Guild Wars 2

Do some research. Start with these.

Ascii’s well build.
Nemesis’ class guides.
30/10/0/0/30 zerker.

There are builds out there that don’t invest in DS (like the Ascii build Zikory pointed out) that are effective. In truth, most of the time, guardian provided stability is all you’ll need for a zerg fight and you can manage roaming with one stunbreak. You should check them out.

Since you mentioned you like being able to drop in and out of a zerg to roam, you might consider something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMax7Fbib87JEpCXD0jeBXAxoHHTwwMA-jECB4iCy0Cwk3BKHqIaslRFRjVdDTHjIq2krIa1SBAxwI-w

It’s a condi build which is very effective for roaming but has a reputation for being somewhat useless in a zerg. Well, that’s only kinda true. Condis aren’t as effective as power builds but actually better when it comes to getting into keeps as the condi damage can quickly blow defenders off walls. What’s more, this build’s distribution has a bit of flexibility in it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmODbkRLTvczbjfPhIV4age8e1CIG9YYKmlB-jECB4iCy0Cwk3BKHqIaslRFRjVdDTHjIq2krIa1SB4rwI-w

By switching food, weapons, slots, elite and traits, you can convert the pure condimancer into a frontline disruption/well build.

It might not be as optimal as running two entirely separate sets of gear and retraiting, but it will enable you to be effective in both roles.

Edit: I was supposed to be running Golem as the elite in the first version.

@Scarran

I like the idea of Hydromancy —> Wells. If you have enough survivability, then this is actually a nice choice. I stand corrected.

I totally agree with WH 5… Hitting critters is a pain and can drop you back very quickly. You really have to be selective about where you run it. Personally, I just switch to SWalk when I need to travel (I always have it and Locust on in swim mode) and I switch to another skill when I’m back with my guild. SWalk is also great because it allows you to jump from everywhere. Say, you need to run supplies for siege at Hills. If you’re in north Hills, you can just ignore the path and jump from the cliff. Saves a lot of time. And, while we’re on the subject, you can also jump from the south outer wall lookout (the highest spot in Hills) into the water if you need to get to the SE camp quickly. You need swiftness, though.

I will point out that one of the good things about warhorn on siphon builds is that because it hits so rapidly, it procs a metric ton of healing making it the perfect skill to use as you cut through the enemy zerg.

I like the idea about switching foods for the condition reduction if you really need the speed however, I find it pretty tough to turn away from the 160 toughness and stun reduction on the Melandrus. How about Locust? If you grab Signet Mastery in Spite, you can have speed plus it works as a AoE/heal in case things get dicey. I would hate to sacrifice a well, though…

I look forward to hearing about any testing you are going to do with this build. I think the build is underutilized but can be very effective. I own a set of clerics but haven’t found a build that works for me as well as my main set of knights does. I would love to get more information about cleric builds and play style so I can occasionally switch them out and run an effective build with more team support.

@Scarraan
Ah, I see. You’re running a heal tank. Very useful.

Notes:

I like the choice of traits but I’d drop Spiteful Removal. It removes condis on kill which may or may not help you. A great deal of the time, it removes inconsequential conditions so there’s not a great deal of utility here. If you need condi cleanse, take Cleanse Conditions instead of the well heal. I know you’re traited for wells and it seems like the best use as it also pulls offensive duty but you need reliable condi management and it’s on a shorter CD. I’d opt for Reaper’s Might to help make up for your lack of damage.

The Runes of Speed… there are more useful choices, IMO. Melandrus would really shore up your durability and condi management — to be honest, you don’t have all that much in the way of armor and considering the melee wells, it would behoove you to get as much as possible. Besides, you’ve got a tremendous amount of HP in this build and don’t really need any more. With Melandrus, you’ll be at 3000 armor with 23000+ HP. With cleric armor, decent cleanse, Parasitic Bond and siphons, that’s basically unkillable. To make up for the loss of speed, consider running warhorn instead. It’s short-range move set synergizes well with this build, tags by the dozen and gives speed. It’s not a perfect replacement but it’s better than blowing your runes for a bit of speed. You could also run SWalk to travel and swap it out for combat.

As for sigils, I’d personally drop the Hydromancy and run Renewal instead. I figure, if you’re going to run that much healing, you should try to proc it as much as possible. And, yeah, you’re probably good running Bloodlust. As I mentioned before, with so much going into defense, you should be unkillable so those 25 stacks are well protected.

Lastly, consider a power/toughness. Seriously, you have a ton of healing and more than enough vitality.

The core of this build is quite strong. Nice job.

Rodyan.9241:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBHhZakRLbvSTTjfPBIz46nnU494xMKeZA-jkCBYfCiEGBiIAM5pIaslRFRjVbDT5CQFbR1mzDRzgO1yAwsAA-w

This is the build i’m running with my guild. With this build, i can provide some serious damage for my team while i maintain enough survival for myself. Hope you enjoy.

Ps: using bloodlust on stacking weapon.

It seems to me there’s no reason to not run Focused Rituals on this build. If the points had been allocated elsewhere, there might be cause but you have 20 in Curses and neither selected trait is superior to it. Further, you passed on the synergy from Ritual of Protection. Siphon traits are good but this could come in handy because your armor is very light considering this is meant to frontline and will have to stand on target in order to well bomb.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

This actually can’t be considered a valk build or even half a valk build — it’s a zerker with 2 pieces of valk armor and 2 valk trinkets. With weapons, this is less than 1/3 the set up. The less valk armor, the less the differential in damage. Outfitting the build to handle “real situations” with Eagle runes, the damage differential is down to around 6% now.

