Guild Wars 2

The point I’m making is that the video does a great job of showing the viability of the zerker Necro.

Don’t just say XXXXX did it in 10 seconds less, because the video is not made to break world records. He found some zerker necros go knew what they were doing but we have no reason to believe they were geared for the fastest Cof speed run (balefire comes to mind)

Also, banners are important. World record team had three classes, and Nemesis only had two. The fact that he did it in such a fast speed with a group of normal Necro + Mesmer shows his point well.

Fury, swiftness, +15% crit damage amongst other things. He also not ALWAYS stayed at 25 might.

Everything works in open world, and the summoner shines here. Minions builds can solo champions at cursed shore without much trouble. Summoners are fine in most dungeons, but it is not the most useful and can run into troubles against bosses who spam AOE skills.

Your high toughness makes you a target over most of your teammates, so you end up taking more damage ironically. For a death shroud build, go ahead and get berserker gear, axe/focus + dagger/warhorn. Take 30/10/0/0/30. You want the life blast giving might, axe training, and +20% damage when half health in spite. You also want life blast puts vulnerability and pierces, and +50% crit chance in DS. The rest is up to you.

To be fair, you had no idea how efficient they were at using their skills. So to take a pug like group and get that time is impressive. Let us not dwell on the exact number as much as being able to look at it from a conceptual perspective.

If you really wanted to push for speed, perhaps 3 Necro with a Mesmer and a Warrior or ranger to give buffs might be the way to go. Obviously, the video was not for that purpose alone.

If you are running full zerker Necro like I am, down’d state Necro is one of the strongest in Pve. (I have a Warrior, Mesmer, Thief, and Engie also at 80 in full Zerker).

Necromancer’s life drain heals, but the biggest thing is that it attacks so fast which allows a ton of crits to be done. No, I usually do not kill half Health Champions (lol who does?), but I have no problem killing off a full health normal mob at Cursed Shore if I’m fighting only him or killing off a low healthed mob when there is a group on me. The damage is tremendously high.

I have Level 80 Warrior, Mesmer, Necro, Engineer, and Thief.

Necro definitely has great sustained damage. Do not let people confuse you with how impressive their burst is. It is exactly like they said. If a Boss has 200k health, someone who can consistently pull 6k dps is better than someone who can upload 40k dps in 4 seconds then sit there auto attacking at 2k dps for a long period of time.

You cannot really test it per sae, but you can make other characters to 80 to have an idea of the damage between classes. This game does not have a DPS tool that keeps track of your actual damage per second, and people tend to forget that time spent moving around or not bursting drops your actual damage per second from the impressive burst you might do a few seconds ago.

I have a level 80 Necro, Warrior, Mesmer, Engineer, and Thief. My favorite class is still the Necro, and I will tell you why.

Pve
For dungeons, Necromancers are good. Necromancer actually does more raw damage than some of my other classes, and the “infamous warrior leet dps” is not actually higher by default; warrior’s awesomeness comes from stacking buffs with other warriors that push the party over the edge. If you want to min/max, you might as well take X number of Warriors for their buffs/banners, then 1 Mesmer for the reflect and timewarp. If you want to argue from that perspective, you shouldn’t and don’t need to play any other classes. However, the most organized group is maybe 10 minutes faster than a group filled with people who know what they are doing but are playing their favorite classes. So really, it does not matter.

Pvp
We are actually one of the strongest class in the game right now. I’m sure you have already heard about this enough. They had just recently nerfed us slightly because of this.

Wvw
Really, in WvW, roaming does not matter. Yeah it is fun and people like to post stupid “LOL 30K THIEF CRITS” videos on youtube, but it does not matter. WvW is won over large organized Zergs and large scale engagements. Necromancer has been one of the strongest group fight/zerg class in the game, and they just recently got buffed.

Oh, and I frequent other boards. Most boards are actually filled with negative posts; ranger’s one especially so (but that one is actually justified). We all like to see our favorite class get buffed, so we tend to be vocal and exaggerate things.

nearlight.3064:

I see. I feel like putting 30 into curses over soul reaping would be more effective because it boosts your DPS more outside of DS and gives more utility in the form of debuff conditions like weakness and vuln. That being said of miss the well CD reduction and HP from blood magic, but the tree just doesn’t provide enough sustainability for the DPS I’d gain fr curses. Any suggestions on gear? Since I just redlined my knight/zeroed armor with cultural I think I’ll stick with those and maybe pick up cavalier/zerker accessories (although I already use a knights amulet).

