Guild Wars 2

Sera.6539:

Ah, thanks.

Though wouldn’t Lion’s Arch -> The Grove stay the same, as you stay the max level you are, and don’t get downscaled?

That might have something to do with how the server loads stats. In other MMOs, I know that when you go from one zone to another, the game first loads your base stats without gear, and then adds on to your stats from gear in that order. This was a huge problem in Ultima Online as every time you crossed a server line you’d lose whatever health/mana/stamina from items you had. This is only speculation though. I have no idea how the servers in GW2 handle this.

Forgot about WvWvW bonus, nevermind.

Yeah, thats probably it.

Sera.6539:

It’s been awhile since I played my Necro, but I’ve noticed that my life force pool keeps draining when switching zones.

For instance I was at 80% in Frostgorge. After going through Heart of the Mists and back to Lion’s Arch, I had 58%. When I went to The Grove, I had 41%, then after porting to Malchor’s Leap, I had 31%.

I thought that it was supposed to keep whatever amount you have until you actually use Death Shroud? Is this normal?

This is due to the down level mechanic. The max amount of life force you have is tied to vitality, so when you get down leveled, your maximum life force (as a numerical value) goes down. When you go from an area where you were down leveled to an area where your level can go back to normal, like Lion’s Arch, your maximum life force (as a numerical value) amount is higher. This makes it seem like you’re losing life force, but in reality the amount of life force (hidden number, but represented as a bar) you had never changed. Just the maximum amount changed. Also keep in mind that if you have max life force at level 80, then go to a down leveled area, you’re actually losing life force (as a numerical value). It should be noted that life force generation and degeneration is percent based though. Life force will always generate and degenerate at the same speed regardless of level. The amount of damage you can take in life force goes up with vitality and level though.

Offensively. Piercing Life Blasts that crit for 4k on each target are amazing.

KirinDave.6451:

Weakness can mess up bursters. It’s really funny when a thief’s backstab gets weakened and their burst is ruined. But who weakness really shuts down is the bunker builds. They tend to operate on a power+defense+no-crit strategy. Against those bunker builds, weakness turns them into total pushovers unless they’re condition types.

Except it doesn’t. I don’t think you understand how weakness works. If a hit rolls critical, weakness is completely ignored. Weakness is ONLY applied to 50% of NON critical hits. And your thief example is also rendered invalid since they have a trait that guarantees that any attack from stealth will have a 100% critical hit chance. Again, if a hit is a critical hit, weakness is not even factored. Name one burst build that has less than a 60% critical hit rate.

Further more, typical bunker builds involve a lot of condition removal as well. Its why they’re called bunker builds. Guardian and Elementalist bunker builds especially. You won’t keep weakness, let alone any other condition, on them longer than 2-3 seconds tops.

Weakness is called lackluster for a reason.

KirinDave.6451:

The only time I’ve had this seem to happen was with culling issues: a culled thief’s damage can render unreliably and this can give the appearance of a much bigger burst because they’ve actually had longer to work on you than you realized.

Yeah you’re not aware of whats actually happening. I figured as much.

KirinDave.6451:

And in general, unless you’re upleveled or undergeared you shouldn’t be losing 30k of health in a burst. The burst is generally around 5 hits, and if it involves heartseeker spam then you can really mess it up by dodging even a single heartseeker. Thieves are on a very tight initiative budget (even if they trait for more). Dodging a heartseeker (or even better, a C&D) will completely ruin them.

Except that you DO lose that much health, even in gear that would be considered tanky. I’m starting to doubt the validity of your claims based on that fact alone. Thieves, ATM, do insane burst damage, even to people in full soldiers gear. Combined with the current culling issues (thieves can do damage to you while still appearing stealthed), I seriously doubt you have any idea whats actually going on.

Moaning Marv.2194:

just lazy coders didn’t finish their job with the icons, same with ranger speed sig!

Typical problem with ANet. They’ve always done this, even in GW1.

Aoi Ikazuchi.8420:

Xsorus.2507:

…I think most Necro’s aren’t taking Advantage of their F2 ability…

(Emphasis mine)

What F2 ability?

Do you even play necromancer at all?

Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?

What F2 ability?

What are you, an idiot? What are you even doing on the necromancer forums when you obviously have no idea what necromancers are or do?

What F2 ability?

Thats the joke.

Signet of Spite – Passive: Conditions last 10% longer. Active: Foe suffers from Weakness (10s), Poison (5s), Cripple (10s), Blind (6s), and Fear (1s). Recharge reduced to 60s.

On second thought, I like this idea better. If fear is to powerful for a signet, then just make it bleed stacks instead of fear.