Ballpark but still significant.

I never claimed it to be a Valk build either.. That’s just the way I would choose to run it on a necro.

I forgot to mention, the thing I like about it is the stat juggling you did to get to a flat 50% precision. No wasted crit chance there.

No. It’s clearly not a swap as we still run weapon trait buffs while in DS.

Build a power well necro. Trait lots of toughness. Run Plague. Enjoy.

Lockdown mesmer

I can generally put up a fight against most other classes but lockdown mesmers are a nightmare for me.

Add me to the list of the skeptical. If you take 9000 damage from a Lifeblast while running 2000 toughness then a glass cannon thief would instagib you back into WvW queue with Backstab.

@Scarran
While I run Focused Rituals myself, I believe that a legit well build can be had without it. Well builds are frontliners and encounter a great deal of the enemy in melee range. While you will miss the versatility that ranged wells give (blowing defenders off walls, taking down siege, bombing from the high ground), this loss does not make them useless. It can make perfect sense, especially if you’re running PVT gear and have little use for the precision stats. I think I would, however, insist that such a build run Ritual of Protection to help make up for the loss of flexibility and add group utility. (Unless your crits are good and you’re running Vampiric Precision, then the well siphons are probably better.)

Lastly, I like the idea of running Transfusion when PvD but switching to Mark of Evasion when fighting. The burst heal is good but in combat, MoE provides more easily accessible healing (1000 on 10 sec CD) as well as small condi pressure.

@Stx
I think every well necro will be running 25 in Death at that point but 290 power? Isn’t that 3000 toughness? I don’t think that’s possible.

When it comes to minor traits, I’d favor 5 in Spite rather than 15 in Curses. Personally, I’m not all that impressed with 5 seconds of Fury and would opt for 1000 heal per kill (most sustain 5 points can buy, IMO).

This actually can’t be considered a valk build or even half a valk build — it’s a zerker with 2 pieces of valk armor and 2 valk trinkets. With weapons, this is less than 1/3 the set up. The less valk armor, the less the differential in damage. Outfitting the build to handle “real situations” with Eagle runes, the damage differential is down to around 6% now.

Ballpark but still significant.

Muchacho.2390:

I think, Axe training is useful, even in ds, as the damage in ds depends on the weapon and thier modifier, you had, when you entered ds. So you can take it in a power build that uses ds offensively.

But that doesnt mean you should take axe instead of dagger ( dagger is better in a power build and i like staff too much for axe, even with the nerfs….).

Edit: For WvW in groups you should take 10 in curses. The ranged wells are so good for that and in that case axe may be the better choice instead of dagger ( 1 aoe skill against 0 aoe skill)

Going 10 in Curses will also give you the option to switch between Focused Rituals and Weakening Shroud depending on the situation. Both are extremely useful.

The question is, how are you going to get to that 50% crit chance threshold? You’re going to have to give up something. You’re already giving up precision for every piece of valk gear you run. Given that stat points are finite, you can never make this difference up. Zerk gear gives up survivability and turns this into extra damage.

Here’s how it shakes out:

The best I can come up with (in comparison to a full zerk build with no added precision) is full zerk trinkets and weapons, truffle steak, oil, sigils of accuracy and scholar runs with the valk armor.

You give up 90 power, 10% crit damage.

You get +2% crit chance (46% total) and 2300 HP.

At 94% to 96% crit chance in DS, this amounts to about 12% or so less damage. This is not the same damage output and the difference is hardly insignificant. The cost of the trade is, on a glass cannon build, about 2 weak hits. Better survivability, indeed, but for a damage-centric build, probably not worth it. Go all out or run another build.

Balekai’s done a nice job finishing the build. I’ve run this before and it will tank like no tomorrow. 5 in Spite gives nice heals to make up for the lack of Vampiric Precision.

The only thing I’d suggest is that you run either SWalk of SArmor in place of a well for the stunbreaker. WoP has its uses but it’s not a true stunbreak.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I can see a mix of Berserker’s and Valk doing well. Use enough Berserker’s to hit 50% crit chance out of DS, then fill the rest with Valk. You have the same power and crit damage as full berserker’s, but the lost precision doesn’t mean anything in DS where you would have 100% crit rate anyway.

We discussed this in the above posts. It probably works fine on balance, it lags behind full zerk. Valk/zerk yields 25% more HP but more than 15% (probably closer to 20%) less damage from things like the loss of power, precision, Sigils of Force and Scholar runes.

Rabid works great. The crits proc extra bleeds and, if traited, burning. (Personally, I prefer the extra offense to dire’s tankiness.) So if you like it, run it!

ipan.4356:

It’s interesting to see other people’s Well builds.

I’ve been using this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAod7djQaV6haOb8bKiJFebcQKcPuiUQMkRVocA-TkAifU/4+x8j8H7PDMWYMdA

It’s a Vampiric Well build – tons of life on hit and fast Lifeforce gain for DS. With some Chill to catch victims. Works wonderfully so far.

Funny thing about this build, is that I actually originally chose it just to put something skeletal/skull/reaper on my entire toolbar – it just turned out to be really powerful. The health gain is ridiculous.

This is kind of a strange build. The traits are really all over the place.

