Guild Wars 2

necros are fine despite the bugs. haters gonna hate, which means they should play another class and leave the forums alone.

totally logical thing to do.

kKagari.6804:

Sheobix.8796:

kKagari.6804:

Sheobix.8796:

Levian.6742:

Don’t forget condition removal is nearly useless PvE so it doesn’t really matter too much if it’s broken. The real life saver is the blind.

What use is there in the warhorn PvE? There’s nearly no use for cripple against mobs as they don’t try to run away, and the daze isn’t useful for anything more than an interrupt without condition duration and +daze duration from mesmer runes

d/w is good because w5 adds swiftness (cant live without it imo) the cripple is an AoE snare and Dps.. which is good for power builds and generally running around. w4 daze is a fast interrupt and works on bosses as such. this is important for a good player who uses it in say…
SE path3 first boss that burrows.. when he starts to burrow, you can hit horn4 and interrupt his burrow, probably saving 1-3 lives in the party. (when he pops out, it insta-downs people)

As a necromancer, you could use DS fear, which interrupts more reliably, (defiant resists daze, unless you’re one of those weird fractal bosses), is near instant, WH4 is not, has better range, and has better cooldown.

Cripple in pve. Well…enemies hardly ever run away, so you don’t really need to catch them. You’d want to cripple an enemy that is powerful in melee, yet the cripple is melee range..hmm, go figure.

Oh it does hit several times though, it actually acts as a decent pbAOE with vampiric traits.

I actually use both ds3 and w4. personally my tastes i use wh>focus but that’s because i also WvW on top of dungeons. the swiftness is just too good =/ but otherwise, focus is the way to go for PvE if that’s what you do.

I think Unshakable/Defiant is primarily the problem with dungeons in the game atm. It makes a necromancer too good (yet people don’t realize this yet). I see why its needed, because otherwise bosses can just get permastunned into oblivion, but it also leaves other classes with no reward for good reaction and CC.

That said, I take warhorn for WvW, focus for PvE, dagger for sPvP. Its so nicely categorized!

i do the same.. hehe

kKagari.6804:

Sheobix.8796:

Levian.6742:

Don’t forget condition removal is nearly useless PvE so it doesn’t really matter too much if it’s broken. The real life saver is the blind.

What use is there in the warhorn PvE? There’s nearly no use for cripple against mobs as they don’t try to run away, and the daze isn’t useful for anything more than an interrupt without condition duration and +daze duration from mesmer runes

d/w is good because w5 adds swiftness (cant live without it imo) the cripple is an AoE snare and Dps.. which is good for power builds and generally running around. w4 daze is a fast interrupt and works on bosses as such. this is important for a good player who uses it in say…
SE path3 first boss that burrows.. when he starts to burrow, you can hit horn4 and interrupt his burrow, probably saving 1-3 lives in the party. (when he pops out, it insta-downs people)

As a necromancer, you could use DS fear, which interrupts more reliably, (defiant resists daze, unless you’re one of those weird fractal bosses), is near instant, WH4 is not, has better range, and has better cooldown.

Cripple in pve. Well…enemies hardly ever run away, so you don’t really need to catch them. You’d want to cripple an enemy that is powerful in melee, yet the cripple is melee range..hmm, go figure.

Oh it does hit several times though, it actually acts as a decent pbAOE with vampiric traits.

I actually use both ds3 and w4. personally my tastes i use wh>focus but that’s because i also WvW on top of dungeons. the swiftness is just too good =/ but otherwise, focus is the way to go for PvE if that’s what you do.

kKagari.6804:

eh, retaliation is kinda useless for Dungeons.

this.

focus is a good weapon too. i use that or warhorn.. but warhorn is my main thing.

Levian.6742:

Don’t forget condition removal is nearly useless PvE so it doesn’t really matter too much if it’s broken. The real life saver is the blind.