Charr. All of them. I love their lore. Especially the Ash Legion. The charr are actually unique in their appearance. Not just a human body with an animal head stuck on it. They’re also above the typical stereotype of animal people = stupid and tribalistic you find in every other MMO. I always play the most non-human looking race when given a choice. I find humans to bland and boring for my tastes. I am one IRL after all, and the lore surrounding humans in video games is always the same. Usually some mirror of a past culture or event in our own history.

I hate playing anything that resembles human in MMOs TBH. Elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings… these are all just humans with a skin condition or deformity of some kind.

Thieves are ridiculous right now. Yesterday in WvW we had 15 people literally chasing a thief around inside of our home borderland garrison for 20 minutes after they failed to take it from us. We built the walls back up so they couldn’t get back in, but a thief and a mesmer got trapped inside. We killed the mesmer no problem, but the thief was trying to res the mesmer inside the garrison so they could portal a group of people back inside.

We never actually killed the thief. Despite there being approx 15 of us chasing him around Benny Hill style, the thief kept stealthing in and out so much that we could never catch him. Every time he’d reappear he’d be back at full health, completely wiped of all conditions. A random warrior some how managed to knock him off the wall, and out of the garrison, with a lucky Earthshaker + Staggering Blow combo. During this 20 minute long chase, the thief also managed to down several people. Never actually finished anyone off, but even with that many people chasing him around, he could still do enough damage to people to put them down.

grave of hearts.7830:

My personal tweak would be flesh wyrm actually teleporting you to its spot regardless of height (and not to the first rock in a straight line ) providing the much needed teleport we need for jumping puzzles.
If the devs are worried about a mass of necros climbing the walls on a tower over w3 they could always make the champion invulnerable while there is no breach.
Now whats your idea?

The reason this will never happen is because we can spawn the flesh wurm on practically any surface. I’ve actually put flesh wurms on top of tower/keep walls during a siege. Not that they lasted longer than 5 seconds before getting pummeled, but imagine if necros could teleport to any location a flesh wurm was spawned. It would also completely trivialize jumping puzzles. No, it needs to function like shadow step. If you can’t normally walk there, it will just teleport you as close as it can get without bypassing obstacles.

Modkip.7681:

Spectral Armor either gets a cooldown reduction or keeps the 90s and grants stability.

I second this.

My idea.

Signet of Spite needs to be made more attractive somehow. Signets are supposed to be a trade off. You temporarily give up a decent passive effect for a good activate effect. The problem is that the passive effect on Signet of Spite is lackluster (only 90 power at 80). The active effect is even worse. While I like the fact that it inflicts practically every condition, save for fear, the problem is that only 1 stack of bleeding/vulnerability is useless. It needs more stacks of these two conditions to make them worth while. 5 is a nice number. The other problem is the duration of these conditions does NOT justify the cool down on the signet (90 seconds? Seriously, WTF ANet?). 3 seconds of blind? Whats that supposed to do? Only 6 seconds of everything else? Who are you trying to kid here, thats terrible for having a 90 second cool down. Either the conditions need to have MUCH longer durations, or the cool down of the signet needs to be dramatically reduced to reflect the short duration of the conditions.

Basically, the amount of power given by Signet of Spite’s passive doesn’t justify sacrificing a utility slot for it, and the activate effects duration/cool down ratio is even worse.

I propose that Signet of Spite have its power increased to 100 at 80, and either have all conditions last for 15 seconds on activate, except blind which can be 5 seconds, and reduce the cool down of the signet to 60 seconds, or keep the condition durations the same and reduce the cool down of the signet to around the 30 second mark. Additionally, the number of bleeding/vulnerability stacks need to increase. 5 stacks of vulnerability should be baseline regardless. The amount of bleed stacks would have to be balanced around the duration of the conditions obviously. Less duration, more stacks, longer duration, less stacks. 1 bleed stack is pitiful.

Rhaynne.9467:

In one of the Fractals, the one with the flaming rocks that roll down the hill that you have to avoid, there is a skeleton at the end one of the wooden bridges wearing a fedora

This is also at the end of the jumping puzzle in Plains of Ashford.

LOLcats reference in Diessa Plateau at the Meatoberfest place. One of the charr is advertising cheese filled meat and a cub walks up and says, “Can I has cheesy meats?” followed by the vendor saying, “Hungry cub is hungry.” Obviously a canihascheeseburger.com reference.

BobJoeXXI.2493:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Our staff does have the second longest range in the game (after Longbow traited for range increase), though. It says 1200, but in actuality it’s about 1420 on the auto-attack plus the mark radius can go beyond that 1200 nicely.

