Guild Wars 2

Nice build, it is kind of similar to mine, the difference being that i dont focus on stacking might, mainly just the vuln stacking+having extra boon stripping via chill of death and a harder punch w/o having to stack might when my target is below 50% using close to death. Only thing i would change in your build if i wanted to run as close to it as possible would just be the force sigils. I find that unless you are expecting to do extremely high aoe dps nonstop with no downtime, then a proccing sigil will add more dmg than you will net from the 5% added to what you do. Air sigil for higher single target and fire for aoe would be what i would choose from for dps. The reason being is with 2300 pwr in pvp on the heavy target golem i can easil proc air for 800dmg. To do enough dmg just for force sigil to surpass that one proc you would need to output around 16k dmg within 3sec(air sigil proc cd) and even more if you use fire sigil and get it to proc and hit multuple targets.

Well as for the vuln part i dont find that hard as i run with unyielding blast, death shiver, offhand focus, and well of suffering (unless i need to run a different utility). Granted my build kind of has all possible options of stacking vuln minus using the sigil. I dont really have to go out of my way for it besides death shiver when it comes to power build anyway(assuming most power builds take unyielding for possible cleave/being able to hit the target you want w/o someone else blocking the shot).

As for weakness, i feel we could use a little more access to it or change around how some of our traits/utilities work with it/apply it to make taking those options more enticing to compete with other skills/traits.

Id just try to get used to it and ignore as much as possible. I play a necro so as you can imagine i get told all sorts of things even tho i dont run condi/mm/any listed meta build, i will still get the sterotypical necro insults. I kinda just take them as compliments, especially when some1 whispers u and sets themselves to offline to you cant respond so they can hide.

All in all just have fun PvPing, and try to get with others that enjoy pvp with you so you can have a good time talking to them while playing.

the version that had a chat link ingame was honestly what i was hoping for. in certain situations it could easily be OP, but that could have been fixed by just removing the ability for allies to also proc and heal from the mark while also limiting the hits such as the charges they now have on it but lower the number to say…10-15?. the older version, while it didnt have a direct heal for the on use, had very good numbers for the active siphon which allowed it to be a good high risk vs reward skill. if you pulled it off well and got a ton of hits in it would be pretty devastating, if u got a decent amount of hit in it still would be worth taking, and then theres the chance of u being locked down/ them evading the crap out of it but honestly i didnt have a problem with that. oh well, to each his own i suppose.

sadly i cant see myself ever using this skill unless im doing something where i know i wont be getting hit just to utilize the procs for damage. even then itd only be team situations seeing as how i can easily crank out more than 250(guessing this is base since it was 286 with zerker necklace)x5, a total of 1250 dmg, in the 1.25sec cast time it has.

if u really want me to use it anet, remove the kitten icd on both passive and active, lower charges to 15 and do not let allies proc it(so yes no team support) and tweak the values abit(mostly the actives proc dmg id say)

also a thing to note, as someone said above your looking at around a 6k heal assuming u get all 5 of ur hits from the mark. CC has a 5250 base heal and a 724 base for each condition removed not to mention a 10sec lower cd. i know u will also get healed for the 300ish amount whenever you are hit but when ur hp gets low and you need to pop your heal by the time it finally comes off cd you probably going to need to use your heal again that and the whole time its on its long cd you do not benefit from the passive.

also, in aoe situations axe #3 is easy perma retal, especially when traited

in any kind of pvp i see it more of a risk vs reward kind of heal. if u pull it off by marking them and cc-ing them to hit them or making them burn their dodges and such before hand u could crank out lots of dmg and healing for yourself. of course if the skill is dodged/they dodge during it/they cc you/disengage you get little to nothing from it. anet likes to make strong skills counterable and i feel they did great with this one based on how i speculate it to work out. cant expect us to have a nice 5s of OPness every 20(16 traited) now can we?

now just think ppl, we can stack all our lifesteals for an insane amount of healing/armor ignoring dmg.

u could use traited on hit, traited on crit, 20% increased siphon(it should affect the sig), sigil of blood/leeching, lifesteal food(wvw/pve), and dont forget vamp runes which when we pop our heal to mark our target would let us proc a nice 925 lifesteal on next hit(not sure what cd is on the steal after heal but if none then we would get every heal even when traited to 16sec cd)+its chance on getting hit proc.