You put 20 into spite and took CoD and SR. SR is one of the silliest traits I can think of. I mean, condi removal should be used when the situation calls for it. This proc on kill so there’s no way to know. CoD can be good but is really a single target skill.

20 into Curses for Hemophilia and Reaper’s Precision. Hemophilia is fine for 1v1 condi builds where condi duration can really put the hurt on. Reaper’s Precision is not very good at generating lifeforce. If you’ve got 33% crit chance, it only has a 1 in 9 chance to proc. Considering you run wells, it’s odd that Focused Rituals wasn’t taken. Unless this is a pure melee build, this really harms the versatility.

Nothing weird in Blood but siphon traits, like wells, work best when there are a lot of targets (i.e. zerg fights). The more targets, the more hits, the more siphons. This said, your weapons (dagger and scepter) are not really suited for this task. Well, the dagger is fine (if you have enough power) but the scepter is, in general, not a good choice.

The 10 in SR is fine.

It should be mentioned that the offensive wells work best with power builds as condis do nothing for them. Thus, if this build is a condi, (because there is no armor, trinkets or weapons traits it is impossible to tell) Well of Suffering is pretty much wasted. If it isn’t then Plague Signet is wasted.

All in all, this build seems, IMO, very confusing. Sorry.

Well, in PvP, there isn’t a lot of choices on build as equipment is very limited. Running zerk with sigils of force and scholar runes is the max, I think. Anything else isn’t really worth in if you’re going DS spam.

@Balekai
Good analysis of well trait synergy. I have to disagree about Ritual of Protection, though. Given how you need to be in the AoE of RoP for the protection to actually proc, it’s a bit at odds with Focused Rituals’ ground targeting. While it’d be nice to grab RoP for the occasional protection (the only wells that you would consistently throw on yourself is Well of Power and Blood), I’m not sure this is worth taking, given the intermittent use and especially when Staff Mastery and Shrouded Removal are available. The ability to get staff skills off CD helps in every phase of necro play and Shrouded Removal can be the difference from staying on tag and getting peeled.

Rennoko.5731:

By wrench I meant the sharpening stoned buff, looks like a wrench. Taking the precision oils obvious prevent that from being used.

I don’t really disagree with anything else said expect scholar. The reason why I like it is because I can start a fight in DS when my hp is 100 percent and burn a full bar of DS damaging with 10 percent more damage before I lose most or all of my ds and have my hp drop below the threshold.

This is true. I don’t run glass builds so I never really considered the effect of the DS health bar in protecting the Scholar bonus. My familiarity with them is on the thief which explains why I think they’re too front-end, so to speak. Excellent point. It’s well worth the equip.

This has also changed my assessment of valk gear as well. With Force sigils, this is a loss of 15% damage along with lower power and precision. The difference is too great for it to be considered “ballpark” damage at this point. It is significantly weaker and 25% more HP does not make up for it. While valk is viable, if you truly believe that a good offense is the best defense, it is definitely inferior to the full zerk.

First, congrats on your first level 80!

The good news: your gear is going to work very well in 1v1 and small groups. As a necro, you will draw focus fire but can do great damage with condis and epidemic. Practice your dodges and skill rotations to quickly stack conditions and you’ll do fine.

The bad news: your condition gear is unsuited to zerging where mass cleansing, lemongrass food and Melandru runes dominate hammer trains. In large fights direct damage is king and you’re not built for it. Time for power gear.

There are two basic flavors of power necros: the wellmancer and the glass cannon.

The GC (many examples if this build floating around) runs 30/10/0/0/30 in full zerker gear. The play is highly DS reliant and attacks at range only. It hits like a truck but is as squishy as roadkill. I personally don’t recommend this but I have an aversion to being rally bait.

The wellmancer is a tanky frontline build. There’s an excellent discussion going on right now:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/WvW-Wellmancer-Discussion

The basic build is x/20/20/20/x but several of us run Foot in the Grave variants. In either case, they’re extremely survivable. If played properly, you should not die unless your zerg gets wiped.

Random notes:

You should still be able to get ascended trinkets via the laurel in Dailies from playing WvW. It’s pretty slow but if you play often, you must have a bunch by now.

There are better choices than perplexity runes for necros, I think.

Condis are almost always useless in zerg v zerg due to mass cleanse, lemongrass and Melandrus. This has been the case for quite some time.

1v1, I dunno… Condi necros are still very strong here. Bad luck, maybe?

Inverted.7439:

Stop your QQ. Warriors cant stomp with x2 their HP, guardians cant. The last thing necro’s need is a buff. DS is too abundant to be able to use for stomps. Thieves stealth stomp can be interrupted very easily or even be killed while trying to stomp. Ele mist form is on a very long CD so I dont see why it’s such a big deal we dont have some Op way of stomping people. Just kill the person again? <3

I’m not sure these objections are relevant. A non-FitG stomp can be interrupted and you can be killed if enough damage is done.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say about warriors and guardians… I think you’re talking about the DS lifebar. If that’s the case, then you’re right, they don’t have an extra lifebar. Just slot access to stability, heavy armor and, in the case of the warrior, an OPed healing signet.

The point is, this isn’t really a buff since we can already shroudstomp. This is about whether or not we should have normal access to a “safe stomp” ability that all other classes do.

Troll.4237:

Im starting to prefer vitality over toughness just because it grants a higher life force pool.

Does it really?

Sell it!

I can’t imagine who’d buy such a thing, though… Yeesh. Might as well replace one of the stats with “Needlepoint.”