What use is there in the warhorn PvE? There’s nearly no use for cripple against mobs as they don’t try to run away, and the daze isn’t useful for anything more than an interrupt without condition duration and +daze duration from mesmer runes

d/w is good because w5 adds swiftness (cant live without it imo) the cripple is an AoE snare and Dps.. which is good for power builds and generally running around. w4 daze is a fast interrupt and works on bosses as such. this is important for a good player who uses it in say…
SE path3 first boss that burrows.. when he starts to burrow, you can hit horn4 and interrupt his burrow, probably saving 1-3 lives in the party. (when he pops out, it insta-downs people)

scepter/d + staff… output dps? what about regeneration or cc?

looks good, but the PvP amulet is not going to be accurate in terms of stat spread compared to gear available for a full Rabid setup.

Rabid Gear (dungeons or khilbrons)
Colossus Fang (AC recipe exotic amulet) http://www.gw2db.com/items/72062-colossus-fang#related:comments
Tortured Root x2 (either looted or recipe drops from TA.. http://www.gw2db.com/items/72128-tortured-root#related:created-from)
BeetleStone’s band x2(CM drop – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Beetlestone%27s_Band)
Proto Frac Capacitor or Ascended version… http://www.gw2db.com/items/72453-prototype-fractal-capacitor or http://www.gw2db.com/items/72463-beta-fractal-capacitor-infused

to gear that up… that’s a lot of work. unless you use rares or mix some other gear like carrion’s..

also, you’d be better off with krait, mad king, and afflicted runes.

traits:
I’d drop the dagger cooldown trait in Blood10 for mark of evasion or trasfusion. drop focused rituals for weakening shroud. you’ll do more damage with two sources of enfeebling blood, and as a scepter user, you should be using BiP in synergy with epidemic. drop well of suffering for that.

change out ritual of protection in the death tree for greater marks, and for god’s sake.. the 10 points in spite can be better used anywhere else.

http://tinyurl.com/a7m4x7b this

http://tinyurl.com/c8yu7dm or this (and you can swap out staff mastery for spiteful vigor… a way better traited source of retaliation than the stupid 3s on Deathshroud trait edit: even reaper’s protection would be good.) reapers protection fears things away when you get CC’d by a dungeon mob. This is super useful for getting out of clusterbinds

welcome to the necro forums.

read the bug list please

hush, that’s a dirty secret. (how embarassing would it be to be geared in nothing but level 79 exotics)

TheWalkingDead.7298:

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Hah, indeed. In my defence, this did sort of start when TheWalkingDead assumed I was a wrong American instead of a correct European.

Anyway, what’s the best way of getting a non-moderator red post in here? I’d love to know what JP has planned for us

In my defense, you quoted the wrong person. Re-read the thread (or my posts, rather) then try again.

both let it go <3

If you know of any other effective builds listed in the forums, please reply so it can be added under “Different Gear and…” section. This helps players who are confused with what gear to choose.

=Different Gear and their similar build counterpart examples=

Powermancers
Soldier(P/T/V gear) “Juggermancer” by Sheobix
Berserker(P/Pr/Cr gear)“How to Hit like a truck” by Hufflepuffer
Berserker(P/Pr/Cr gear) Shroudstomp by Oozo (link to build)

Hybrids
PvP – Knight’s(V/P/Pr gear) “Mr.Freeze” by Ascii
Berserker+Rabid+Soldier(P/Pr/Cr+C/T/Pr+P/T/V gear) Critmancer by Zintair (link to gear setup)
PvP – Carrion+Shaman(C/P/V+T/C/H Amulet+Jewel) Powerr’s Build

Condition Damage Based Gear
=Rabid, Carrion=

condition damage is a much more complicated stat to build from. most of the tiers in condition damage are gained from special rune sets, trait allocation, or mixing two or more offensive condition gear sets with more defensive condition gear sets such as Apothecary, or Shaman’s.

Tier 1: Condition Damage
Tier 2: Condition Duration
Tier 3: Condition Procedure (Proc’d Abilities and Conditions)

As stated in the precursor to listing these tiers, condition damage is a much more complicated combo to work with. Most of the time, gear you choose for a condition based gear setup will be a trade off between Condition Maxing<=> Defense Mechanism

Carrion Gear
Carrion gear offers Condition Damage/Power/Vitality. This is one of the most popular gear sets due to availability and focus on Condition damage, while giving more HP. the power stat as a minor bonus makes it so that when you attack siege or non-mob objects that require you to use power, you don’t do little damage. Vitality only serves as a buffer, though, which can easily be destroyed by incoming conditions and high-power geared foes. Which leads me to explain the more pricy, harder to obtain, and more offensive cousin…..