Do not forget that 30 into Soul Reaping gives +30% Crit damage along with the 5% flat damage when above half Life Force. That is a lot. You can still pump 10 points into Curses with 30/10/0/0/30, so you are only losing 200 Precision (which is like 8% crit only).

Then you can think about the tremendous amount of help you get from DS especially in WvW. Curses in general have pretty terrible traits when it comes to a power build. Only thing worth using is the minor trait Target the Weak, but that is a 25 point trait with the rest of the trait slots almost wasted. Do not get trapped into pumping 30 into curses just for the 8% crit, and never underestimate how useful DS is for Necros.

nearlight.3064:

I see. I feel like putting 30 into curses over soul reaping would be more effective because it boosts your DPS more outside of DS and gives more utility in the form of debuff conditions like weakness and vuln. That being said of miss the well CD reduction and HP from blood magic, but the tree just doesn’t provide enough sustainability for the DPS I’d gain fr curses. Any suggestions on gear? Since I just redlined my knight/zeroed armor with cultural I think I’ll stick with those and maybe pick up cavalier/zerker accessories (although I already use a knights amulet).

Do not forget that 30 into Soul Reaping gives +30% Crit damage as well kitten flat damage when above half Life Force. That is a lot. Do not take Curses just for the 300 Precision. You can still pump 10 points into it with 30/10/0/0/30, so you are only losing 200 Precision (which is like 8% crit only).

Then you can think about the tremendous amount of help you get from DS especially in WvW. Curses in general have pretty terrible traits when it comes to a power build. Only thing worth using is the minor trait Target the Weak, but that is a 25 point trait with the rest of the trait slots almost wasted. Do not get trapped into pumping 30 into curses just for the 200 extra precision.

Rennoko.5731:

SnyderHall.7263:

I am going to play devil’s advocate here and defend thieves for a second.

Thieves are only OP against glass cannons / bad players. I am not pointing fingers, but you can deal with thieves very easily if you can live through their initial burst. Especially with DS, Necromancers should have no problems if prepared.

Judges ruling??? EHHHHH wrong…

Sorry for the rude response… but this is horribly inaccurate. Your statement is entirely true of bad thieves, or even mediocre thieves, not of exceptional thieves. The statement that you can deal with thieves very easily if you survive the intial burst means you are playing against the bad thieves. The good thieves have less burst, and significantly more survivability and mobility.

Triple signet burst 30/30/10 thief…. yes.. if you live 5 seconds into the fight you can win it pretty easy. But you won’t most of the time, especially if anyone else is around. Having a full DS bar soaks up a few hits, or a smart thief just stealths, waits for you to LEAVE DS, then bursts back onto you knowing you have no defense.

… and your statement is entirely inaccurate on the ground that you are talking about bad or mediocre Necros. See how easy it is to simply claim things to claim things? You also cannot use a constructed scenario as “evidence”. What is this whole “burst till no DS, come back burst more” business? What is the Necro doing while the Thief is dropping its incredible burst? Standing there? No wonder people think Thieves are OP.

Our petty anecdotal evidence does not mean much when players better than both of us can attest how incredible Necro is. It is not OP, in my opinion, just very good. Similarly, Thieves have always been the “incredibly OP when observed by new or unprepared players”but not impossible to counter at all class."

Also, ya know what? Even if you are onto something, Thieves were intended to be great at roaming (even best) but one of the worst (if not the worst) at zergs with their Tissue-paper like defense and laughable amount of Aoe. I don’t know what server you play on, but WvWs are generally not won by how many kills people get while roaming around.

We, of course, know how effective Necros are in sPvP at the moment.

spoj.9672:

I dont range anything in this game except fiery shaman boss in grawl fractal. Sometimes it helps to have some ranged options when you need to duck out a bit, but the dagger 2 and DS is enough for that. If you melee everything it is more damage even when taking into account dodges. But obviously not everyone is capable of doing that or its just not their playstyle.