If I saw you extended the range out for staff 1 necro past 1200 I would report you for exploiting. The range is 1200.

Its not an exploit if the ability does that naturally. The tool tip says 1200, but its actually farther. This can be construed as either a bug, or a tool tip error. Not an exploit.

Weakness is a pretty terrible condition. In PVE its ok since NPCs don’t crit very much, but NPCs don’t dodge, so there is no point to the half endurance regeneration. In PVP, where most people are running crit heavy builds, weakness gets completely negated since only half of non critical hits are affected (does absolutely nothing to thieves since they’re all running glass cannon crit builds). The half endurance regeneration is moot since most fights are over in 10-20 seconds with all the ridiculous burst being thrown around. Its pointless to bother using this condition.

Your guide talks about having 20 points in Spite along with having the spinal shivers trait, but the build you posted only has 10 points. Those 10 points seem to be in Soul Reaping instead.

BTW, I’ve been using your Juggermancer build. Simply amazing. I honestly did not think that it would work, but its ridiculously effective in WvW. I can only be killed by a full sized zerg.

An often overlooked trick. When you immobilize someone, they cannot turn (NPCs still can though). Stand behind them while you wail on them for free damage. Combined with dropping wells on top of them you can do some pretty wicked burst.

Focus 5 removes 3 boons (including aegis and stability). Tool tip says nothing about it, but it definitely removes boons.

Wells generate life force when things are hit by them. Again, tool tip neglects to tell you that.

Staff 3 followed by staff 4 is a combo blast area weakness. This one everyone should already know though.

You can keep permanent regeneration on people by spamming staff 2 every time its up, provided you have things to trigger the mark.

Bloodthirst affects Signet of the Locust. With 5 targets and Bloodthirst (First tier Blood tree), you can heal for approx 6k. Its basically a second heal. Tool tip will not reflect actual amount of healing done, however.

Exploding Bone Minions are blast combo finishers. Get an ele or guardian with water fields and heal everyone! No need to be minion specced.

You can corrupt boon stability! It turns into fear. Eat that you dirty guardian!

You can go into death shroud while stunned or knocked down. Even while stunned or knocked down, you can still use Doom. Fear them away from you! Interrupt those annoying scavengers in AC if they knock you down and start eating you.

The same thing applies to Plague. You can shift into Plague while stunned or knocked down and blind them.

Reported here with detailed explanation of why this is happening: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Cannot-Dye-Coat-Removing-crashes-game/first#post1084614

TLDR: This has been a bug since beta. This bug only affects transmuted armor. You cannot use the default colors of the armor set (remove dye) or it reverts to the colors of the armor that was transmuted into your T3 armor. If you unequip the item while those colors are in effect, your game will crash.

restoration.2806:

Does this skill work properly yet? I remember it used to be bugged and would just duplicate conditions on to you. And how often does it transfer conditions to yourself?

It still doesn’t work. Just copies conditions.

HellHeart.4391:

Running a dagger/focus lifesteal/Deathshroud necro and Ive yet to be killed 1v1 on WvW. Ive done a lot of 1v1 against Bunker ele’s too.

I guess people have to specify which necro build needs to be worked on because it’d be tad unfair for people who’re running a necro and is having fun.

I don’t suppose you’d mind posting your build? I’m curious as to how effective a lifesteal build can be in WvW.

I’ve been running a dagger/focus and staff build in WvW for the last couple weeks with great success. I’ve been tinkering around with my traits trying to figure out what I liked the most and I’ve finally decided settled on a final build. However, up until this point I’ve just had major sigils (air, accuracy and fire) slotted since I wasn’t sure what sigils I wanted to use. Now its time to get serious about sigils and I need to upgrade to superiors.

I’d like to know what sigils people are using for power builds so I can get an idea of what people are running.

Also, does anyone know if the Bloodthirst trait works with the sigil of blood?

More information! This bug is reproducible.

So I did some testing with fine transmutation stones, at cost to me might I add. I hope ANet is willing to reimburse me for this, but if not, it doesn’t matter.

It turns out that this problem applies to all transmuted items. You cannot use the default color scheme (remove dye) with ANY armor that you have transmuted. I also tested this with other armor that I had previously transmuted in my bank. The colors will change to some odd color set if you try to use default armor colors. I’m not 100% sure where these other random colors are being pulled from, but I think its the default color set from the other item whos stats were transmuted.

Example: I transmuted the Ascalonian armor (default color set Midnight Purple, Royal Purple, Black) stats onto the T3 charr light armor skin. Any time I try to use the default color scheme for my T3 armor (default color set Ebony, Ebony, Pine), it reverts to the Ascalonian armor color scheme. Then the game crashes if I unequip the armor with that color scheme. I can’t even manually add the default colors without this bug happening.