Rabid Gear
Rabid combo offers Condition Damage/ Precision/ Toughness and provides health density (armor from toughness) high Condition damage base, and preicison to begin focusing on proc’d skills such as bleeding and siphon based healing. Rabid is a more offensive cousin to Carrion, because it gives you more incentive to be closer to your opponent, pushing more conditions and trying to deal more power-based attacks to proc even more bleeding and healing to fill your HP buffer. Using rabid gear as a base, and mixing in defensive or Carrion accessories for the more secondary/defensive stats is a more common way to go from endgame Conditionmancers.

—Secondary Condition Gear sets—

Rampagers
Rampager gear is the wild card in hybrid/condition playstyle, even power based playstyle. it offers a Precision/Power/Condition damage combo, (Precision is the major bonus) which means your necro will benefit much more from using critical hits to proc healing and bleeding. Some total setups include:

• Rabid Armor, Rampager Accessories, Carrion Jewels slotted (Precision>Toughness>Vitality)
• Carrion Armor, Rampager Accessories (Condition Damage>Precision>Vitality)
• Rampager Armor, Carrion Accessories, Crests of the Rabid slotted (Precision>Condition Damage>Toughness)

Apothecary
Apothecary gear is the newest addition to GW2 as of the Nov15th update. It offers two defensive stats and one offensive minor bonus. Healing Power/ Toughness / Condition damage.
This combo suggests an improvement in selection for healing/tanking condition players, who may want to use minions for cover while using healing power to heal and regenerate those around them. Apothecary is a good way to make a more generalist/support conditionmancer, and can be mixed with Rabid or Carrion gear effectively.

Shaman Upgrades
Shaman gear is only obtainable in Caudecus Manor, and provides Vitality/Condition Damage/ Healing Power bonuses to make a good filler for Vitality and Healing holes with gear such as Rampagers. to balance other gear with Shaman, here are some set ups available:

• Shaman Armor, Rampager accessories, Rabid Crests slotted (Balanced Vitality/Toughness > Balanced Condition/Healing power > Precision/Power balanced)
• Carrion Armor, Rampager Accessories, Crests of Shaman slotted (Condition Damage>Vitality> Precision/Healing power/Power balanced)
• Rabid Armor, Carrion Accessories, Shaman Crests slotted (Condition>Vitality>Tough/Healing power Balanced)

Welcome to the necromancer.

To fill you in, a large majority of our (most prized)traits are either cooldown modifiers or % damage modifiers to the tools we are already granted. Because of this, picking “special” traits is not a large problem for many. The bigger problem is… what gear should a necromancer use?

The gear you choose (Armor, Accessories, and Slotted Upgrades) will be the biggest factor of how your Necromancer performs. To compliment this, you’ll see direct relations between the passive attribute bonuses and major/minor traits in any given trait line.

• Example 1: Death magic grants Toughness and Boon duration, which compliments greater marks and staff mastery for defensive aspects of your Staff marks.

• Example 2: Blood magic grants Vitality and Healing power, which compliments Dagger+Staff play from siphoning, well usage, and staff2 regeneration as well as an increase in healing output. Vitality serves as a gain to your HP buffer.

I’ve broken down both power and condition damage into tiers, each tier sacrifices one or more defensive stats that are inherent in popular 3-bonus exotic pieces of armor. Armor bonuses work like this:

Major Bonus / Minor Bonus

or for exotic and some rare pieces:

Major Bonus / Minor Bonus / Minor bonus

Naturally, you find that most offensive gear sets (Berserkers, Soldiers, Valkyrie, Carrion, and Rabid) to have an offensive stat as the major bonus, and one or more defensive stats to be a minor bonus. Sometimes, a second offensive stat is offered as a minor bonus as well. (such as critical damage or precision)

To organize the trade-off between defensive stats and offensive stats, i’ve broken down Power and Condition damage into increasing tiers, and as you invest into a higher tier of either Power or Condition based gear, you will naturally lose out on more defensive stats.