There you go again with the ad hominem. Can we stop with the name calling? Capable of what? Dodging? Dodging reduces DPS uptime. More you dodge, more DPS loss. What’s so hard to understand?
Being able to live through a hard fight with the dagger does not equate good dps when you could have potentially pumped out higher constant damage per second had you stayed in ranged.

Dagger 2 and inferior DS due to you using it in dagger are your excuses for ranged combat? That is even further DPS loss on top of the melee dps uptime loss. Dagger 2 is terrible for damage and DS lacks the 10% boost from Axe training as well as the slightly higher weapon damage from Axe, by the way.

It is not like Nemesis, I, or the others are saying dagger is bad. No one is telling you to not go dagger through Cof runs or anything (just a simple example). However, we are arguing that there are plenty (not just situational) times when the range dps option will provide superior DPS.

Remember, this is not the same as Warrior axe vs rifle. You cannot simply discount the benefit of a projectile weapon just because melee does slightly more DPS. Necromancer has one of the strongest range DPS in the game currently, and it nearly matches the numbers put out by the dagger without accounting for dps uptime.

In another thread, you even admitted that you could not kill a Risen Giant under 25 seconds no matter how many times you’ve tried, when another poster got it in 22 seconds with DS + Axe due to not needing to dodge in range.

spoj.9672:

Ok just got a 25second kill but i interrupted my locust swarm so that didnt get cast till mid fight and then the giant chain stomped 2 times in a row at the end. Had to dodge 3 attacks total. :<

Also bare in mind a DS build stacks vuln and might better, so solo it probably is quite even.

Edit: Around 25 seconds seems to be the best i can get when being forced to dodge so many stomps and not having the best sigils (Need to get bloodlust and swap focus sigil from energy to force).

Oh, and the icing on the cake? You can use Dagger as your offset for when you know that the fight does not require much active mitigation. Did we mention DS also pierces, applies vulnerability, and stacks might? Please don’t say that you will run with 4 warriors who is giving you 25 might stacks, fury, and keeping 25 vul on enemies at all times. That does not happen nearly enough, and we simply cannot tell all the new players “never worry about vulnerability/might, because your teammates will do it”. Someone has to do it.

spoj.9672:

SnyderHall.7263:

Guys, stop being so arrogant with this “if you’re a more advanced/skilled player, you can melee in safety which makes it okay!”

Everyone half skilled can dodge, position, and heal properly, but that misses the point of DPS uptime completely. How much DPS are you doing when you’re dodging? Healing? Repositioning after dodging? While you are constantly evading (which no one is saying impossible or hard to do), the ranged DPS is applying nearly constant DPS. So unless your melee dps is greatly higher than ranged dps (such as Warrior melee vs ranged), ranged dps will put out more.

There is no point arguing, since some of you will most likely reply with “oh, I never really need to dodge, I’m just really pro” stuff that I’m already seeing. To all the new players, test it out yourself. Don’t be fooled by big numbers and think that you are doing fantastic DPS. Even if you are not downing, the fact that you are spending several seconds at a time evading, healing, and getting back to the Boss cost you tremendous DPS.

Sometimes I really wish they allowed DPS addons in this game like WoW, it would solve a lot of issues with all these theorycrafting gurus.

Great guide, Nemesis.

The game is designed to do more damage in melee. The tradeoff is danger. Even dodging and healing you still do more dps.

I addressed this. The second set of weapon is Dagger anyways, so it is not like you will not take it out in situations where the melee does more. The degree of active damage mitagation required will determine whether you stay in ranged or melee. The trick is always balance.

Without evidence, neither of us can claim one way or the other; especially when there is no “always go melee/ranged” situation going on here. Unlike other classes, the difference in damage between Axe+DS vs Dagger is extremely small, that is why we have this discussion to begin with.

Nemesis has posted a video. Why not post a video of you doing Bosses while barely moving to dodge the damages?

I am going to play devil’s advocate here and defend thieves for a second.

Thieves are only OP against glass cannons / bad players. I am not pointing fingers, but you can deal with thieves very easily if you can live through their initial burst. Especially with DS, Necromancers should have no problems if prepared.