i know there is the whole omg they could dodge the skill itself or ur hits, but keep in mind we have a long immo on dagger#3 which would allow us to mark=get lots of free hits in unless they cleanse it or pop a blocking/invuln skill. we also have our fears and shackles for short—>mid term cc to set up the mark.

now once the mark is on we can hit our enemies a lot by setting up with locust swarm before hand, dropping wells, using axe#2—>swapping to dagger for 1 combo or even just using dagger #2 since if traited with 20% more siphoning we would likely see 300ish procs per tick from it and even tho its hit per second is slower than other means we have its healing comboing with the marks is nice. and the heal only having 11 seconds of downtime inbetween the mark wearing off(assuming u land it) and it coming back off cd is just nice.

this is all assuming no icd(which if there was one this would make the skill abysmal) and with group play id assume it goes without saying it would increase dps on a target by an insane amount(hello timewipe anyone?)

sorry for bad format but im in a rush

not sure if any1 else noticed, but locust swarm now gives 2% life force per target hit, unless it just a tooltip bug.

7/10 very simple but it works, i also rarely ever see humans with that mask.

Not sure what I would want in a perfect world but, my human necro(my main) has the name Nauxus, my charr necro alt I lvled for a bloodstone shard has the name Illest Will

ive been running well of powere lately myself. lower cd+1sec of stability to assure u not getting instantly cc-ed te moment u stunbreak the 1st, and its effects seems to last for a couple sec after u walk out of it(haven’t checked to see if it actually still cleanses but it keeps the buff on my boon bar for abit).

and it provides good team cleanses and access to boons we cant normally get

Yes I agree with Batdogi. It really doesn’t matter which of the three you choose they are pretty equal with activity in both and have good communities.

JQ might have better cookies, but on Blackgate we have the best pie.

I will make it simple. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into the necro class, I really do enjoy how it plays (unlike a lot of other “necro players” posting in this thread)

Deployed right now and using my laptop so id have to download something to use to record, but int he meantime if u have any questions specifically let me know. I have all the legendaries my necro can equip besides the scepter since I don’t really run condi builds.

I got an idea for how to apply it. Frostburn-everytime you apply chill you apply X seconds of burning

Hmm after reading about all the tests n stuff I might give my soldiers set a try. Although ill prob end up going back to knights just because I like using blood sigil+lifesteal food+lifesteal traits which all benefit from crit chance. Guess it all depends on playstyle/how much on crit effects you have in your specific build.

am I the only one with love for knights?(pve version, pwr+tough+prec) of course I also don’t use all knights, just my armor.

sAdam.5876:

@Papish What armor is that?

its a mix between hotw human cultural necro helm, and Halloween shoulders

Been rocking this armor since 2nd day of Halloween events, just did some dye changes as the time has gone by.

hopped into game real quick, using my axe trait setup as mention above(to give u an idea) my stats are, with no food or anything extra besides gear

attack=2828
crit chance=41%
crit damage=76%
armor=2,521
hp=22,972
healing power=260
condition damage=360

You could also try running what I do, ill run a 0/30/10/20/10 or 0/20/10/20/20(depending on if I want marks to generate life force or not) and also 0/30/0/20/20 when I use axe instead of staff as my wep swap. it actually works quite well, been running those variations for a long time now even using my grandmaster slot in curse for spectral attunement instead of applying weakness since it does have it benefits(and also even tho the endurance debuff from weakness is nice, weakness wont lower dmg from zerker builds much since if all they do is crit their dmg never gets lowered). weakness is way more effective in pve imo since mobs don’t crit that often.

sorry for the wall of text kind of in a rush, reason it works for me with my armor set up is even tho my attack sits around 2800-2900 I have a high crit chance 41%(46% counting sigil)(56% counting sigil+potion+food) and more crits=more lifestealing=more dmg+survivablility so it all works out.

to be more specific with the frostfang animation, it is just like incinerator which actually just turns all your projectiles into a spinning model of the weapon( it think its just incin’s flame, always hard to get a good look when I use it) but for frostfang u shoot a forward spinning frostfang axe instead of ur normal projectiles. another one would be the legendary spear, when u shoot life blast underwater u shoot a shark instead of the normal projectile,

MF is nice I suppose, I for one do not not use it because best loot is mainly from chests, which as devs have said b4 is not affected by MF.