Power Based Gear
=Berserker, Soldier, Valkyrie=

Tier 1: Power
Tier 2: Precision
Tier 3: Critical Damage

If you notice, Berserker gear offers all three tiers of Power-base attributes. You get the Power/Precision/Critical Damage combo (Maj/Min/Min) so you have a high power base with a precision and critical damage bonus, which raises the end of your DPS curve. The trade off is, you get no sources of vitality or toughness. Therefore, at level 80, you will have only 916 Vitality+ Base armor to provide you protection from your foes. (1800 armor) and only 18,000 HP to fight with. If you don’t understand the benefits of Toughness or Vitality to the necromancer class, I recommend you search the terms in the forums.

The next step down in Power based gear is Valkyrie Armor. It offers TWO of the Power-based attributes, and substitutes vitality for precision. You gain a greater HP buffer (more hitpoints) at the trade off of critting less, yet you maintain a high critical damage modifier.

The last step down in power based gear is Soldier’s Armor. It offers Power/Toughness/Vitality and retains only the first tier of the power base aspect. It substitutes toughness and vitality instead of higher crit chance and damage.

Power based gear Dmg<=>Tank scale: Berserker<=>Valkyrie<=>Soldier

Thresher.3049:

lettucemode.3789:

If you put 15 points into Soul Reaping, you will automatically gain Spectral Armor for free, including the stun break. I’m pretty sure that’s the only traited one we get.

Plus, the lowered Spectral timer is at 10pts into that line, I find it fairly worthy enough to keep it there as it drops the cycle time down to about 48sec on Spec-Walk (not been able to confirm if it affects the cyclic time of Spec-Armour at 15pts though).

Which if nothing else gives you +33% speed 90% of the time, 100% if you switch in a warhorn for Locusts. That in a way does give you something of ‘prevention’ instead of cure for maintaining a kiting position.

you have no idea how heart-rending soul reaping 10 is for me.

i love perma-swift so much… i just wish it didn’t cost 10 points!!

Manticore Five.9867:

Sorry, that 30 trait is the only stability that Necro has. Period. End of story.

Spectral Walk is the only stunbreaker that isn’t worthless outside it’s stun break effect. The swiftness is long lasting and stays crunchy in milk.

this is a perfect description of our current state w/ stability and swiftness.

this is why i suggested 8s stability w/ spectral armor…

but the mods decided that suggestion was a general suggestion (wtf? its a necro specific suggestion to a necro utility), so they moved it to the general suggestions subforums.. but wait! they actually just deleted it instead. (my thread disappeared.. you can’t even search for it.) mod fail.

best alternative is invader’s earrings. or just use emerald earrings if you’re really desperate for exotics in your gear.

never ever settle for rares.

downwithdragons.8291:

Can someone give me some ideas on what traits/utility skills/stats I should go with? I want to center the build around the things I have the most fun with. The build does not need to be top tier, it just needs to enhance the following aspects of necromancer play..

The things I love most about necromancers, in order of what I’d like to enhance/build upon first..

1) Plague.
2) Death shroud
3) Staff
4) Dual daggers

Thanks in advance for any tips you can offer!

gamefreak.5673:

I happen to like Sheobix.8796 build since it is very close to my final build i am using. It has a few tweaks from his i just like myself but his is a nice solid build. One day minions will work and ill be happy since that is what i wanted to use but right now they are just horrible.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Update-28k-HP-3k-Armor-3-4k-Attack-Necro/first

in context of the above player’s reply to your OP, for what you asked for (d/d blah blah blah) I will redirect you to zintair’s critmancer thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/WvW-Critmancer-Build-Power-Condition/first

its going to be exactly what you’re looking for.

if you’re mind is set on farming bags/badges in WvW to get invader gear, run w/ full outblown berserker gear and use dagger mh and just melt people and buttonmash F.

do this w/ cover of others. you should get around 20-30 badges per hour.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

I’m pretty poor, too, but this build keeps me pretty capable.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mMVczzM9MmFwrMmFwrMax0aGoMkqzco

For gear, its just Rare stuff, runes and sigils are Majors (Superior when i can affford it).