Guys, stop being so arrogant with this “if you’re a more advanced/skilled player, you can melee in safety which makes it okay!”

Everyone half skilled can dodge, position, and heal properly, but that misses the point of DPS uptime completely. How much DPS are you doing when you’re dodging? Healing? Repositioning after dodging? While you are constantly evading (which no one is saying impossible or hard to do), the ranged DPS is applying nearly constant DPS. So unless your melee dps is greatly higher than ranged dps (such as Warrior melee vs ranged), ranged dps will put out more.

There is no point arguing, since some of you will most likely reply with “oh, I never really need to dodge, I’m just really pro” stuff that I’m already seeing. To all the new players, test it out yourself. Don’t be fooled by big numbers and think that you are doing fantastic DPS. Even if you are not downing, the fact that you are spending several seconds at a time evading, healing, and getting back to the Boss cost you tremendous DPS.

Sometimes I really wish they allowed DPS addons in this game like WoW, it would solve a lot of issues with all these theorycrafting gurus.

Great guide, Nemesis.

If they consistently die to a Mesmer, they will simply say, “Oh Mesmers are a good class.” When a Necro kills them, now it’s all, “ERMAIGAWD, OP CLASS. NERF.”

Necromancer is not OP, but we are very good at the moment. People are not used to being dominated by Necromancers even if it is in 1v1 situations or when they are bad, so they blame the buffs as Necromancers being OP. The truth is, we have been so average (or even below average according to some) for so long, that people are simply unwilling to see us adept.

Azraeel.1238:

I personally run 30/10/0/0/30 Axe/Focus offset Dagger/Warhorn or Staff depending on the situation. I love it in both PvE and WvW. It is however a power build, not condition.

I do this too. Great fun to be had here.

Due to the recent patch, there are not many “cookie cutter” builds settled in yet besides the 30/30/10 terror+fire stuff. I would take any self proclaimed definitive guides or tips on the front page with a grain of salt for that reason (including mine).

Though his guides/videos are outdated, Nemesis’ video tutorials and his guides stickied on the top of the Necro forum are very helpful for someone new. He explains his reasoning very thoroughly as well as highlighting why Necromancers are played the way they are. By getting a rudimentary understanding of the class through his videos, you should be able to discern which guides/tips are correct and vice versa.

As far as leveling goes, using a Power/crit based build or a Minion builds are both great for leveling. I would stay away from condition builds for leveling for the most part, as you lack most of the high tier traits, and going tanky for leveling is silly (Though you are quite tanky with a Minion build). The Power build will be faster for the most part, while the Minion build really kicks in at level 40 with “Flesh of the Master” and provide you with an amazing suitability and a smooth leveling experience.

In general, you will want to look for yellow hearts on the map to try to accomplish, they give you a good idea of the levels of the area nearby. On your way there, you will run into orange events that you should always try to do for more experience. Try to grab all red vistas and point of interests along the way for even more experience. Whenever you can, do your Personal Story missions, as they also give you a great deal of experience.

Good Luck!

Axe damage is fine. Its auto attack is the problem. That’s why we use DS in between cooldowns of Axe 2 and Focus 4.

Use Axe with 30/x/x/x/30 trait. The Axe training works with DS. Go DS1 2-4 times. Get out of DS. Use Axe 2, Focus 4. DS1 2 times, DS4 and DS5 if you wish. Axe 2. Mix in wells in there for good measure.

Mix in Dagger combos with it when you get the feel too when Life Force is low and Axe/Focus is on cooldown.

I like the guide, but since the patch, a few things need to be addressed here.

DS will be a useful tool for any necro, especially power. Even if your plan is not to spam DS, the fact that it does tremendous damage and that you are using an Axe warrants 30 in Soul Reaping. Only build that can get away from that is one focused on Dagger, but for dungeons, the ranged option of the Axe+DS will provide more dps output since it is ranged.

30 in Soul Reaping gives you 15% more crit damage, 5% more damage most of the time, and +50%crit in DS (remember it applies to wells), and potentially 30% DS recharge rate (allows you to go in and out of DS in between Axe 2 and Focus 4). The overall benefit, in my opinions, trumps the 7%crit you get from curses and the 4-8% damage you get from Target the Weak. Yes, it is possible that you are with an organized group, but for general pugging, people do not apply that many conditions.