Still, luckier than I’ve ever been!

Ynot.8397:

Rangerdeity.5847:

I would be a fool for building to face jade quarry when im facing henge of denvri the way they build and zerg is completely different i left gold tier servers because of Q times. The fact is vs servers in bronze tier this kitten works im sorry you need 1600 toughness to survive the thousand man march in gold tiers down in the bronze its a 50man march at its high time you dont need toughness you need burst with a small amount of CC to stop their opening strikes. battles in bronze are decided in the first 10 seconds of contact a good player in this domain builds to handle that. So yes vs the hammer train this class would shatter but vs the zerg it shatters formations. understanding the differences between your enemies is important if i treated anvil rock like i did jade i would never die thats very true they dont have enough players to put out enough damage to drop a 1600 toughness necro not to mention they dont have as many good commanders so once i shatter their formation it stays broken. in gold tier if a formation got shattered by a single necro that necro would be hacking because each well can only hit 5 players. and if you want to know why im in a bad bronze teir server its because the challenge of fighting 20v50 amuses me as someone playing a game the amusement factor is the reason i continue to play. I dont play or not play based on if my team wins i play or quit based on my personal performance and this has forced me to use builds that are far from standard and use a playstyle other than paint the ground red. I am so sorry yall are still sticking around the gold tier servers where your impact in the zerg is just another circle on the ground.

You run a kittenty build even for bronze tier.
-signed someone who has spent all of his 1500+ hours on necro on FC.

p.s. you have a terribad build

I began of the horrifyingly bad Eredon Terrace. FC was final boss mode to us!

Because ANet is dumb. If an engi the size of a cat’s testicle can stomp me, an undead phantom should be able to as well.

Overkillengine.6084:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Overkillengine.6084:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Since it seems that ANet really doesn’t want to give us health siphon in DS, I have an alternate suggestion: activate the heal function button and allow it to convert life force into HP. This way, we aren’t given “unstoppable perma-healing” but rather, provided with the option of using the life force/HP that we have earned in a more flexible manner and a small rise in sustain.

alternate alternate suggestion: do away with the clunky transform mechanic altogether, and give us the DS skills as Function button skills:

f1: Life Blast (unchanged)
f2: Dark Path (unchanged)
f3:Doom (unchanged)
f4: Life Transfer: Damage nearby foes and steal their health.
f5: Tainted Shackles: (unchanged)

This would require reworking a lot of enter/exit DS transformation traits though so will likely never happen.

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with DS mode. To me, it’s not clunky at all. Actually, I kind of like it. It makes the class play differently than the others and variety of game play counts for something.

And, your suggestion brings up fundamental concerns. For example, you couldn’t leave the DS skills unchanged because they overlap/replace regular weapons skills. I mean, who would ever use staff 1 if they had unlimited access to Lifeblast?

I would. Life Blast by default does not pierce, and it consumes precious life-force I’d frankly rather save for one of the other skills especially if playing a condition spec.

Pierce is a tier 1 skill. It’s a bargain that many necros take. And, yes, if you’re a condimancer, you’re not going to spam DS 1 because you have no power. But, there are different kinds of builds so Lifeblast spamming would need to be addressed (along with a million other issues this change would necessitate).

Rennoko.5731:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Rennoko.5731:

I just don’t care for that stat combo, which does you absolutely no good when you are out of DS. Crit damage with no crit chance is a horrible situation to be in. I would prefer knights, because at least my crit rate would synergize with my power. If you could reliably enter DS and get your burst off in all circumstances (like a 100% crit out of stealth thief), then I would be all about this. But if you find your DS burned, you would be a PVT necro without the T. having played a PVT necro, it is not good for me.

A valk necro isn’t what you think it is.

Again, I would point you to my mock up of a valk necro build in the post above. With ascended trinkets and the right combination of gear, its stats are very close to full zerker but with a much larger HP pool. It’s not even close to being simply “PV” outside of DS.

I looked at it and you have traded power for precision to make up for the builds lack of precision. You give up a flat 5 percent damage because your crit rate is too low. Your vitality is only a few thousand higher than zerker, and you have sacked your power wrench and are using stat heavy runes without any interesting damage side effects like Scholar.

You have a finite stat pool to work with. Taking a secondary stat that is completely dependent on another stat not even on your gear is just not optimal. It doesn’t matter how you slice it up.

I am sure the build is fine and if you enjoy it more power to you.

First of all, the vitality is 5000 which represents greater than 25% increased HP. With minimal armor, it’s not much but the ability to take 25% more damage is the ability to take 25% more damage.

Secondly, I agree that the loss of the 5% from sigils is not good.

Thirdly, I don’t know what a power wrench is.

Fourthly, I have no idea what is so interesting about scholar runes. A 10% damage bump is okay but one hit, you’re below the threshold and the bonus is gone so I personally don’t care for them. To each his own. The crit damage is quite good, though.

Lastly, I’ve never run this build — that was sort of implied by the initial post. I just ran it through a build calculator and found that your assessment was fairly exaggerated. All I am saying is that a valk build doesn’t have to be 0% crit chance as you intimated nor would it be useless outside of DS. Crit chance can be nudged up to 40% or so which makes Deathly Precision a near lock to crit. I said that you are going to have to give up damage to get that HP — there’s no free lunch — but the set up would at least put you in the ballpark while providing added survivability (given the same toughness). No one is arguing optimality. Not even a little bit. It’s just a question of the fairness of assessment.