• Knights armor
• For weapons, go for Berserker (Power/Precision/CritDmg)
• 2xRunes of Strength, 2xRunes of Fire, 2xRunes of Hoelbrak (for Might stacking)
• Sigils of Strength on Scepter & Axe, Agony on Dagger, Bloodlust on Focus
  (I’m tempted to try stacking another Strength – instead of Agony – on the Dagger)

Scepter/dagger is great for AoE & conditions. Axe/Focus is pretty good for single target and vulns stack quickly, which make DS1 hit really hard.

this is actually a really nice on-your-toes risk v. reward build. I like it.

although vuln stacking is difficult to pull off, and it tends to require too much focus to utilize. the duration of invuln vs. how long it takes to really push it out isn’t the best strat. imo. But the build itself is fantastic.

^ i’d recommend something similar to the above post.

cleric’s full gear staff+ dagger/x necro focusing w/ wells and sources of regeneration.

^ critmancer or PTV geared necro with any traits w/ axe/x works fine for dungeons.

im personally biased, but since your OP stated you liked using axe and spite line, try my juggermancer.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Update-28k-HP-3k-Armor-3-4k-Attack-Necro/first#post856503

you have to send them a cake. not even joking. (for anyone who remembers the halloween stint someone did to send them a cake)

I will solve your problems in one post

use 2 runes of krait, 2 runes of afflicted, and 2 runes of the mad king.

this will emulate 30 points in spite, without the 30 points in spite. (but beware, the tooltip won’t show it)

use the 30 points elsewhere. stack curses for fun.

use rare veggie pizza at all times. /faceroll

you have to loot the recipe from SE dungeon. good luck :P~

just like looting recipe for nightmare coil from TA (fyi its a PTV exotic ring)

cesmode.4257:

I believe it was 20 in curses, 30 in blood, 20 in death magic

prec/vit/toughness
d/d

no food buffs

so i pretty much got it right. knight’s gear with 30 points in blood.
you’d get 300 more healing proc’ing on your crits if you used the food buff i stated.

d/d to proc bleeding.. i hope you have a sigil of earth on your mh dagger.

btw, the 20 in death could be lowered to 10 and you could use that to pump 10 in spite or soul reaping. sr: perma swift or DS goodies, spite: might ramping w/ DS1 trait + condition duration add.

D/D is usually only used for hybrid (rampager or otherwise) crit based necros. using dagger as a compromise between the worlds of power and conditions while utilizing precision to crit for bleeds and healing to compliment such a build.

otherwise, you’ll see powermancers running around with d/w and MAYBE d/f (god, who uses focus these days? :P )

Come on, stop it with the bickering over date formats. the game is played from all sorts of countries. get with the timez.

the special part about rolling a MM is that the minions utilities don’t scale with stats, they stay the same w/ damage output per level.

so essentially, you could roll ANY necro (power or cond.. or hybrid) and use full minions and be somewhat minion-y.

or you could put points in blood and death and roll it from there w/ your gear.

for runes if you’re going conditionmancy with scept/dag or scept/focus would be 2 mad king runes, 2 runes of krait, and 2 runes of afflicted. you get some precision and cond damage, and a total of (+15% + 15%)x (10%) = 33% bleed duration. that gives you freedom from the spite line for cond duration, or you can stack spite on top of curses to reeaaaallly push max bleeds.

for a power based minionmaster, death and blood with spite/soul reaping and just work on power, toughness, and healing power. (which is sapphire/clerics btw) and use sources of regen and control to manage your minions and output base damage.

as a hybrid, rampagers/knights with your choice of secondary precision jems or orbs will go a long way. d/d or whatever will make you run fine.

aside from all that, if you want to roll a funny little minionmaster, roll an asuran necro, use a bunch of golems, pick up some golem in a box, and craft yourself a full set of Golemancer runes. just spam golems everywhere on top of your minions.

you’ll be a total OP troll golemancer

let me guess, 20 t 30 points in blood, with precision gear (either knights or rampagers) utilizing dagger mainhand and omnomberry ghosts or something similar that gives 66% chance to siphon on crit.