I find spectral skills to be awesome but that’s just my opinion. Ive always ran with the 20% cd reduction trait ad lately have now started also using SA. I use walk because with walk+warhorn I have perma swift easily, a very nice juke in combat, great use for jumping off cliffs and taking no dmg, and also popping it in combat to get that little more life force buildup as you get hit. I have also always used grasp because of the position control it allows, the chill, and also very nice is the life force generation. A lot of ppl tend to think you should only use grasp if your opponent is running away from you or already at a distance. Unless you know your opponent is about to dart away from you then it is perfectly fine to use it when you are in melee range or very close tot hem because chill makes it easier to land everything and it also increases their cd. Lastly, while traited with SA it gives 15% life force when you hit some1 with it(16.5%) if you also have 5 pts in soul reaping. Idk about most ppl but that is a good chunk of life force especially when coupled with focus #4 which if your close and getting all bounces will give you 12%(13.2% traited), both of those together would net you 19.7% life force if traited in a very short amount of time.

thank you for reading my wall of text sorry im to lazy to format it better.

Yea it would be awesome if any NA servers have a temple open soon so I can make my spear =P

Yea I decided in beg of game I wanted legendaries because I wanted something else to work at and I like some of the effects/models. I will agree most don’t theme correctly with necro but some do(frostfang because of chill, trident, spear id say cuz why not its a shark+leaves blood trail effect, and I suppose howler with the moon which means night and the clouds/fog on you)
as of right now I have 5 (all land weps besides scepter) made and im working on my 6th (spear).

I know ill get flame posts like"you have no life" “all you do is grind/buy gold” etc, honestly idc I play the tp well and have had amazing luck in the forge and with certain one time events/holiday stuff. Didn’t actually spend much dedicated time going for them just had to set aside my gold/mats for them and make trips to forge/balth temple

I don’t have anything saved right now to link but with my setup I have PVT weapons, knights armor. My accessories are a little more complicated since I change them here and there but I usually end up using a zerker back, knights acc, and my necklace+both rings are pwr+tough+crit dmg. with traits I end up with 2.8k armor, 22.3k hp, 2.7k attack pwr, 40% crit chance and 62% crit dmg. I know my pwr seems low but coupled with my 40% crit chance and 62% crit dmg I actually do very good dmg while being tanky. Also with food my crit chance goes up to 50% and on both of my weapons sets I use sigil of accuracy(since I dual wield) which brings me up to 45% unbuffed 55% buffed crit chance.

Lastly, as I said before, I do swap my accessories everynow and then from knights to zerker. This lowers my crit chance by 1% raised pwr by about 60, lowers my armor by 140, and raises my crit dmg from 62% to 74% if I feel like I want some more dmg. I have a funny thing where 2800 armor just looks good to me so I usually just use knights.

Nemesis.8593:

After all the work i’ve done, people still think necromancers were and still are the worst class…

Honestly all I can say to new/returning necro players on these forums is check out the guides and other info the actively involved necros share such as nemesis. The reason being most have a horrible perception of necros because they cant get te hang of the class/got stomped when playing it/expected it to be an easy pick up and pwn everything else class and based their opinion on the class off that. I have tried before on these forums even posting my build(now slightly outdated than what I use now) back when no one used a build even close and it got shot down, yet ingame I will get pms asking for build and how I do so well.

just my 5 cents.

Darklimbo.1476:

Lucky or a big nice troll. Rashka with 1400 exos got nothing and you got 4 pres….

As I said maybe RNG was on my side. If you want to think of me as a troll then go for it, anyone who was there with me knows I got them, just take it as you will.

ill give u my recent luck. this last week I have tried the forge twice, once today and once 5 days ago. added up I dumped about 600g into the forge and I have gotten……….