So basically, whatever skin was used to transmute, you can’t use those default colors. The game won’t let you. Instead you will get the color set from the stats that was transmuted. Then game crash when you unequip.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

Kravick.4906:

Condition and hybrid builds are not the only way you can build a necro for WvW. Unfortunately, I don’t know the first thing about making videos. I have a very successful power based dagger/focus and staff build I’m running that I would just love to show to people.

fraps. free for 30 sec chunks of video

Which is useless for making PVP videos with.

Condition and hybrid builds are not the only way you can build a necro for WvW. Unfortunately, I don’t know the first thing about making videos. I have a very successful power based dagger/focus and staff build I’m running that I would just love to show to people.

Axe 2 got a slight buff (10%). Last patch said it fixed Gluttony (and buffed it to 10%), but I can’t tell a difference. Someone needs to do some testing to figure out if it really works. The minion Reanimator trait spawns now lasts longer, but its still a useless piece of kitten. Spectral Grasp, Dark Path, and Staff auto attack projectiles now move faster, but IMO still feel to slow. Thats all I can remember ATM.

I’m having this exact same problem right now. I finally saved up enough money to buy the T3 cultural charr light armor for my necromancer. I used transmutation stones to get the stats I wanted. It won’t let me change the dye colors. When I remove the armor, the game crashes.

EDIT: I managed to fix this issue on my own. The method I used was to unequip the armor (causing another crash) and then equip a completely different set of armor. I then changed ALL the dye colors on that armor. I then switched back to the “problem” armor one piece at a time and changed the colors all to a single color. I am now able to change the colors as normal.

HOWEVER, if I try to use the dye remover tool, the colors all revert to some weird color combination that I did not pick. If I try to dye any of the color slots their default “remove dye” color manually, the bug reoccurs again and I must repeat the process above to fix the issue. I am basically forbidden from ever using the 3 default colors that remove dye gives me on that piece of armor.

Even more EDIT: Well now apparently some slots refused to even have their dyes change at all. This is the strangest bug I’ve seen.

The colors I cannot use on T3 charr cultural light armor after its been transmuted is Ebony (top dye slot, reverts to Midnight Purple), Ebony (bottom left dye slot, reverts to Royal Purple), and Pine (bottom right dye slot, reverts to Black). Sadly, the default color combination is the combination that I want to use. If I unequip the armor with any of the reverted colors (which are odd because none of them are even the default colors) the game will crash.

Heres mine. Armor is T2 cultural with T1 cultural boots. Staff is Deathwish.

Konfuzfanten.6503:

necros are still a good dungeon class, lots of aoe + blinds.

You mean the one ability that has a 60 second cool down and only lasts for 5 seconds? Thieves apply blind much more reliably and more often.

Elementalists do AoE better and more often than necromancers. In fact they can give other classes AoE by dropping Ice Bows and Fiery Greatswords. Neceromancers cannot do that.

Teabaker.9524:

33k fine, 12k backstab isn’t. I love the thief hate lmao xD

Its not.

The real difference, however, is backstab can be used every 3 seconds. It also happens while your opponent is invisible so you have no way to defend against it. There is also no giant glowing dodge me sign when you backstab someone unlike Kill Shot. Backstab also comes with heartseeker spam in between uses.

Kill Shot is a one pump chump skill. Backstab keeps coming back for more, and more, and more… This is why there is much less of an outcry when it comes to Kill Shot. Besides, that 33k was done on down leveled player.

Brutalistik.6473:

Faranox.4217:

On the topic, does anyone know what “30% increased velocity” on the Longbow is supposed to mean from the patch notes?

Shorter casting time when using a Longbow attacks.

You mean to say, arrows fly 30% faster than they did before.

Velocity is a directional speed over time.

I don’t like forum petitions. I feel they don’t accomplish anything. However, I have to agree with everyone here. Reanimator sucks. The minion it summons sucks. Minions in general suck. Minion AI sucks. It bugs out and keeps you in combat longer than you should be, which sucks.

+1 I guess.

I’ve had this happen to me before. Got pulled off a wall by a guardian. After hitting the ground I shot straight up in the air a few feet. I wasn’t high enough to take falling damage though.

Levian.6742:

To get back on subject, take a look at this build

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;04-_;2IkI0G4gJkJ0;9;49EJ-O5;03;014;259-Lol6-N;0DsV2DsV25RY

Dagger/warhorn + staff

You can swap warhorn for something else, I just chose it because it fits my playstyle with Well Bombing. Increased radius and decreased cooldown on staff, with 3% Lf on staff Marks, you’re going to be in DS a lot.