alanis.6094:

You will get more overall stats from the Runes.

incorrect.

orbs/crests when fully used in armor AND trinkets, give an upwards of 280/196/+196 bonus to a stat combo when stacked.

even when it’s only gear in question, that’s a 140/98/98 bonus slotted in armor.
the highest stat total bonus a full set of runes can get you is +185ish. (that’s still far below the whole stat bonus of 6 orbs/crests)

there is a reason why berserker jewels/orbs are so kitten expensive.

just from my experience, the two most optimal setups (for two seperate extremes) on power<=>Condition scales are..

PTV/Emerald gear with Soldier crests/Rampger jewels for power

Rabid gear (khilbrons or dungeon) with Carrion Trinks w/ rampager/carrion jewels in trinks. runes of krait, mad king, and afflicted (2 each) in gear. it subs out or adds an additional +33% bleed duration total.

the middle ground (crit hybrid, usually scept/dag or dag/dag) is rampager full gear with carrion jewels or emerald orbs/jems slotted.

Mammoth.1975:

Xom.9264:

Still waiting for those screen shots showing all of you claiming Necro is ‘fine’ have actually done a fair amount of tpvp.

You people have the nerve to post L2P crap when you dont even play.

Regarding the argument of some top players on teams using necro, they are getting carried or have comps that kind of fit the class but another could class could fill the role with no problems and probably do better.

Just post your tpvp wins with necro already or admit what we already know… you people saying necro is fine dont tpvp.

Thanks.

BEST POST EVER. hats off to you! +20

Mammoth’s screenshot is a testament to how solid we are. good job

Scarran.9845:

…. snip

The good thing about this build is Sheo has provided a very nice base with armour, jewellery etc for you to tweak around to suit your play style. I have tried various builds with different jewellery and armour combinations and this is the one ive found the best. I may not do as much Condition damage as someone in full Carrion but I find I have better survivability and with that extra power to do the initial damage with the dots as a secondary. There is too much area condition cleansing skills in WvW for having Conditions as a main to be effective, they are only effective if you can get the full duration out of them.

imo PTV gear is the optimal setup, with a close cousin being full emerald gear (knights) with the soldier crests in them. Any trait setup will rock this gear setup, even condition hybrids.

if someone was to push this as a dag/dag condition hybrid, i’d go full knights with either rampager jewels x12-14 or stick with the soldier crests. that way you can go x/30/x/20(25)/x and use sigil of earth on top of barbed precision to proc bleeding. this subs out scepter to stack bleeds and let you utilize the highest dps ratio of dagger attacks. So basically a dagger conditionmancer. as long as you have 20 points in blood with that kind of build, you can consume any 66% crit chance siphon food and heal+bleed with any crits (mainly channeled abilities like Ds4 and Dag2)

using lich/plague with BiP and a well, d/d emerald/ramp( or soldier) geared necro can also do well on the other end of the spectrum.

Hugo the Great.1426:

Just out of curiosity, I dont see what Earrings you are using, and what would be an alternative to use for jewelry until the RNG gods bless me with two rings? Im totally stoaked to try this build out, and look foward to building my Juggermancer after a long time of conditon play.

I had to spend some time researching what earrings would work, and are more accessible.

I updated the post today to include Shukov’s Launch Codes (200 tokens of moletariate, and ori setting+hook) x2 or invader earrings for the PTV accessories.

The food are NOT a must. most of the time, i forget about them and realize they aren’t in my bar.

into the mists has old data that doesn’t include ascended gear, and uses PvP setups to calculate gear stat spread which is not the same as PvE gear. Also, PvE gear adds over twice the bonus.

try the build. Even when my necro was only half geared (like 5 pieces of SE and some emerald junk) He was tanking better than my best guild Warriors.

also, don’t edit the link to mask because it has a ; in the URL. nobody can go to it. use bit.ly or my favorites are gw2codex or http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc because they easily show what boons, conditions, and base stat spreads w/ traits are calculated.

Thanks again glock, I updated the whole post and gave some credit. Great things can come from the necro community if people work together.