Remember, we need to play our strength here. Necro has superior ranges power build dps than pretty much most classes like warrior or thief (I do not have a Mesmer, so I can’t comment on that). Not only do we never run the risk of dying, the time saved by not dodging most attacks or needing to heal ultimately contribute to reasons to play a power necro.

Do you think being very loud in your thread and stubborn makes you a better necromancer than people who ranked higher than you? Also, are your builds (builds you stole) better than people who have better ranks than you simply because you say so?

Luckily, no class does damage or damage buff better than warriors, so we are on even grounds wih other class in that regard. However, since this game is about having fun, all classes are pretty much viable, and no one will comment on you not being a warrior (unless you join a “lfg all warriors”), you will have a blast using zerker necro.

So much misinformation here. Cof is universally known to be incredibly easy and everyone can finish the whole dungeon in melee range. That is why people prefer thieves or warriors for it. There is no need it any utilities when nothing can kill you.

I have a zerker grenade engineer, warrior, thief, and nerco.

People hate thieves in dungeons if there is already another one (even for cof). I get a lot of “too many thieves?” Thieves are good on paper, since they do more damage. However, unless you have perfect Internet and never make a mistake, everyone knows that thief gets down a lot. In the end, due to its weak defense in zerker, thief will be less effective overall.

Engineer is great, since it is ranged. The damage I fantastic, but it is no very different from the necro post patch. Not much to say here. People do not complain about my engineer at all.

Warrior does not do more (or much more) raw damage by himself. However, warrior has better team buff skills when it comes to might, fury, precision..etc. That is why people might prefer warriors in parties. Honestly, no one has ever asked me to switch to a warrior when I’m doing dungeons.

As for necro, I have never ran into anyone who cared enough to kick me or asked me to switch class, even when there are another necro in the party. Necro does great damage, especially with all of it in ranged. It makes for great dps because you are not down all the time nor are you forced to dodge as often.

For what it’s worth, people have a negative view on warriors and thieves because most new players like them.

Swipee.3560:

maybe you can give me some guide about leveling. or doing the My Story is the only way to level? sorry im too new here, lot of things i dont know. need to learn

Best way to leveling is exploring areas while doing hearts and events until you are high enough level for the My Story, then do those as you are leveling along.

Pretty much what everyone’s thinking.

emon.1863:

Necro is atm at very hard times, it just got buffed to heaven and seems it will be nerf’d to bottom soon (again).
If you run PvE you wont have any issues with any build and weapon set, till you are 80 ( even then the PvE is pretty easy).

Note: Necro has problems with direct dmg, so you will have some problems in some dungeons.

No to pretty much everything this guy said.

Power necro has been the more popular and more viable pve (and pvp according to some people) build for some time now. They also got a ton of upgrades in the recent patch. So no, necros do not have problems with direct damage or dungeons.

It is also not hard times, because necros will not be nerfed just because you and a few of your buddies think so.

Also, people who do not play high level fractals should not be allowed to post “pve is pretty easy” unless you are talkin about leveling and the easier dungeons.

Necromancer power build got significant buffs because DS got huge upgrades, axe got buffed, wells got buffed.

I got a chance to test everything, here are some results. (Everything was done with steady weapon and normal weapons on spvp target golems)

DS does substantially more damage in Axe than Staff when you have Axe training selected.
Axe training works in DS, however, the skill was nerfed to 10% increase damage.

Ah, you’re right. The wiki finally updated it yesterday or so. It is now only a 10% increase. That’s a shame.

Test it more. If the trait does not work, it should be something like 4.5% as math shows. If it works, it will be 15%. There is no reason possible that the trait is “half working”; (very weird bug indeed). What is more likely happening is that your sample size was not big enough, and you might not have accounted for the loss of 5% damage when your lifeforce is below 50%.

If you truly care, document 100 shots either all above or all below 50% lifeforce in identical situations with axe training, then 100 shots without. Average both, then compare. From the perspective of someone who is doing a lot of statistical analysis in my labs, even 100 is considered a small sample size.