Since you are going to be using DS a lot, it pierces for better effect and gives might. This is a fairly high crit and power build so Life Blast is going to hit for a ton when you’re above 50% LF, and you also get fury on entering DS. An effective way to use it with fury I find is to pop in for 3 or 4 Life Blasts then exit and build up more LF. Then switch in again and pop Life Transfer.

Your daggers are going to be hitting for a lot with auto attack, and using the daggers immobilize, warhorn’s constant cripple you can keep enemies inside your wells for a while. I’d suggest using Flesh Golem just for its knockdown but if you like Plague then go for it. It is good for holding points or just trying to survive/run away, and can also really help out some teammates under heavy fire with your constant blinds.

If you want, you can change out the warhorn for anything else, dagger OH works well. If you use dagger you should swap out the Curses 10 point for blind causes chill. If you find yourself needing DS stability, or faster DS cooldown then I’d suggest taking 5 points from the Death Magic tree and sacrificing one of your staff traits, which ever you find the least useful.

Hope this helps, its sort of a combination of my build, and another build I’ve seen around here lately

I’m curious, do you WvW with this build? If you do, what armor/jewelry stats do you use?

KirinDave.6451:

Lackluster? Compared to what, Time Warp? Perhaps you’d like Mortar or Tornado instead?

Plague Form can be used offensively to spearhead assaults into larger groups in WvW and its devastating when used this way. In PvP plague can tip the balance of a mid point very suddenly. Plague is one if the better elite skills. It’s no Time Warp, but its not Elixir X either.

Yes, I would love to have Time Warp instead of Plague. You can do so much with that ability. Or maybe Signet of Rage. It would be amazing to have near permanent fury, might, and swiftness. Or Fiery Greatsword, because then I could actually be useful in killing siege equipment. How about the Guardian book? I would love to be able to fully heal an entire group. Dagger Storm would be pretty flippin’ nice. Stability on myself plus cripple AND bleeds for everyone else… all at the same time!

hackks.3687:

who is it supporting? because every time I see a necro go into a plague form I know it means I’ve won the fight. How do I know, that’s just how it always ends. Rip the stability off of them and they’re kittened unless their friends can bail them out. Plague form is a desperate transformation that will only buy you time and nothing more. It hits for nothing, blind is an underwhelming condition, and enough stacks of vuln will make even plague form into a squishy.

not trying to be a dick or anything, but I really feel like plague form needs some serious overhauling.

I have to agree with most of this. The exception is blind against Heartseeker spam thieves, which is amazing.

Honestly, all of the necro elites feel lack luster in PVP. Lich Form just gets you focused or CCed. Sometimes it feels like there is some invisible Mesmer that follows me around just so he can Moa morph me as soon as I pop Lich Form. Plague is only useful as a means to escape into keeps if you get pulled off a wall. All it does is prolong the inevitable as most people have learned to back away from you and switch to ranged weaponry to kill you. The damage you do in Plague can best be described as trying to kill someone with a feather. Flesh Golem is a minion. We all know how broken minions are. There is nothing else that can be said that hasn’t already been said about minions.

About Plague, if I want to cripple someone, I am better off using warhorn 5 or staff 3, not Plague. The bleed on Plague is a joke. The blind on Plague is the only ability thats worth using, and it can be completely circumvented by dodging away and shooting the necromancer.

Its really hit or miss with me. I spend on average 4-5 hours a night in WvW on my necromancer. Sometimes longer depending on how many people from my guild are online and in WvW with me. I typically get about 20-30 badges a night, which is really low considering my thief and elementalist guild mates tell me they get more than that in just an hour of WvW. However, I have very little in the way of AoEs with my spec since I run dagger/horn axe/focus. Most of my kills are either roaming 1v1 or 1v2 battles. I feel useless at siege battles since the cool downs on the necro staff are so long and the auto attack is so laughably slow and easy to dodge. There is no burst damage with staff so getting kills in a siege is extremely rare for me.

Last night though, I some how managed to pull a killing spree without any deaths where I was dropping multiple people left and right. I managed to get 21 badges in the span of about 30 minutes. Then I got blindsided by a zerg and my badge drop rate went back to the usual 5 badges or so an hour. I have no idea if kill/death ratio within a time frame affects drop rate of badges though.

Again, not enough people play the necromancer for ANet to care what we think. The most popular classes always get the attention first.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

I want to club trahearne to death with the severed head of Logan Thackeray. Pwetty please with a cherry on top?

This. So much this. I wanna put Logan’s head on a pike and beat Trahearne with it.

