Guild Wars 2

Wells are based off power so you need to go power based. Wells are usually close encounters and in PvE you can’t really kite while using wells, so the obvious solution is to go daggers.

I personally don’t think precision is that great for necros, we don’t burst very well anyways. So power/toughness/vitality is probably what you want I think. Traits would probably be the spite/blood/death lines and just play with those and see what you like.

Staff is a hybrid weapon so remember that, its half power and half conditions.

Move the 10 points from Spite into Soul Reaping. Get the Marks generate 3% life force.

Spectral Grasp is an odd choice. I would pick a corruption cause it benefits from the reduction time. Blood is power is a bit weak atm. A lot of people like epidemic but I’m not fond of it.

Corrosive poison cloud is a bit bugged, but its still useful for a 15 second duration and a poison field.

Some people don’t need the staff reduction if they primarily use scepter/dagger. Some people like to put the points into Blood magic for the Mark on roll or transfusion.

Your amulet is completely wrong. It has ZERO condition damage on it. Berserker is a power crit glass cannon build’s amulet. You want carrion/rabid/shaman/or rampager.

I wouldnt try to increase bleed duration with that many split sets, I suggest just one complete set. Many people are fond of Rune of the Undead as it increases condition damage the most.

i believe theoretically what the dev’s wanted was minion masters were to use axes. It inflicts vulnerability which would increase the minion’s damage output. Additionally it looks like to use the focus offhand instead of warhorn.

And if you look at the Spite (power) line this backs it up. Focus recharge trait (focus 4/5) give regen and vulnerability both helpful for minion masters. And then minion damage, and then the last for Axe damage and recharge.

Dagger/Warhorn makes sense as a switch. You got the locust swarm to catch up to enemies while you slash away at them.

On the other hand, staff brings way too many utilities to pass up, however it is a hybrid weapon and the majority of the damage is conditions with only the autos and the direct mark damage which benefits from power.

Vulnerability stated pretty clearly on the tooltip that it increased all damage. And it used to state on the wiki that it was all damage taken was increased.

And as a necro who primarily gives conditions rather than boons it makes sense to give vulnerability rather than to stack might.

I agree with all points. We’d probably need more pets to make up for kitten AI. And ya the AOE reduction is really needed. Especially in sPvP. Hell they take condition damage while a turret engineer’s turrets take none.

And regen is so badly needed on them. Either they need to give regen or allow us to easily unsummon that one without swapping utilities.

I’d really like it if the jagged horror could have multiple of them. Don’t degen but instead whenever they attack they leech from their own health to deal damage.

Fiesbert.9816:

Got another bug regarding Death Shroud and Moa Bird.
If you get transformed into a Moa Bird you can’t leave Death Shroud. Easyly reproducible since it happens 100% of the time.

I personally would like to ENTER death shroud when I’m MOA’d. It would allow my shroud to soak the damage I’d take while MOA’d.

Hey stormy O I remember your Elementalist D/D. I didn’t get to play against you long cause of the loading screen bug. You were a very good player, but I didn’t get to 1v1 you, it always ended up me vs you and someone else who joined later on.

You played a heavy CC elementalist, and I think that perfectly counters a necro. We have very limited access to stability so while my huge health pool was helpful you wouldnt let me do anything and then someone else would join and then at that time I was already behind after being cc’d and then the extra damage just made it impossible to win.

The conditions need time to work, and if I’m cc’d before I can place the conditions I think we fall very behind in the damage race.

The main problem I have is necro kills over time, and we are tanky for that reason. But when you need that fast kill before the other teammates show up it falls flat. However on that regard it makes us excellent at holding points until someone comes.

But then you look at say a mesmer and they can hold a point for quite a while with clones while still running a glass cannon build. And they still have the burst with the sword to help in small skirmishes or to aid a teammate.

Guardians even non bunker builds have enough knockbacks and utilities to hold points for quite a while as well.

Thieves with multiple stealths and annoying down mechanics can yet again hold a point while still running a relatively glass cannon build.