In my own testing, when I noticed that the general damage increase was over 10% by proximate, I called it a day and deduced that it was more likely working as opposed to working at 66% efficiency.

pvp? pve? wvw? solo experimental builds?

Necromancer is a much more flexible class when it comes to build post patch.

The most traditional fundation to work on a build begins at Power/crit versus Condition + tanky. There are, of course, other builds that combine the two to some degree.

A good build that I am very familiar with that I have been using pre and post patch is Power/crit with DS and Wells to support, since DS and Wells scale incredibly well with power and crit stats.

So focus on Power, crit, crit damage stats, and use some sort of 30/x/x/x/30. Make sure to pick up Reaper’s Might, Close to Death, Axe Mastery, Deathly Precision, Unyielding Blast.

Targuil.3741:

Andele.1306:

Just to note since DS scales of the weapon not its increases Staff DS still does more than any other weapon we got (and another reason why it should be staple in each build).

Axe with axe mastery does more damage in DS than staff.

Axe: (857+1048)/2*1,15=1095,375
Staff: (985+1111)/2=1048

Axe with mastety gives ~4,5% damage increase in DS over staff, not to mention extra sigil. Though I am not certain if DS uses offhand at all.

Not sure if this is intended, but Axe Mastery has always worked with DS by +15%. This has been tested and tried true for months. I have tested it post patch, and it still works just the same.

flow.6043:

Just one thing:

By “100% crit chance” I assume you mean you have like ~50% and get another 50 with Deathly Perception.
However, this trait doesn’t mean +50%. It means that your chrit chance is multiplied by 1,5. So 50% regular crit chance really gives you 75% in DS with Deathly Perception.

No it’s not. Research it up again. That was one of the first thing people figured out when the patch notes were leaked.

Test it yourself, but you can also figure it out based on the tool text itself. It does not say “increases crit chance by 50%”, it says something like “you You have a 50% greater critical chance while in death shroud.”

I have seen quite a few people who are saying it in different replies. Some are claiming that dagger auto attacks hit harder without testin DS with axe training on. Or they straight up forget that DS is a powerful aoe option too.

I don’t think people understand what damage per second means.

If you are serious about DS, you need axe training and have an axe for when you go into DS; yes, the 15% damage works for DS!

I also recommend giving it a shot as a main weapon in general (in favor of the staff or dagger depends on how much range/support/utility you wish to have). Since the patch allowing both Axe Training and Close to Death, Axe really got a major buff. War horn offhand, of course.

…. well not really THAT much. However, a lot of people have been slamming on the buffs saying that DS still sucks, buffs didn’t matter, no new builds should be explored…etc etc. I have not yet finished testing everything, but here are a list of not so obvious updates that is now true due to the buffs.

New DS:
1) +10% damage at all times/ +20% when target is below 50% in DS form. Axe Training and Close to Death could not both be selected before the patch. Since Axe Training does affect DS, this is a HUGE increase; assuming you chose Close to Death before. So to all the naysayers who are saying that DS is not worth using, try using it with Axe Training + an axe in your hand, then compare the numbers. The other implication is that tha axe now has +20% damage when target is less than 50% health; this is also huge.

2) 100% crit on Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption with zerker gear. Just drop the Wells, then hit DS. Profit LYK A BAWS.

3) Having fun yet? Now, instead of using DS1 ability three times then forced to leave because your Life Force dropped below 50%, now you can spam DS abilities until you are READY to leave? DS form can be effectively used for very prolonged period of time.

As you can see, though there needs to be more testing, DS/powernecros got huge buffs as far as theory crafting and initial testings go.

Disclaimer: I am not saying power is the best trait, nor am I saying Necro is OP. I am simply summarizing some of the obvious and not so obvious buffs that certain people have been brushing off.

Oh, do you like icing on your cakes?
4) 33% chance to gain 1% Life Force on ALL attacks during DS. Imagine using Well + DS4 on a group of mobs. (With the trait Reaper’s Precision of course)

To all the people who are underestimating DS: I’m not going to argue whether or not a Dagger combo will do more damage than DS for now (need more testing), but here’s what I do know.