@jalmari
If your team dies while you have 90% HP, your team is made up of a bunch of guys running glassy, rally-bait builds.

@Bawi
I’ve run that 0/20/20/30 build and it’s very solid. I especially love the numbers that fountain up from wells when dropped in a good spot. And, with all the passive condi removal well builds run, I’d occasionally take WoB to add to the well bomb.

If you ever get tired of this, a sort of odd point variant is 5/20/25/20/0. The Parasitic Bond is underrated as a heal and the bonus (20 kills = 20000 HP) from Death 25 is nice considering the amount of toughness we roll.

@Kreamy
I understand the idea about getting wells off CD ASAP but I have a difficult time making that call. While well CDs and siphon traits add to sustain, the necro’s light armor always gives me pause. Thus, (at least at the moment) I opt for the extra toughness and staff traits in Death. Besides, most of the time I run only two wells and SWall so it mitigates the absolute need for the well CD.

I like your point about the added peel potential of Path of Midnight. I’ll replace Unyielding Blast and see how it works for me.

mistsim.2748:

if you guys want to fix a weapon, you should seriously use your talents to buff warhorn, arguably the most useless skill-set in the game.

1v1 I’m inclined to agree but not in large group fighting — I couldn’t disagree more. WH 4’s slow activation makes it a bad interrupt daze but it works very well when enemies are massed in a zerg ball to maximixe the AoE cone. WH 5 is made for these situations as well. It synergizes nicely with siphon traits, plague and is great for mass tagging and disruption as you drag the tail through.

Sure, if you run a ranged, glass build, WH is certainly not for you but for front line zerg build, WH is an indispensable tool.

Overkillengine.6084:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Since it seems that ANet really doesn’t want to give us health siphon in DS, I have an alternate suggestion: activate the heal function button and allow it to convert life force into HP. This way, we aren’t given “unstoppable perma-healing” but rather, provided with the option of using the life force/HP that we have earned in a more flexible manner and a small rise in sustain.

alternate alternate suggestion: do away with the clunky transform mechanic altogether, and give us the DS skills as Function button skills:

f1: Life Blast (unchanged)
f2: Dark Path (unchanged)
f3:Doom (unchanged)
f4: Life Transfer: Damage nearby foes and steal their health.
f5: Tainted Shackles: (unchanged)

This would require reworking a lot of enter/exit DS transformation traits though so will likely never happen.

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with DS mode. To me, it’s not clunky at all. Actually, I kind of like it. It makes the class play differently than the others and variety of game play counts for something.

And, your suggestion brings up fundamental concerns. For example, you couldn’t leave the DS skills unchanged because they overlap/replace regular weapons skills. I mean, who would ever use staff 1 if they had unlimited access to Lifeblast?

Since it seems that ANet really doesn’t want to give us health siphon in DS, I have an alternate suggestion: activate the heal function button and allow it to convert life force into HP. This way, we aren’t given “unstoppable perma-healing” but rather, provided with the option of using the life force/HP that we have earned in a more flexible manner and a small rise in sustain.

Rennoko.5731:

I just don’t care for that stat combo, which does you absolutely no good when you are out of DS. Crit damage with no crit chance is a horrible situation to be in. I would prefer knights, because at least my crit rate would synergize with my power. If you could reliably enter DS and get your burst off in all circumstances (like a 100% crit out of stealth thief), then I would be all about this. But if you find your DS burned, you would be a PVT necro without the T. having played a PVT necro, it is not good for me.

A valk necro isn’t what you think it is.

Again, I would point you to my mock up of a valk necro build in the post above. With ascended trinkets and the right combination of gear, its stats are very close to full zerker but with a much larger HP pool. It’s not even close to being simply “PV” outside of DS.

@Bawi
Actually, I take the points out of Blood and run 0/20/20/0/30 so my armor is not lacking (3100+); it’s the HP that takes the hit. While I miss the siphon, I figure the loss of HP is better counterbalanced by the additional DS uptime. The addition of Last Gasp also increases survivability.

Also, it should be mentioned that a real advantage of going knights over soldiers is the bonuses that proc on crit. Things like Sigil of Blood add a lot to both damage and survivability.

@Kreamy
Well said. This is exactly what I’m talking about.

Actually, just looking at the stats, valk looks pretty good.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQUQNBHhZakRLdPaTbjhPRA9491yZRFOG1DAAAAA-jECB4fCiEEgEBBK9pIasVSFRjVhET7iIq2erIa1SBMqwI-w

About 100 less power and 12% less crit chance than full zerk but gains 5000 HP. It’s not really that big a loss offensively with a gain of over 20% HP.

Happens a lot in PvP for me (no stability or blind). I think it might be lag…?

Zikory.6871:

What “invalidates” the build is the fact that you have sub 1k toughness and are stacking 100%+ crit chance. Because of the fact that you are wasting stats, you are not “min/maxing”. Also 200 hours? That’s kinda cute… I have been solely playing my Necro for the last 8 months, I have played every “meta” build to date. You want to know one thing they all had in common? A minimum of 1600 toughness…I know! That’s super weird. Who knew you are the smartest Necro player and every one else is wrong….

I don’t know what kind of competition you have down in Devona’s Rest but being that it’s bottom tier, I doubt you are setting any type of meta for any server tier 4 and above. I would love to see you bring your build to a WvW server and test your might, I can guarantee the only reason you are doing well now is because you have not faced some of the best guilds in the game.