Nexon owns 14.7% of NCSoft. Nexon installed Crystin Cox as “Monetization Producer” to protect their investment. Googling both of these names shows some really bad decisions that are starting to creep their way into GW2. Oh, it will look great on a corporate account book in the short term, but none of it will be good for the longevity of this game. Honestly, based on these two names alone, I predict this game gonna tank within a year. Yeah, it will still be “around”, but people will remember it as “that game”, and the majority of people won’t touch it even if they were being paid to play it.

hackks.3687:

They specially have a hard time with conditions.

Which makes me laugh when they say this because 6x runes of the soldier + any shout = warriors are basically immune to conditions. Lets not forget the trait that removes movement impairing effects on movement abilities.

There just simply isn’t enough people playing this class for them to spend resources on. Necromancers were one of the lowest played classes at launch. Its going to be even lower now as people have moved on to other classes that don’t have the numerous issues that we do.

Warriors didn’t get anything simply because they’re exactly where ANet feels they should be.

It is possible to open the chest on your own without help from others. I’ve done it, but it took me about an hour and of half of trying. Unfortunately, when I did finally open the chest, it was empty. A serious let down. Its not supposed to be empty as my friends were able to get something out of it when they did it before. Maybe they fixed this bug by now, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

hackks.3687:

Am I getting this right though, if one of your teammates dodges while in the path of the scythe it will interrupt?

If your teammate is chosen by the game to be the recipient of a scythe bounce and he dodges before it reaches him, yes. The scythes do not seek their targets, instead only flying in a straight line between targets. The scythe always targets the closest ally when it bounces, so its best that you are that closest ally.

If something blocks the path between bounces it will break the chain as well.

Engineers: These guys can actually hurt you pretty bad if they’re grenade traited, and most are. My only advice is to simply never stop moving. Be unpredictable. Zig and zag like your life depends on it, because it does. Those grenades will melt your face. Fortunately, engineers are very rare. So rare in fact that I have never found myself in a 1v1 situation with them. I cannot give reliable information on how to deal with this class as a result.

Necromancers: At the risk of sounding elitest, I will not publicly post this information. While necromancers aren’t as common as most classes, I do not wish to give out any tactics that might be used against myself. I have found myself in 1v1 situations with other necromancers on more than a few occasions, and I certainly don’t want other classes that read this board to learn how to counter what little builds we already have. However, if you really would like information on fighting other necromancers as power/well build, just send me a PM and I’ll give you a few tips.

My god, what a wall of text that was. This was only supposed to be a single post about gear and traits and it somehow turned into a lecture. If you’ve read this far, then congratulations, you have some serious dedication to this class and I’d say you’re very serious about making the most out of the necromancer. One more tip for those that read this far. DS and Doom both work while knocked down. Use this to your advantage. I’m open to any discussions via in game chat if anyone has more questions. My username is to the left.

Tips and tricks for fighting other classes.

Mesmers: If you are fighting mesmers, fear them and use Life Transfer to kill all of their clones/phantasms. NEVER IGNORE PHANTASMS. Phantasms are the transparent purple clones. They must die ASAP as they can hit like a Mack truck going 60 MPH towards your face. The non transparent clones aren’t as bad, but still worth getting rid of, but only if you can do so while also keeping pressure on the mesmer. Don’t focus the non transparent ones though. Kill the real one and the Phantasms. Phantasms and clones have next to no HP and a single dagger auto attack chain will kill them. A full use of Life Transfer will clear the entire battlefield of all clones and phantasms. Mesmers can be extremely difficult to moderately easy to deal with depending on their level of skill and trait set up.

Warriors: When you hear “Shake it off!” bust them with a well bomb. When they start flailing their greatsword around, do NOT stand in it. Greatsword warriors are 1 pump chumps. Once they blow Hundred Blades you can mop them up pretty easily. Be careful of axe warriors. They can out DPS your dagger 1 with their axe 1. You need to kite these guys until they “Shake it off!”. Then drop the well bomb. If they switch to rifle, you switch to axe. Dodge their rapid fire move. You can easily out DPS rifle warriors with just your axe and DS abilities if you play your cards right. Hammer warriors are all about dodging their knockdowns. If you have a warrior friend, have him show you his hammer moves so you can familiarize yourself with what to look for. DODGE the knockdown abilities.

Guardians: These guys are laughably easy with Well of Corruption. They also have no way to catch you if you decide to disengage. If the guardian is using a greatsword, you won’t even need to immobilize them to drop a well bomb. They will usually stand right in it if you let them hit you. Turning their boons into conditions will destroy them. Guardians have the lowest HP in the game right next to thieves. Without their boons, they’re nothing more than a wet paper bag. However, guardians have a ton of ways to remove conditions depending on how they’re traited. You can still easily outlast them in a battle of attrition though.