DS allows your wells to 100% crit. This is actually a huge deal. That plus the DS 4 and even DS5 instantly wipes out 5 mobs and do insane damage to the rest. The AOE aspect cannot be ignored. Not to mention that there will be times when your heals and such are on cooldown, and you need to go in DS. Your “buffer period” in DS now is infinitely more powerful than before.

Oh, and it’s also ranged.

I think that a build focused on using everything to make those few seconds in DS extraordinary is not as effective as a traditional powerbuild that heavily utilizes DS. Yes, it’s great when you can stack all the might for the burst inside DS, but what if you get hit? CC’d? Not to mention that even with all the right traits, majority of your time will not be spent in Death Shroud when you are actually fighting.

I think Death Shroud can and should be one of the main workhorse for a power build. Necromancer power build was already decent before the patch, but it just got a huge boost in Soul Reaping. Rune Orbs instead of runes can not only provide more consistent dps, but it also benefits you much more when you cannot stack those might and pop inside DS. This also allows you to drop some of the might stacking abilities for Wells, which scale incredibly well with power and crit. Not to mention their cool down got a majority buff, and it also provides you with more aoe offense.

Of course, you can definitely create your own build and test them, since I cannot say if your build is unreliable as a pure DS build was before the patch. However, I still believe that DS should support Power builds, not the other way around.

I like grounding wells for dungeons, since there are a lot of situations where precise wells are useful.

Okay, minions are mostly affected by your traits and not much by your gear. People sometimes like to use high toughness gears to draw aggro (more on this later), but since you want to do a condition build as well, then I suppose gear that helps with condition damage might be what you want.

You should, however, worry about keeping your minions sustained. Staff #2 skill is the best for this, so staff has always been my prefered weapon for MM builds. It gives a huge regeneration to your minion, so your main source of offense(and defense) is always nicely replenished. The 3, 4, 5 skills are also very powerful to support your team of minions.

Don’t worry about sigils before level 80. Honestly, you level through the low level content so fast that a sigil or the weapon gets outdated way too fast. In fact, do not worry about items while leveling, especially a MM necromancer. MM builds need some required traits to function, however, and this is especially true at level 80.

They are: (from highest to lowest priority)
1) a) Death Magic (X) +50% hp to minions. This allows them to tank aoe bursts while giving you the time to heal them up through Staff skill 2. Remember, your greatest weakness is aoe burst damage. The more minions you have alive at all times, the more powerful you are.
b) Death Maigc (III) Minion skills recharge 20% faster. You really need this. No matter what, there will be times when your minions die, and those fights are the ones where you will need this skill the most. By having your minions on 24 ish cooldowns, you can afford to have minions die. You will be able to solo elites without much problems by summoning out minions faster than they can kill them.

2) Spite (IX) +30% minion damage. Again, very self-explanatory. Your minions can dish out fair amount of damage, and this trait is what allow them to do just that.

3) Blood Magic (VII) Minions Siphon Health to you. This is why you want to have toughness gear. You can tank for your minions when you have 4-6 things attacking them healing you constantly as well as being healed by your Staff #2 skill. With high toughness from Death Magic and your armor, you protect your minions who in turn heal you. Essentially, you are almost invincible so long as your minions are alive.

The rest are kind of up to you. With those traits as the framework, your builds are actually very flexible. Feel free to try different things.

I have been doing 30/10/0/0/30, and it is ridiculous. that +30% crit damage combined with +50% crit chance in death shroud (lolwut) is absolutely crazy.

So, on my third character, I decided to do the naval route for the personal story at level 78 that gave you the choice between naval, tank, and searching for the missing squad.

Spoiler

I was of course, very sad when Agent Zott died, right after falling in love with Elli. I had never thought that two Asura would be so heartwarming.

Anyways, in the final area, I like to talk to everyone, so I tried to find Elli. However, she was not at her usual spot dancing with her Hologram. Giving up, I finally went to the last areas, and there she was: sitting quietly in front of the memorial stone dedicated to all who gave their lives to the war.

So much feels. Good job Anet. Subtle things like this is the reason you guys are awesome.

I also ran into this problem. Hopefully, it is just a bug.