Guild Wars 2

Amethyst Lure.5624:

I suppose it is a form of tax for the fact that it is so liberal with ignoring defenses, that the damage is a bit subpar. I still enjoy it for the rare times you need to go ranged in a power build; I feel like staff is really poor there since that usually means you’re fighting one difficult target.

This. I don’t know why, but I feel like people are pretending that necro has this whole set of ranged tools. Without shroud we are doomed to use either axe or staff. Staff #1 is even worse than axe and with power build marks are not that great (utility is nice, but not for pve).
Yes, axe dmg is horrible. Yes, axe doesn’t have any cleave. I use axe on swap for fighting more difficult single targets that I can’t get close to at some particular moments. For ranged option, as a reaper some dmg is better than no dmg at all.

@OP
So to anwser your question, I feel that axe is stronger than before. Not nearly strong enough to be main weapon, but it’s not like we have great deal of choice anyway for those niche moments we want to go ranged.

Hello. I run mm necro since HoT for pve. Soldier is a bit overkilling it.
1) I’m never getting killed in maguma jungle with minions (never, never had trouble soloing anything, any hps, champ of baltazar or most champs/group events), I’d actually recommend going berserker to ramp you crit chance around 50% and run decimate defenses for 100% crit. (even with solider I recommend going for decimate defenses it’s very easy 50% crit chance)
2) Soul eater is not that great, I mean don’t go for it if you take blood magic. Blood Magic on mm nacro is like a heal skill. I don’t use active bloodfiend (almost never). Also take Transfusion for healing yourself, your minions and your allies.
3) Dealthy Chills are not that great vs reapers onslaught imo. Without Soul Reaping you are going to use GS more than reaper form, that 15% as is really nice. Also you don’t have 100% chilluptime.
4) For weapon sigils I run bloodlust and acc, since I solo stuff mostly, running with groups acc sigil is illadvised (but cheap ^.^)
5) armor runes – I ran lich runes and found them subpar even with death nova. I’d recommend going pack or some 25% speed runes if you are lazy.
6) also I run blood minions on pvp build due to better burst, but on pve they are not that great, so I’m running currently with spooky ghost (shadow fiend) and change it for wurm if I know it’ll be stationary fight for a while.

@up
I went with bloodbond as well and I see it poping a lot, no idea from what (and I also have axe on swap, so no bleeding at all) . Anyway other traits are not very appealing for pve – you can go for 25% speed with dagger and have it for swap to ran around, and I found ritual of life useless in pve.