Thieves: Oozo’s build is actually better than mine at killing thieves since he runs Well of Darkness instead of Well of Corruption. However, I compensate by using Plague blind until they dump all their initiative trying to heartseeker spam me. Once they’ve blown their initiative, they’re extremely easy to kill. A single axe 2 eats half their HP all by itself. If they catch you off guard, go into Plague blind or DS if Plague is on cool down, and let it eat as many heartseekers as you can. DO NOT let them get you to under 50% HP if you can help it. The easiest way to kill a fleeing thief is to understand how Shadow Refuge works. When a thief enters the circle, they go invisible. If they stay in the circle for its entire duration, they will remain invisible for an additional 6 seconds after the circle expires. If they leave the circle before then, they will become visible instantly and will not go invisible again if they re-enter the circle. When the thief drops his Shadow Refuge, drop all your wells on it. This will drop him into downed state if he doesn’t run out of it. Most thieves will not move out Refuge until it expires, however. Even while downed the thief will remain invisible for up to 6 seconds if they’ve stayed inside its full duration. NEVER stop moving when thieves are around. Even if you think you’ve downed them inside of a refuge.

Elementalists: These guys are probably your toughest enemies. Most elementalists these days are bunker build. You cannot well bomb these guys, so don’t bother trying. Bunker eles have a million ways to remove conditions. Your best bet is to simply survive, which is easy to do with a combination of DS and Plague blind (Ele bunker builds are always dagger/dagger, so this means they must melee you). Once they’ve blown all their cool downs, they’ll run away. Theres nothing you can do to catch them either. They have more escapes than you have gap closers. They can clear all your chills and your immobilize faster than you can apply them. Non bunker builds are just like thieves though and will rip like tissue paper under any kind of pressure.

Rangers: The new kitten class. I don’t even know what to say about these guys. Just well bomb them. No, seriously, thats all you have to do. Run up to them, drop an immobilize, and bomb them. Just pretend their pet isn’t even there. It won’t do anything to you anyway.

Skill usage. This is where the magic happens. Since PVP is chaotic, and things change very quickly, there is no real hard rotation. Dark Path is your gap closer. If you do use Dark Path, follow it with Life Transfer to put pressure on your opponent. Using Doom before a Life Transfer is dependent on what class you’re fighting and how the fight has played out up to that point. I cannot give pointers for when to use Doom. Its something that you must get a feel for and is extremely subjective. Different people will find one ability worth interrupting while others will see it as a waste of a cool down. Never stay in DS long. Remember, you need more than 50% Life Force to gain the extra 5% damage from 25 in Soul Reaping. You also have to get a feel for when to activate each ability at the right time. This is especially true for Spectral Grasp since it is very prone to missing. My only advice at this point is practice until you get a general idea of when to use your abilities. In all fights you want to try and force your opponent to use up their dodges and blow their condition removal skill. This is so you can land Dagger 3 and drop a well bomb on them. Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption plus dagger 1 spam is ridiculous damage. When you are able to successfully immobilize your target, STAND BEHIND THEM. When immobilized, you cannot turn your character. This means you have a chance at free damage.

SAVE YOUR DODGES. Never dodge towards an enemy that is running away. Thats what Spectral Grasp and Dark Path are for. I see so many people make this mistake. If you cannot catch them because Warhorn 5 is on cooldown, and you’ve already used your Spectral Grasp/Dark Path, let them go. You can’t catch them at this point. You will never catch them by dodging towards them and all it does is waste your time. There is one exception to this rule, however. Since I trait for Chilling Darkness, every time I blind someone, I am also chilling them. If they dodge away from you to get out of your blind radius, “dodge follow” them to keep them in it.

hackks.3687:

Please do post the build. Curious to see what other necros are doing with the Axe. The #2 and #3 skills are killer IMO and it works so nice with the focus. I’d like to get a solid axe build going and I sorta feel like I’m on the right track. It’s a big deviation from my normal play style though so I need to give it a day or two to really iron out the kinks.

First off, I want to admit something. Two weeks ago I would have said necromancers are a horrible class that everyone should stay far, far away from. I cannot say that now. In fact I cannot see myself playing any other class at all at this point. I had a very long conversation with a few people about necromancers in game that prompted me to try a few things. Turns out, they worked, and they worked extremely well. So well in fact, that its become something of an obsession. I’d say that the dev was absolutely right about fearing necromancers would become OP if they got buffed. Its true that necromancers do not have the burst other classes do, and necromancers have the most horrible trait tree I have ever seen in any game that has a “talent” system. Its also true that necromancers boast the biggest bug list I’ve seen for any class in an MMO. However, they’re not the de-clawed kittens I once thought they were. I honestly believe that necromancers are just as strong as any other class right now, and that once we do have our bugs fixed, we’ll be outright feared like thieves.

