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I recently read a few posts where various people suggested a lack a creativity with some necromancer builds. I made an effort to try some new things and found a combo that’s effective and hasn’t (to my knowledge) been discussed.
The key to the build is “Near to Death” in the Soul Reaping trait line. This trait will reduce the cooldown of death shroud to 5 sec. This is great for one main reason: “Furious Demise” (15 points in Curses), which grants 5 seconds of fury.
I figured it would be interesting to try a power build that focused on maintaining fury by enabling death shroud and immediately disabling it. This grants 5 seconds of fury. When fury runs out, enable and disable death shroud again. We maintain death shroud only when the enemy is clustered and we can maximized the utility of piercing (“Unyielding Blast”: Soul Reaping).
Since I was swapping in and out of death shroud, I figured I could use several abilities that would be effective in this type of situations. First, there’s “Weakening Shroud” (10 points Curses), which cast enfeebling blood whenever you trigger death shroud. Second, there’s “Spiteful Spirit” (10 point Spite), which grants 3 seconds of retaliation.
This means that every 5 seconds you get 5 seconds of fury, 3 seconds retaliation, and a cast of enfeebling blood.
Since it’s a power build, I figured a dagger would be the most useful. To keep enemies in range, I would focus on keeping them chilled with either “Spectral Grasp”, Focus 5, or a Sigil of Ice. In addition, I’d keep swiftness up with horn 5, or Spectral walk (which can also be used to run into a zerg and drop a few wells and return to the top of a tower wall).
Totally optional tweak of the build: focus on keeping chilled on the target with various runes (Svanir, Ice).
Chill will also grant us a little mobility in that it will slow our pursuers down when we’re trying to flee. It can also be useful to trigger death shroud, fear, and continue fleeing.
Initially, I was a little protective of this build, but I figured the necro hive-mind might be able to improve on it . It’s unusual and doesn’t take advantage of some of the necromancers better skills (Epidemic, Minions, etc.), but it’s fun and interesting. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
As for gear, it’s pretty flexible. I do WvWvW, so I mix a little PVT and PPT gear.
Anet doesn’t seem terribly interested in overhauling our traits, so let’s seem what we can do with what we have.
Regards,
Crow on a Wire (Henge of Denravi)