This I feel is the reason you see them so much in tourneys and sPvP, they can be offensive and defensive while still running a rather bursty comp. Necro is pidgeonholed into a defensive tank build running conditions that is good at holding points but terrible at helping teammates secure a kill (lack of stability for stomps as well).

Rangers, average to above average at killing, terrible at holding points.

Elementalist are in the middle, they have to spec to what they want to do. Very high mobility though and support skills.

Warriors are very good at killing and securing the kills. You’re facing off 1v1 against some other dude, you don’t notice their warrior friend he charges you and 100 blades and all of sudden you’re either dead or extremely low. If you’re downed you get instantly stomped before you can even CC. They aren’t great at holding points but their mobility is very good, and if they hold out long enough they can revenge wasting even more time.

Necros vs revenge specced warriors that rez if they kill something are horrendous. they kill your pet they rez, they kill a shark in raid of capricorn and they rez. Its so hard to kill them sometimes.

Think i went OT.

Dibrom.6408:

Berullos.6928:

And I think its dumb that we only get one elite underwater.

As far as I’m aware everyone gets 1 underwater elite.
(Doesn’t make it any less stupid)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elite

Look, not everyone only gets one. And the people that get only one elite underwater severely outclass our one elite. Its either a shorter cooldown or it does way more damage.

Banner underwater? Who the crap thought that made sense. Supply crate is so BS underwater. The one elite that kinda sucks is the basilisk of thieves but thats such a short cooldown, and they got tons of initiative moves that let them dodge/evade stuff underwater its ridic. Mass invis and time warp underwater cmon thats just not fair. And then we got our plague, AOE blindness for a tanking time too bad once you drop out of plague you’ll 50% die instantly cause of the way bonus health works.

His charge should be like a drill underwater. He has a horn on his face, he should use it. Lots of classes already have a move that makes them spin in a circle, just do it for the flesh golem.

And I think its dumb that we only get one elite underwater.

Dropping out of plague form does not give you stability, unlike dropping out of Lich form still maintains the full 30 seconds.

Also I have been feared while in plague form I have NO idea how that happened.

I swear its like why bother even trying to get stability as a necro, we’re expected to eat all the damage/CC.

Confirmed: Corrosive Poison CLoud is bugged, it isn’t going the full duration that it states in the tooltip. Only 1 second pulses.

I think just plague form stability isn’t working properly at all as I’ve been cc’d before while using it.

I got a question does regen still work while in DS? Like heals your real HP, I can’t tell cause we don’t have our health shown. Wondering if the Vampiric stuff works while I’m in DS.

Just use a full set armor. Afflicted/Nightmare/Necromancer/Undead/Krait/Orrian. And 30% bleed duration isn’t worth the trade off of all that condition damage lost IF you’re going full condition damage. It isn’t a bad choice to go for defensive armor runes either as the opportunity cost of losing the condition damage might be offset by the larger increase in survivability.

I think VItality is the best defensive stat for necro’s. Gives more room against bursty classes. Increases the amount of health you have while in Death shroud. Gives more room against condition classes/self inflicted conditions. Toughness and vitality are equal for a necro. Sure, toughness is better if you can get consistent heals off, but what class is going to let you consistently heal? Not to mention we lack stability. You’re going to get cc’d like crazy before they let you get the heal off. So the more health you got, the longer they gotta CC you before the heal gets off. Sure its not as effective as a toughness necro’s health when healed but at least you’re alive a little longer.

And you’ll notice later on, the really high damaging classes mix both. Direct damage affected by toughness and condition damage. Toughness only mitigates one, vitality helps both.

You just need to survive long enough until they die or run away.

I personally think precision is crap on a condition necro. The 66% chance for a bleed on crit only lasts a second. Thats 1 tick of MAX 130 bleed. That is utter crap. And then the % chance with scepter on crit? 25% of a crit. So thats like ~12% chance. Weakness isn’t even ‘that’ great a condition. And how often are they going to let you autoattack? Okay maybe you’ll run some sigils that have on crit chance. Getting all that precision just for some sigils? Thats terrible.

If conditions could crit, god yes I would do precision. But since they don’t, I think precision is worthless.