Now, on to the build I use as promised. Wall of text incoming. You may have to copy and paste the link into your browser.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQIQRBIhdu1IjW1emmlG/eCA6Ru46cUhipe4e5nD;TkAKbM2IsxZj0mFBDC2UMpA

Armor: Invaders (Power/vit/toughness)
Jewelry: All Berserker’s
Weapons: All Berserker’s
Runes: 5 Dolyak/1 Emerald Orb
Sigils: Superior Air/Superior Accuracy on both weapon sets
During Siege: Swap Dagger/Warhorn for Staff. Staff has Superior Rune of Fire. Change Chill of Death trait to Spiteful Marks.

The original build belongs to Oozo. Mine is a slightly modified version of his build to suit my play style. He has a video of himself in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y3GzVb43X4 I have no idea what stats Oozo runs. The original build is located here: http://www.intothemists.com/calc/index.php?build=;04-8c;0kHkH0G4wJkJ0;9;4T9;0T19B3;626A4BG0I;1OZG5OZG55Bk I wish I could make my own videos but I don’t know the first thing about making PVP videos. With my current stat configuration I do similar damage to him and have roughly the same HP as him. If I had to guess, I’d say I win about 85-90% of my 1v1s. “Win” is subjective as I consider my opponents running away as a victory for me.

Some key information that should also be noted. When traveling in WvW, I will swap out Spectal Grasp for Spectral Walk. When I know I’m about to enter a combat situation I will switch it back to Spectral Grasp if its off cooldown. That said, I do find myself in a lot of situations where I do not have Spectral Grasp on my bar. As far as not having a stun removal when I do have Spectral Grasp, Plague can be used while stunned/knocked down. Plague also grants you a huge health pool over your normal health pool. If I ever find myself face planted by a knockdown, I’ll pop Plague and use blind.

I originally ran all berserker’s, but found that to be way to squishy for my taste. Now I run Invaders armor (Power/tough/vit, easily obtained with WvW tokens or AC tokens) and found my survivability increased 10 fold with only a small sacrifice to damage. As for only using 5 Dolyak runes instead of 6, Dolyak runes are expensive and I don’t feel the extra cost of a 6th rune is justified for the pitiful amount of regeneration it gives.

With this build your crit rate is only going to be 37% (32% + 5% from sigil), which is still nice, but a lot of people I’ve talked too seem put off by anything that doesn’t have at least 40+ crit in WvW. I want to say that you’re not losing killing power by sacrificing a small amount of crit for toughness/vit. Your survivability goes through the roof just by having those stats over an extra bit of crit and crit damage. I can easily survive 2v1 and even some 3v1 encounters and still come out on top.

There are very few 1v1 situations that I outright lose. Though I will say that elementalists, and especially thieves tend to give me a run for my money. They also will run away from me once they see I’ve gained the upper hand. While its technically a draw since no one died, it feels like a victory since they’re the ones running away and I’ve stood my ground. You cannot chase dagger/dagger elementalists and thieves down, so don’t even bother. When they want to disengage, there is nothing you can do to stop them. Necromancers simply do not have the tools to do anything about it. Spectral Grasp is for everyone else that tries to run away from you.

hackks.3687:

Kravick.4906:

Swadow.6213:

For a Necro Staff is a necessity. A build without a Staff is really bad, there is no reason to go without one.

This is wrong. I run a dagger/warhorn axe/focus well build and it works extremely well in both PVE and PVP. I only use staves during tower/keep sieges in WvW, but this is no different than a warrior needing to swap out his off weapon for a longbow/rifle during tower/keep sieges. In PVE there hasn’t been a single instance of me needing to use a staff.

I made another attempt at using axe/focus + dagger/warhorn last night in PvP and while I was devastating at close range I was complete fodder if they could keep me at range. I just don’t feel like Necros have the mobility (such as leaps and gap closers) to make this build work except in niche roles in a group such as point defense where mobility isn’t as important.

Dark Path and Spectral Grasp are your friends. When I get home from work, I will post my build and describe how I make it all work. Your millage may vary, of course.

Best bet is to chill your target first with focus 5 after they exhaust their dodges, then hit them with Reaper’s Touch at point blank range so it bounces between you and them really fast. If at any point your target, or the target ally that the scythe bounces between dodges, the bounce chain is stopped. Someone having swiftness on them moving around a lot can also mess up the bounce chain, which is why you need to be up close.