My suggestions are based of ample time fighting some of the best guilded raid groups on NA. The likes of Agg, DIE, KH, TW, HIRE, FOO, HzH, RG. If you think for a seconded chilling darkness and well of darkness is going to slow down there hammer train for even a second, you have no idea what your talking about. With 18k HP and 900 toughness, you are going to die just by standing near the fight…

Also if you’re going to respond please break up your paragraph into something readable. Your sentence structure is as bad as your “theory crafting”.

He’s on Devona’s Rest? That explains it. It’s not just a bottom tier server, it’s a bad bottom tier server. No wonder he thinks this build works.

@Rangerdiety
Since you’re getting so defensive, let me be blunt.

You run Chilling Darkness but not Plague. What’s the use? Weakening Shroud is a far superior option.

You’re trying to +10% conditions that last less than 2 seconds. That’s 0.15 seconds of extra chill. Feel the power.

Your food gives might that lasts for 5 lousy seconds. That’s an unstackable 35 power/condi. That’s not even a stat.

Your build is complete glass but has 600 less power and 21% less critical damage than a standard zerker build maxed for Lifeblast spam. Also, that zerker build will carry and additional 250 power from Bloodlust and have at least 10 stacks of might up all the time. That’s over 1100 power more than your build. Do you have any idea how much more damage this is? The worst part is that it actually has more survivability than your build by virtue of Last Gasp and 20% more DS.

Axe has a range of 600. This is too close to a hammer train. Its best attack is 3. You are unable to soak up enough damage to make retaliation matter.

The dagger has no range and you have no armor. Nevermind the train — one warrior will pound you dead.

You’ve got one condi cleanse. Wow. Aren’t we prepared?

You’ve got no stunbreakers. Yup. Really prepared!

You grabbed Reaper’s Might yet only invested 10 into Soul Reaping.

You’ve got four wells and no well CD reduction.

Here’s your build in a nutshell: It’s all offense and no defense but at the same time does only mediocre damage due to lack of power, lack of DS uptime and excessive CD times on all slot skills.

Honestly, this is the worst build I’ve ever seen.

And, here — take this with you. […………] These are some extra periods I had lying around my keyboard. Use them to make your words understandable.

Lorelei.3918:

Honestly dagger was made for the well necro. All of my well builds hinge on it. It has a immobilize on it…

Food: Consider saffron bread. Well necros spend a lot of time on their rump. With this you can now take 20% less dmg while eating dirt.

Don’t overlook Lich Form. It turns you into essentially a mobile ballista for 30 seconds. Also plague form isn’t so good if you don’t put any points into curses for chill, so then Lich is clear winner.

If you don’t stat precision, don’t stat crit dmg. Crit dmg is a sub optimal stat if you only crit while in DS.

Foot in the Grave is good IF you are a shroud dancer. 3 sec of stability on a 6 second timer is only true if you spend less then 1 second in DS at a time…which means for actual shroud fighting builds FitG is sub optimal.

Even without chill, the train still benefits from the continuous blind and poison (not to mention cripple and retal if you’re doing it right). This is far more utility to the zerg than Lich.

FitG is good if you use DS situationally. If you tend to drain it for might stacking or unnecessarily linger in it, it won’t work. It also prevents the need for niche food like saffron bread which has very narrow application and take broader utility food like Lemongrass. Oh, and lessens the need for Melandrus too as stun reduction isn’t a big priority.

1. Going great so far! Can’t wait for the finish.

2. Adept Minor in Spite is pretty good considering how many we can tag. Why isn’t this in Blood, stupid devs?

3. I run a MH dagger sometimes because, honestly, selecting targets seems like too much work. Add dagger for the lazy necro. -_-

4. I know it was wrong but I once… threw WoB during a heal rally just to feel like I was contributing. I… killed a lot of teammates that day. =/ How the hell did we get a light field!??!?

5. You don’t like Foot in the Grave? Well, um… good! More for me, then!

Zikory.6871:

Rangerdeity.5847:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQUQRBHRhG2IkWlemmoGDfiA6x7rlzieUshtMqCrD-jECBoiFRjmiIgUGRORqIasFOFRjVXDT5iIq2grIa1SBwuuK-w

This build requires a decent amount of skill but it can solo camps in under a minute and smashes formations and has the CC necessary to prevent a warrior from getting inside the walls or escaping your damage is straight out instead of condition so those pesky condition removers wont do your enemies any good. Your damage at lv 80 in the full exotics is comparable to a superior arrow cart

With ~900 toughness I would not recommend the setup if you want to go anywhere near a zerg. Even then while roaming, 74% crit is unnecessary due to you gaining fury on DS and your power is quite low for having glass cannon defensive stats.

EDIT also your sigil of strength shares a cooldown so having 2 on 1 weapon set is a waste.

Your toxic oil is a waste for condi duration since you gain nothing from your conditions, considering your toughness I doubt you can be in a fight long enough to make use of the duration. Also your condi damage being at 300 means your damage from it is pointless.

Late Edit: You only have 1 condi clear on a 18s CD which also requires the attack to be successful. Well of blood is far to stationary for a setup of such little defense and should really only be taken over consume conditions if you have ritual mastery and even then its questionable.