I think corrupt boon sucks personally. One target, 40 second CD, can be blocked can be dodged and it gives you a self condition. Look at Well of corruption. 45 second CD. ~500-1000 damage x5 pulses, AOE, and converts boons to conditions. Sure it doesn’t change the full stack to all conditions and you gotta be in closer range, but a lot of guardians think they can hold the point when they got their full stack of buffs. I drop that well, and they crumble in about 5 seconds with all my other conditions I apply as well.

Don’t do half/half armor sigils. I don’t think its worth the loss of the 5th armor bonus which is usually 100 condition damage. The only time I would stack multiples of differ armor bonuses is if I was trying to keep a boon up at all times, but necros have crap access to any boons besides maybe regen.

I don’t understand why we have a staff that turns into a SHADOW SCYTHE but we use our HANDS to throw a shadow hand instead of swinging our SHADOW SCYTHE to throw an attack.

That’s like defeating the point and not showing off the sweet scythe graphic.

Thats actually a bunker minion spec you’re aiming for if for sPvP. I would actually not do 30 points in blood and instead go 20 points, and then 20 in soul reaping for the marks give life force.

Death line go greater marks, staff cd, and minion health. The boon removal is pathetic. The condition removal that it does from allies is horrendously bad its not even worth using. You got like 11 stacks of bleeds on you right? It removes ONE stack down to 10 stacks per minion per 10 seconds. Its so bad. It’s just better to use the Staff 4 or Consume conditions.

This is if you’re going sPvP, if going for PvE I would actually consider doing your 30/30/10. But instead of minions removing conditions I would pick the 20% well reduction and Run Well of Blood instead of Consume Conditions. If you’re stacking +healing and you should if you’re a bunker spec or PvE minion, that well is your biggest heal and really good at team support. And with all the +healing you’ll have 100% uptime on Regeneration on your minions and teammates.

For sPvP the set is shaman i think, it has condition, tougness, and healing perfect for bunker minion.

Now heres the flaw in this for sPvP. AoE wrecks minion masters so bad. Just like how mesmers get wrecked by AoE. Once your minions are down you have no life siphon, no utilities, and your toughness drops 20 per minion. Mesmers elite Moa also will completely destroy all your minions. Also in group fights you’re pretty bad as your minions start attacking random people and not focusing on anyone, your minions are also more likely to die in the group fights with the ton of AoE’s flying around.

Also you suck vs thieves that are decent. Your minions dont attack them if they keep stealthing, meaning they stand around doing nothing.

You don’t incorporate much death shroud abilities which I feel is a mistake in sPvP.

The duration is more beneficial in a PvP setting. The longer it lasts the more pressure it applies to them cause its still ticking and they gotta remove it somehow. Take blood is power for example. The base is 30 seconds. However if you use a bunch of bleed duration stacking you can get it to ~45-50 seconds at 2 stacks. That essentially is ~7-8k damage that they gotta remove somehow. And remember condition damage bypasses all armor so it is VERY dangerous if you cant remove it. And for this reason I love it so much versus thieves. Throw one blood is power on a thief and it keeps ticking even in stealth. This is also what I do versus downed thieves. Throw one on them and then walk away while someone else bothers to stomp them.

And a master trait making bleeds immune would be OP. This isn’t WoW with warlocks that prevent dispels. And the answer is to just apply more bleeds, keep it up so they can’t remove it all.

Use the well of Corruption its better in every way compared to corrupt boon. Sure you gotta go in melee range, but not like we can really kite people anyways our mobility is trash.

Is it a bug or by design that Marks don’t trigger on Downed enemies? Been wondering since we suck at stomping.

@Arcades Staves are amazing man. Most utility fastest life force gain, and AoE conditions. Combo fields also. I use it as my primary in sPvP. I made a guide about the necro build I made. However, I recently updated and improved it, which I haven’t shown yet cause too lazy.

Mesmers have greater control and can be extremely rewarding. Elementalist are underpowered if you dont know how to use them, but very strong in good hands.

We are offensive support. We don’t do high bursty damage (bar power crit dagger necros) by ourselves, but can magnify the pressure that your teammates can do if they ignore you. We aren’t defensive support with lack of CC’s and lack of healing others but we can throw tons of offensive combo fields, condition spams everywhere, and convert boons.