Duskx2
Dawnx1
Sparkx1
Maybe the RNG gods are smiling upon me?

if you are dual wielding weapons also keep in mind any sigil proc will put your other sigil on cd for the duration of the cd of the one that just procced. as an example if u are using dagger+warhorn and your dagger has sigil of air and your warhorn has sigil of leeching, if you hit someone and proc sigil of air your sigil of leeching is now on cd for 5sec with sigil of air and weapon swapping during that time will make your sigil of leeching worthless. also vice versa, if you swap weapons and proc your sigil of leeching and your other weapon is say axe+focus also with a sigil of leeching+sigil of air your sigil of air on that set wont work for 10sec(leech sigil cd)

OMNIBUS.2913:

Papish.5806:

Here he is.

15chars

How the heck did you get so many legendaries? play 24/7?lol

actually no I did not play 24/7. my total game hours were about 1300 when I got the fifth one and I didn’t even dedicate everymoment to making em while I was playing. I just used my time well when I did work torwards them and managed to get lucky in the forge while it was good and I had a lot of lucky moments in the tp. (I sticked up on t mats for future legendaries the day b4 the bot ban the the market skyrocket by some stroke of luck and basically quadrupled my gold)

Here he is.

15chars

but what about my rainbows….no1 ever suspects the necro full of rainbows to be a mass murderer

you actually hit my build pretty spot on. only difference is I take heals on crit instead of dagger cd reduction and I only use the chill on blind trait if im in wvw and with a coordinated small group to tank/blind/snare a group of enemies while my allies destroy them. most of the time I actually use golem because even with its not so reliable ai the knockdown is amazing and its dmg is great and on top of it all golem’s auto attacks cripple which helps a bunch. for my 3rd utility I usually finding myself swapping between corrupt boon and well of corruption because of all the guards+eles I run into. well of darkness I use here and there or if I just want to be more defensive or save to secure a stomp because dropping it on a downed war/ranger/necro/guard/engi keeps them from stopping your stomp. here is the build with slightly revised traits to reflect what I run 90% of the time

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBIhZakRraPcTUjfTBIV45JFezd0DkXmZqCwD

@Duckcheeps
my weapon sets are dagger+warhorn/staff utilizing my utilities+ds+weapon skills I have no problem staying in melee range. you don’t have to lock down your opponent to be able to hit them with melee, with my perma swift I always have on and my constant chills/cripple/immobilization here and there/teleport/grab/daze its not hard to stay in melee range and get consistent hits even while they are trying to kite away from you. also weapon swapping very often helps out with this too even if its just to weapon swap to staff use chillbains for the chill or fear them with the mark to control their movements for a second then hop into deathshroud for good dmg until you know u can hop back out drop a couple more marks and immediately swap back to dagger. also if you are having problems landing spectral grab/ dark path, try going into deathshroud/using staff’s fear to make sure the projectiles from those land(it works well once you get your timing down on when you should fear them). Lastly for the axe#2 and dagger #2 comparing, dagger #2 dmg is not as good dps wise as axe #2 that much is obvious. but I prefer dagger>axe with my trait setup. dumping 30 pts into spite just for axe mastery seems kind of a waste id say but that’s just my opinion that and with 50% increase siphon which I am traited for doing comparative dmg to axe#2 while healing 3k+ hp is very nice. also im used to running my trait setup which actually has 0 pts in spite 30 in curses instead for the warhorn trait(which makes warhorn amazing) and the ever so awesome 25% chance for 3sec weakness on crit. between my fast dagger hits, locust swarm, life transfer, and life siphon it is extremely easy to have near if not always perm weakness on my opponent.

last I checked it works on grasp’s chill, sprectral armor’s prot(cant remember 100% on this one) and spectral walls prot but I don’t think so on vuln

/highfive to you bro. I run a similar setup aswell stats wise(I have more crit chance+crit dmg and little less hp+pwr, but other than that my utilities are basically the same with spectral walk+grab 3rd I always tend to swap out depending on the situation. I also use dagger+warhorn as opposed to axe. glad your sticking with it tho 1k hours on my necro with 3 legendaries(almost a 4th) cant say im going to play anything but him as my main really.