+1 to everything Zikory said, especially the part about zerging. With these weapons, you’re going to have to front line with minimal toughness, 1 condi cleanse and no stunbreakers. Quite honestly, you’re going to be vaporized.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Monkeymonger.9235:

I do agree with these points. However in my experience (bad) necros immediatly drop into plague as a panic reaction and remain there for the entire duration. I’m usually content with just leaving them there and focusing them once they come out again. I don’t quite understand why people would chase a blinding plague.

I usually drop into Plague for full duration in fights, but the reason for that is Plague is massively disruptive, regardless of whether or not it’s being focused. If I get focused, great! They’re wasting soooo much time. If I don’t get focused, I sit in the middle of them causing their damage and cooldowns to take a vacation.

You don’t run in Plague, you stick on your enemies.

Indeed. You should never have to chase a Plague. A Plague should be easily found sitting on top of you, inflicting conditions while a teammates take advantage the cover it gives.

That being said, I like to use it a bit later in the fight. I find that Plague is more unnerving to enemies when they’re a bit lower on health as they become more aware of the conditions they’re being hit with. Many panic (retaliation helps with this) and try to flee the circle which makes it easier for teammates to finish the job.

MethaneGas.8357:

nekretaal.6485:

Necromancer plays like a second rate engineer or second rate elementalist with more survivability, but no/little team utility. And the survivability is kind of a mirage. With no healing in shroud and bad access to boons like stability, protection, and regeneration, and no vigor or invulnerabilities, you can survive a bad play with your death shroud, but can’t heal up or escape either so the end effect is that you die anyways.

Properly played by skilled players, the necromancer may be the least survivable class in the game.

Very opinionated and yet very wrong. What Valheru Baal said about Necros is true. I can’t believe someone would say “no team utility”. Staff, anyone? Warhorn? Scepter? Dagger off-hand? Axe? All of those provide a nice sprinkle of utility, ESPECIALLY the staff. Fearing people off of team mates, chilling chasers and soon, transferring condis form ally to enemy is no team utility? Please. AoE blind (chill, if traited) through Plague for 20 seconds. The list goes on and on and on.

And about your last point. A properly played, skilled Necro doesn’t go down. Maybe you haven’t met any good Necros, or you met those that go into 100% offense and can melt you in 1 second but get melted just as fast when focused. Just a few days ago I fought a Necro that tanked about 7 people for around 30 seconds.

It’s weird how people say horrid things about Necros and yet, they are one of the most feared classes.

This is from a WvW point of view though. PvE is a different story described by one word: Epidemic

+1 this.

I found the whole thing pretty laughable considering my zerg build revolves around providing group utility (WoC, WoP, SWall, CDarkness, Warhorn, Plague) and is usually one of the last ones left standing. And I’m not even that good of a player. In MW2, I was fairly terrifying (how I loved my dual rangers). As a necro in GW2, I think I’m pretty average. It’s mostly about the class and the build, really.

Quick stuff:

I’d ditch the Blood Fiend. CC is one of the great skills in the game.

I’d run Lemongrass food if I were you. Running CC will help but with only chillblains to cleanse condis, you might have some trouble. You might instead consider running an OH dagger…? (I prefer WH too.)

What’s with the carrion staff?

You might consider also running one non-minion skill such as Corrupt Boon, one of the wells or a spectral for the stunbreak.

All in all, I’d rather get speed from WH 5 and SWalk and be able to run other runes.

If you like Transfusion, have you tried running this build with cleric gear? It’s fun in it’s own way. Between DS and massive heals, people get really upset.

@Noble
The “Why should other professions…” was me responding to your assertion that "Every Professions SHOULD be able to ONLY get Stability as a Grandmaster Trait, if they want to have stability while accessing Heal & other skills. The problem is Necros are THE ONLY Profession that has to do that. " Here, you are inferring that since necros only have stability as a GM trait, this should be the case with all other professions. I am rephrasing your statement in the form of a question and then responded that WoP, which gives stability, invalidates your argument.

If you notice, this also addresses you comment about me saying that FitG was the only way to use skills under stability. But, I have to say, it’s strange that you think I said this as the word “only” does not once appear in my previous posts. I think you mixed me up with someone else, maybe.

And, yes, weapons like the scepter make it difficult to build DS. This is why they must be augmented with weapons like axes, daggers and staffs and spectral skills. If you use them in a timely manner and use DS judiciously, you shouldn’t have that hard a time maintaining a reserve.

Lastly, I don’t mean to be insulting but if you thought Antitoxin and CC were even close to being the same (they’re really, really not…), perhaps you need to take a look at your play style before railing against the game design.

I mean, did you not notice after using it you were still BLEEDING AND/OR ON FIRE? I’m not the best player in the world and even this would get my attention. -_-

I’m really tired so this might come out like word salad.

The problem with trying to make a do-everything build is that, generally speaking, the necro thrives in small fights due to conditions and in zergs because of power. What’s more, while you dedicate some points to it, you aren’t set up to do any real condition damage. The staff isn’t going to get it done on it’s own — especially with the upcoming nerf ANet has planned. To max condis, you need the scepter but to do this, you’ll need to drop the staff and its do-everything utility. That’s tough. In the same vein, your power is quite low as well considering you aren’t running an abundance of armor or other stat considerations that might have eaten into your power pool. Sharpening Stones will help but at 2900 attack, it won’t exactly be a bruiser, either.