Vulnerability still is not fixed. It was supposed to be fixed but it does not increase condition damage. This is still crucial for Unyielding Blast.

Son of a b*tch. Vulnerability from in-game tooltips and wiki http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage as well as the vulnerability wiki say it increases condition damage. But it doesn’t.

It was supposed to be fixed ugh. Vulnerability though will still help the life blasts.

Might stacks do work properly at increasing condition damage though.

General info/Theorycrafting

A major problem of condition mancers is death shroud looks like it sucks so bad cause its mostly power based, but this solves it and boosts condition damage through vulnerability. And you need death shroud for defense as if you try to build without it you are extremely squishy. Now I think precision is overrated for a Scepter build, cause you arent going to auto attack as much as you think, and 66% of a 40-50% crit is only 33% chance. and 25% of a crit for weakness is only 12.5% chance. Now the downside is you lose out on the on crit sigils.

Crit makes the most sense for daggers because you attack so fast though.

I think necros are made to be offensive support if that makes any sense. Just throwing tons of conditions/constant damage/pressure while your teammates go to town. You can dispel/remove conditions but the necros job is to apply more conditions faster than they can remove them. AOE’s, combo fields.

And the last thing about death shroud. Death shroud is the answer to almost everything. Taking burst? Death Shroud. Need to survive a bit longer Death Shroud. All conditions are applied/all cd’s are off, death shroud to boost condition damage/life blasts. Interrupt needed? Death Shroud. Quick condition removal? Death Shroud.

You’ll be able to death shroud 2-3 times per battle because of how fast you gain life force which dramatically increases your survivability.

Life force shouldnt drop below 50% cause then you lose out on damage.

Fear should last longer. 1 second is BS. 2 seconds would be way better. Thieves get 3 already. I’ve tried the trait for increase fear by 50% and the sigils for Fear and it still is too short.

Regarding traits that increase bleed/condition duration in theory they’re cool, but in practice the duration increased is minuscule (few seconds increase) and losing out on a lot of other traits. However other classes that increase buff durations get abnormally long increases which is quite BS imo. If you really wanted to you can get a warrior with Might stacking armor sigils to get 46 second long mights to the whole team. And since might stacks in intensity you can theoretically get might stacks of 6-9 permanently. Thats 200-300 power and condition damage increased for your whole team almost all the time.

Sigils

Hell you can do whatever you want. I just picked this cause I like poison, condition damage, and it gives me haste! Who doesn’t like haste. You can pick anything in the Malice line tbh. Weapon sigils are to taste also.

I dunno if I’m missing anything. I like theorycrafting but my skill isn’t as on par.

Now utilities. These are exactly what is meant by utilities. CHANGE them depending on scenarios. You can do this in battle depending on what builds you’re facing/builds you’re playing with.

The ones I listed go in line with high life force gain but can be changed around depending on your playstyle.

Blood is Power. 30 second blood and 20% life force, helllloooo life force. Fastest way to gain life force imo and should be the first thing you do in battle especially if you’re low on life force.

Second is Corrosive Poison, now this is a personal pick and you can choose whatever you want really. I like it cause it lasts 15 seconds and does weakness and poison, two of my favorite conditions. Make heals worse, and make them glance.

Last is Spectral Armor you can use as stun breaker, protection and/or Life force gain. Now theres some problems with this ability but its still a pretty good ability. Its a shield ability with an abnormally long CD of 90 seconds. You look at Balanced Stance of Warriors its on a 40 second CD and grants stability for 8 seconds/stun breaker. Spectral armor is only 6 seconds. Hell I dont even need the protection, give me stability. Or make the CD 60 seconds so its more in line with other abilities. Or look at Stand your ground from Guardian its AOE, stability and retaliation for 5 seconds and only a 30 second CD. Thats BS. And last part is it is removed when you death shroud. Cmon that sucks so much its not even fair. Yet despite that its required cause of stun break and the high life force gain you get when using it while being bashed on.