Another couple things i forgot to mention, For all above me saying ds in bad, its not just has its uses.DS underwater=aoe fear, aoeblind+poison(amazing when ur target feels like sitting still in it and getting constant blind on himself) and also ur very powerful #1, While #1 doesnt hit for much underwater(unless ur pwr prec with some crit dmg) it has a secondary effect, transfer one condition to ur opponent per shot. Ever fight a bleed stacking ranger underwater? his dmg when u go into DS literally drops to almost 0 as u hit him with ur life blast dmg and give him all his bleeds as he applies them to u. On another note, Plague Form underwater with blind added=pulses faster than an eles whirlpool so if they pop whirlpool just go into plague hit #2 and laugh at them as they miss every one of their pulses so they do no dmg to both u and any allies(also no cc from what they add)

something else i missed completely and is kinda of obvious. staff #2 if u stand in it as it triggers is easy perma regen with some boon duration or staff mark cd reuction. although id have to say if u could and wanted the regen id get the larger unblockable marks so u dont have to be as close to ur target and could easily get more allies in it aswell. using that in a high pwr tough healing pwr setup i could see it maybe working with a perma retal setup aswell since u would be tanky have perma regen and dish out dmg just by getting hit. testing would be required but there u go

Also on another note keep in mind that immobilize doesnt let u rotate so if u immo some1(i do all the time even when not trying to kite or run away/catch some1 running away) u just stand behind them and they cant hit u with anything besides aoes. taking advantage of immolizes ability to not let them dodge roll is also a good chance to hit them with ur warhorn 3sec daze for a cc chaineither right when they get immobilized, or right before it ends.(ppl usually tend to dodge roll the moment an immobilize ends so keep that in mind too)

yes i do use the f1-2 trick to get close but b4 u go out of ds another trick to also do in conjunction with that is to use #3(fear) on them right b4 projectile hits em to prevent them from moving left or right to avoid or dodge roll. i also use this with spectral grasp and if i really want to catch up and i feel like it ill even throw out grasp then hit f1 then #2 in ds followed by fear in ds b4 one of them lands. usually either the grab will hit, the tele will hit, or both =)

although i only use them all at once when i know if i catch up to my target=they wont get away. if they have another gap creator of a sort or somthing then i wont blow em all at once unless im bored.

both necro condi and pwr is great uderwater….condi obviously but if u need help with pwr ill give u a quick good setup. utilities, spectral grasp spectral walk bone minions. bone minion summon time is 1/2 sec and 1st explosion instant upon summon(2nd one has a little delay from 1st) so if u want u get in mlee range summon and instant explod 1st and wait for 2nd to adjust himeself to target(i do 1.5k-2k non crit dmg on my targets with 2.9k pwr on my nec). as for using spectral grasp u want a good combo? pull ur trident out b4 u go inot combat and if u are in copmbat and they are running/have a distance just auto attack them or ds after u get trident out to wait for weap swap cd to be done if u want major combo dmg if not then here u go. sink them with #4 and then immedietely use grab(unless there is a target in front of them to get grabbed i land about 90% of my grabs doing this)right after grab immdietely start channeling frozen abbys then use #2 right after, there u have it lots of burst. for more then do a quick wep swap and use #3 on spear then #4 then spin and watch them continue to melt. also b4 u use grab u can also summon ur minions since u can explode them while using other skills. so u could either use #3 summon minions while keeping close to ur opponent then use #2 spin and explode them while spinning for massive dmg or….with the trident combo summon minions then sink then grab then while channeling frozen explode the minions.

ur guide for necro underwater pwr =)

War Mourner.5168:

I like my horn and dagger, but then I didn’t really try going for a very necro-ish look.

OMG IM NOT ALONE, i also have all the mats to make either bifrost or frostfang and almost all mats for 4th one after that, im just about to deploy for 6months so ill wait till i get back to see what im making.

I myself usually have permanent weakness on my opponent without any condition duration because of how fast dagger attacks+having locust swarm on to also proc it since its a 3sec weaknes by default. I have thought about swapping it out on bossfights because of their buff but even with their buff if i get a lucky string i can still keep weakness on then for a good amount of time easy

Best u can get for boons id say is doing a DS build which involves you going in then immediately out for the 5sec fury 3sec retal(more with +boon duration stuff) and if possible, idk if ud have enough trait points, getting the prot from wells. suppose you could use bip too if u want to count that.

every1 likes to ignore the warr dont they? in terms of the enemy being determined to somp u id say only thief and ele have it better than us. in terms of the enemy/enemies just wanting to shoot/hit u to death necro#1 in downed state(especially with trait)>all because it can keep u alive long enough for an ally to come by and possibly save you. also another note, siphon trait+lifesteal food=you can get urself up using #1 while downed which i do all the time when im not being focused in a zerg fight or w/e but i am getting aoed here and there to rupt my #4

