the daze is more reliable to land and aoe.
It would also be possible to go 15 curses and put the 5 points in either blood for 500hp and regen or better Soul Reaping for increased life force gain and 5% crit dmg.

Death Magic
Greater Marks is necessary if you play with a staff, it makes marks pretty easy to land and more effective in aoe situations. Putrid marks teamfight capabilites also get increased thanks to the larger circle.
50% health increase to minions is necessary for the flesh golem to work. If you don’t have it he gets aoe cleaved so easy while with it he survives some fights.
This trait does close to nothing for bone minions since you either start a fight with pulling someone into you and letting them explode or summoning them to let them explode.
Deadly Strength (minor) i quickly wanted to mention this minor trait since it gives you an additional 90 power.
Death Nova (build2): i like the poison field a lot. If someone stays in both fields for their whole duration(3secs each) they just got poisoned for about 24 secs. Also since putrid explosion is one of your opening moves it reduces the effectiveness of their following heal.

So thats it from my side. Give this build a try and tell me what you think or just look over it and give me some feedback. Thanks for your attention.

TL:DR
Pull stuff with Spectral grasp followed by Dark Pact and melt their faces with Putrid explosion and dagger auto
The Build (same Link as Build 2)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBIhZakRravUTZjePBI94ZqnGSxuSHp44lB;TsAA0CnoKyUkoIbRuikFt+YMysAA

In my opinion, taking minions without going all in is generally bad, although you can make it work. Especially Flesh golem and Bone minions (with death nova) can be put into other builds and give you some help with decent damage, and the golem’s cripple/cc or bone minions poison fields can be pretty strong when you are going for holding people down in one area. However, I also feel like there are other utility skills you could have gone for that provide much stronger burst damage, and free up trait points for more useful applications. Your poisoning could be done with staff 3, and also Corrosive Poison Cloud, giving you the poison debuff, and either freeing up a utility slot for something better, or in poison cloud’s case also giving weakness to them (you can use staff 4 to transfer over your own weakness). Also, Lich form as an ult would do much higher damage (you can get autos to hit insanely hard), and applying vulnerability with some other conditions is stronger than those few autos golem will do.

I’m not exactly sure what your overall goal for this build is, s/tPvP necros are really best fit for stationary defense (our mobility is god-awful compared to classes like ele and thief), so if you could specify that, it would help people help you more.

I feel like your build is fine, and I’m sure you can do okay with it if you play it right, but I think if you wanted a burst build, you should go further towards power/crit damage, and abuse DS 1’s huge crits, and Lich 1 crits, along with something like well of suffering for big damage and vuln stacks. If you want survivability/sustain (a necro bunker), then you can trait more fully into minions with all power/tough/vit stats, or go for a condition/DS (using DS 4 to apply crit bleeds), and using a dagger + any offhand (they can all pump out good conditions) and staff.

Remember, necros will NEVER, ever be as bursty as burst classes, you can give yourself a 5 second “burst” that will do big damage, but compared to a thief’s <1 sec 15k macro, its pretty long. Your build is fine, don’t let anything discourage you from using it if its fun, but I think you haven’t specialized enough to see something productive outside of zerg-fest games (your build probably does really well in zergs, with huge poison AoE and single target pulls to melt squishies). Anywho, thats all just my opinion, and I’m far from an expert on anything.