Other utilities that can be use are:
Epidemic Spreading conditions “Share the love!”
Corrupt Boon; awesome but very situation and can be countered/blocked easily. So depends on scenario/builds. Guardian builds would be obvious usage for this ability but if its a smart guardian he’ll bait the corrupt boon and then convert those conditions into boons/or use to heal himself with it.
Plague Signet; its good but I’m personally not a fan of it. Especially in generally pub matches since no one supports you. Plus 60 seconds sucks in order to transfer conditions.
You can do wells if you like them, since its affected by power. Good damage but short duration that they’re out for. Also will need to move some traits around so wells are more viable.

Last is ult.
Lich Form. Grants stability for 30 seconds, and best benefit to power. Huge marks areas and boost to health pool. I would use it until you get to how much health you normally would’ve had, and then EXIT the form. The stability STILL remains. So if you really really needed the stability you can use it for stomps/heals whatever.

Reason not to use Plague it only lasts 20 seconds, the range is pathetic easily countered by moving away from the swarm. Stability only lasts 20 seconds then.

Flesh Golem iskitten No stability, on maps with lots of elevation pets are sokitten its not even funny. Raid of capricorn, going to beach from spawn they walk around the stairs takes forever. An enemy attacking you from above? It walks all the way around to attack you. Battle of Khylo (however its spelled). Oh god its so bad. Above the keep in Foefire, it just stands there doing nothing, cant use the knockdown.

After the response by ANet stating we need to use Death Shroud properly I started to think of a build. Namely high life force gain necro. So first I thought it had to be a power build but then I tried many and the burst is not the same as other classes can do, we require much more setup or long combo chains and lots of auto attacking, also we suck at group battles so bad its not even funny, bar wells but I never liked them that much.

Anyways, heres the build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQAQNAW7YjMap7lbabM8JApHW/M0QF2l6x6sfOA;T0AgyCuoGzMmYM7YuxkjtAZAyJkdIvQA

So going over my decisions on weapons.

Staff is the main weapon and the focus of this build. The utility is bar none the best of the necro weapons. Now the reason for power and condition is the staff benefits equally from both so to maximize you would do both.

The auto is a combo finisher and generates life force. Marks can get huge and constant pressure, not to mention combo fields for teammates and the fear which can be used defensively or offensively.

Switch is the known Scepter/Dagger. The main problem I dont like with Scepter is it attacks so slow. But the parts I do like are Scepter 2, and Dagger 4/5. Scepter 2 is a cripple and a bleed so more conditions and better to kite, Dagger 4 is just too good with condition transfer, and 5 gives more conditions and weakness. Scepter 3 isn’t as great damage wise but you can use for the life force gain which is what we’re all about in this build.

Traits
10 Spite

Spiteful Spirit or Reapers Might.

Spirit if you like the retaliation if you want to punish people attacking you when you enter Death Shroud which isnt as great as it should be since its only 3 seconds I think it should be like 5 seconds, 3 seconds is nothing.

Reapers Might since Might increases power AND condition damage.

30 Death Magic
Shrouded Removal/Greater Marks/Reapers Protection.

Shrouded Removal is just quick ways to remove conditions if you dont need to use the Death Shroud for severe offensive/defensive usage. Note: Immobilize/Cripple/Chill are all conditions that can be removed.

Greater Marks cause bigger Marks.

Reapers Protection causes an auto fear if you get CCd whats not to like. You can not use this if you’re skilled enough with Death Shroud gaining stability but I’m not and I like free CC’s as it stops cheese builds.

Shrouded Removal/Reapers Protection can potentially be removed if you think you can manage without them, and instead put those maybe in Blood for life transfer heals or maybe more into Spite for increased Mark damage (Note: only increases mark initial damage).

30 Soul Reaping

Unyielding Blast/Soul Marks/Foot in the Grave

Unyielding Blast pierce is sooo delicious in group battles, and Vulnerability increases ALL damage taken and I think is an often overlooked condition. So vulnerability increases the condition damage they take also.

Soul Marks cause 3% Life gain per mark is so good and fast life force gain.

Foot in the Grave cause we really need access to some stability. Too bad its only 3 seconds, I would’ve liked maybe 4-5 seconds so I could use it for stomps.