Figured id post my build since i enjoy it so much, have not seen any1 else use it or post it, and im going to be deployed for 6 months. Alright so here we go….
WEAPONS: dagger/warhorn+staff (if u want to use focus thats up you u but id just have to choose traits a little different, and u could even use axe on swp if u dont mind not having range/more aoe)—-stats on weapons=PVT

ARMOR:full knights with divinity runes(i like having well rounded stats but if u want more offense you could use orbs they are way cheaper if u dont mind losing some defense

ACCESSORIES: necklace=triforge, backpiece=berserker(ascended), acc=berserker, rings=bagh nakh and vine of the pale tree

TRAITS:0/30/10/20/10
Curses: V=so u get more life force, VIII=makes ur daze last 3sec locust swarm last 12-13seconds(w/e it is) and lowers both of their cd, XII=the part of the build i like 25% chance on crit to apply 3sec of weakness
Death: II=bigger unblockable marks
Blood:V+II=life steal on crit and makes life steal+life siphon a lot better
Soul Reaping: IV=lower cd on spectral

Ending Stats(unbuffed):
Power=2809 (400condi, there because of runes+tri+traits)
Crit Chance=46%
Crit Dmg=63%
Armor=2479
Hp=23062
as for food i always use lifesteal on crit because it is amazing and u can use /we floats ur boat for potions

UTILITY SKILLS= i always use spectral walk+grasp myself because with walk+ locust swarm it is a really easy perma swift and then some. you can always use spectral walk in combat for not only swiftness and jukes but to generate extra life force and as only some necros know, to survive any fall. Spectral grasp is chosen for the grab obviously but also because it generates a good chunk of life force at once, chill is just a bonus.
my last utility changes extremely often from well of corruption for aoe dmg+debooning, corrupt boon for obvious reasons, well of darkness for aoe blind when getting focused and for blinding certain downed classes for free stomps(ex: warr,ranger,necro,guard), sig of undeath for team revival and more life force regen, flesh wurm for teleports(place in a safe area well before u go into combat or even during combat to juke/kite/gain distance when running), and if im fighting some1 easy/doing an easy dungeon ill use well of suffering.

Elite: i really only use 2 elites here Plague+Golem. Lich is nice and all but only time ive ever used it, is to poke at enemey zergs or fights where i cant get next to my oppnent for the most part(lupi). Now as for when i use my two elites its as simple as this, i use golem in any dungeon i do and also in wvw(so pretty much always right?). Ok so the only time i really swap golem out for plague is when i wvw and i need to be the focus of the enemey zerg(use to blindspam) or if i just feel like running a very defensive setup in dungeons or WvW. Golem is better imo becuase even if his ai gets derped and he doesnt attack u can still use his charge to kd ur oppents as u fight them or to (as i have) get the golem to kd every following u as u run for ur life. plague is nice and all but it wont save u when escaping because even with criple spam most can just stay on you and wait for it to end(only time it helps is when ur near a keep/tower to tele into for safety). Also when golem actually attacks ur target his dps+ur dps>lich form dps imo and he also cripples.

Thank you for reading my post whether u like it or not and sorry i dont post much so i know a lot of my post looks like a bunch of poo format wise.

id say yes it is worth it, but honestly just play the class if u enjoy it. every class is viable in this game in all aspects whether ppl tell you they are or not(lot of ignorant ppl or ppl not willing to try new/diff things just cuz the general population THINKS something is bad). i run a pwr prec build on my necro as some above me have posted with 23k hp 2.5k armor 2.8k pwr 46% crit chance 63% crit dmg and use dag/warhorn+staff. I do extremely well in both zerg and small squads contrary to popular info by most i actually use my dagger/warhorn about 70% of the time(even in zerg vs zerg fights) and to give u an idea of how much i die doing this i can wvw for 7+ hours before dieing enough to fully break a piece of armor, if i play safer then i nearly never die. and yes i get kills in a day of wvw (5-8 hours) i can easily get 80-120 badges and i do very well in 1v1s. 1.2k hours played on necro, love the class although it needs some tweaks