This leads to Deathly Perception. A lot of people like it but, I’m just not a fan. Personally, I think it locks you into a style of play (long bouts of DS 1 spamming) that doesn’t fully take advantage of the offensive and defensive goodies DS can proc (weakness, cleanse, bleed, stability etc) as well as the ability to use it for damage mitigation when bursted. If you’re going the DP route, you almost need to go full glass cannon with Reaper’s Might to synergize with the play style. Half-assing it will only drain DS and leave you vulnerable.

As for the d/d set up… I dunno. I like offhand dagger for small encounters but warhorn is far superior for zerging. Also, putting two traits into them seems like a misallocation of resources especially so considering the numerous traits you could grab with those extra points (Chilling Darkness, Staff Mastery, Reaper’s Might, Weakening Shroud). The trait line itself is a mixed bag as well. It’s main feature is siphon which can be very good in zerging where you can AoE a great deal but is fairly useless 1v1. Going 30 deep into it on a build that might see a lot of 1v1 is pretty scary. I’d rather run the signet if you really want the speed. Those points can buy useful things.

However, if you can give up the daggers, a simple solution is to run a standard condi build (30/20/0/0/20) that features rabid/dire gear with enough precision to proc dhuumfire consistently and run condi-friendly skills like Epidemic and SoS. This will give enough condis to be dangerous in 1v1 while the armor will also maintain your tankiness for zerging. While condis aren’t great for zerging, you can run a disruption build with no drop off in effectiveness. Simply change the traits from [WShroud, Terror, VPersistance] to things like [FRituals, CDarkness, SMastery]. If you wanted to spend the last 20 points in another tree, you could easily do that as well. It would blunt fear’s potential but you could select more zerg-friendly traits in Death and Blood or put the full 30 into Curses which gives you the flexibility to run WShroud or Banshee’s Wail as well.

@Liquid
Rushing into the face of a hammer train is my purpose in life. XD I mained a guardian before this and my playstyle hasn’t changed much. A bit reckless but fun.

BTW, I really like this thread. It’s like a meeting of the Foot in the Grave Appreciation Society.

crochip.2389:

This is the current raid spec i’m using:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNAW3YjMaV6haaa87JgJFdPekihLm6R5ofOA-jUDBYLCyEEwkFBK7BNBiIasqpIasKGYKXQaYwqYCpWzoW0DR2nATGAmxA-w

For swiftness i rely on the warriors and eles so warhorn is not needed, and the dagger offers a blind, condi clear and is a source of weakness.
Foot in the grave helps with the lack of stunbreakers.
Transfusion adds a bit of support to this build in addition to damage and blinds which are the main focus.
I’m still experimenting with stats but atm i am comfortable with 1.7k toughness and 22k health without Applied Fortitude.

Warhorn isn’t for speed. It’s for the AoE stun and mass cripple (which combos extremely well with axe 3 and plague).

I wonder about Transfusion… Considering you don’t have a lot of Healing spec’ed, is this really worth it for the support over Vampiric Precision (better heal for you) or Mark of Evasion (10 sec CD)?

I like the build but the armor’s a bit light for me — especially without Melandrus. I wonder if Blood sigils would improve the sustain?

Liquid.9672:

The main issue I have with this build comes from this thread and analysis …

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Damage-Power-Precision-and-Golden-Ratios/first#post2851306

Regardless of the validity of the deeper analysis, it seems to clear to me that you should never have more precision than power.

I’ve run Ascii’s build for a good while, but have been experimenting with different 30 SR builds lately. After reading that crit analysis, and thinking about how I want to play in large group WvW, I came up with the following build …

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBHhZakRLcvSTTjfPBApY3ajUM8yUPKH9zB-j0CBYfCi0HBiIAM7RQMBSZtMqIasabYKXQqYDp2cWRzgWoWKAmEGB-w

My targets with the build was 2,000 Power, 30%+ crit chance and 2,800 armor. I fell short on the Armor goal, as getting Toughness without Knights can be a challenge, but I got close and feel comfortable at the 2,700 mark. This also gets close to the “golden ratio” in the above linked thread when you include the 250 power from 25 stacks of Bloodlust. I’m still not decided on sigils, so I through Energy in the build for the time being.

Anyhoo, another option to consider if you like the look of it.

Thanks for showing me this. I’m disappointed there wasn’t a more conclusive answer as to the correct ratio of power/crit but both numbers agree that it should be somewhere between 1.4 to 1.6. In the build’s defense, the main reason for the extremely high crits was to stack might quickly but even with this (and Bloodlust), the build’s ratio was quite a bit off.

I really liked your build. Very nice stats all around. You mentioned being a bit short on your 2800 goal for armor. How about this?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBHhZakRLcvSTTjfPBApY3ajUM8yUPKH9zB-jkCBYfCi0HBiIAM7BKBiIjtMqIasabYqYER1mzKaG0C1SBwkwI-w

It changed the ratio (and lost some vitality) but the post didn’t factor in crit damage. I assume as it goes up, the power/precision ratio goes down as more of the damage burden can be met by critical hits. Given the build’s superior crit damage, I wonder if this is fine? If not, going with Reaper’s Might could help even out the difference.

How is the testing on the build going? I was curious about the sustain. The lower armor isn’t fatal considering Lemongrass/Melandrus/FitG but, does it make it much harder to stay in a fight for very long? I am currently running an extremely durable 0/20/20/0/30 FitG well build with 3100+ armor and even then during some long, tough fights, I find myself missing the siphon heals. Maybe I’ll try a fairly wonky 0/10/10/20/30 build but giving up Banshee/Chilling Darkness is tough to do.