EgidiuS.8609:

I’m so lost with the Necromancer. I’m playing with it since August 1. I have all the sets, all the items for all builds, and I’m still not finding a suitable build.

Is the build of this topic good for W v W?

This build is probably one of the best for WvW. In the end, when you finally gear him up, you’ll be having loads of fun with this build.
(even with a mix of junk and just some PTV stuff, it’s still very good!)

great, glock. now i have to update the WHOLE POST and the title. but good work!

I always thought oils worked, guess not. time to sell them and buy the stones…

And yes. craft consumables stack with food consumes

alanis.6094:

Manticore Five.9867:

It’s generally for the best if you pick your trait lines for the traits themselves and almost ignore the stats, which you can use gear to tweak. Let that guide your decisions, and you’ll do ok.

Not to be a Negative-Nancy, as I generally think the Necro isn’t as bad as many on the forums believe, but…

The “pick the traits and ignore the stats” only does a little bit of good for the Necro, as if I did that myself my build would be 0/20/20/0/0 and therefore less competitive with 30 unused points. The current trait lines we have just don’t have 7 major traits worthy enough.

I agree. The gear you choose is actually a more important factor of how you build your necro.

Like, if i was building a conditionmancer, I’d have to choose either between Rabid, Rampager, or Carrion gear. The major cleaves between those sets would be minors in Power/Vit, High precision, or Toughness vs. Power.

If i just chose what traits i want and sort of filled the holes in with gear…

well, i’d also have 30 points left over.

Valheru speaks very well for the point I’m trying to make. Its not my intention to make this a condescending “L2P” thread or to make excuses for our downfalls. I’ve addressed our problems accordingly.

But I am very uncomfortable with the fact that a large portion of new posters on the necro subforums spend more time knocking down the class instead of sharing positive and strong strategies and insight— more so than other subforums.

Alex.4186:

how much crti chance you get in this way?

w/ emerald trinks, and khilbron mix, he’s probably getting 30-40% crit chance, which is not bad.

glock.2089:

Sheobix in your ideal build above you list:

Lost Seal of Usoku x 2 (for P/V/T ascended rings). This is not achievable as ascended items are unique and therefore you can only equip one (also have to wait for the ring to random drop from a daily chest which is quite frustrating).

However the Royal Signet of Doric has the same stats as the Seal:

http://www.gw2db.com/items/71356-royal-signet-of-doric

I’m not thrilled about major fractal ginding and then waiting for random drops so I’m satisfied with getting the exotic Invaders ring from WvW or buying the exotic nightmare coil off trading post:

http://www.gw2db.com/items/72125-nightmare-coil

very good catch! when i get the time, hopefully this weekend, I’ll re-work the OP to include a new updated list of gear for optimal PTV stats.

Gryph.8237:

SHeobix,

Thanks for the guide. Today I took a second set of armor I have, and worked it up to get similar stats that you have posted. I worried about having lower crit chance, so I downed my health to 25.5k. I ended up with around 46% crit (only 19% crit dmg), 3200 attack, 3100 armor, running your 20/0/25/25/0 build.

I ran it in WvW, using a dagger/warhorn, staff. I have to say, that while I liked having so much armor, and so much health, i felt like I was less of a force in WvW. Before, I was running Zintair’s power/crit/condition-mancer. Ended up having about 2850-3k attack, 1300 condition dmg, 46% crit/40 crit damage, 1250 vitality, 2400 armor (If I am recalling correcting).

Essentially, when I compared the two, targets seemed to fall faster. I think the crit damage combined with the bleeds that ticked for 106, really increased the damage output (if the bleeds were not insta cleared). My hps were about 23.5k, so granted i did not have as high of armor, hps, but I had ground targetable wells, high condition damage for staff and scepter/dagger skills.

So, I guess, I just want your throughts on your build in wvw. I was not getting that much of a difference in well dmg, or staff damage with your build, and I felt dagger put me in a bad spot when in wvw.

Any maxed power or maxed condition damage build will feel less efficient when not running a full crit build (aka a hybrid that uses both) because you’re essentially squeezing every drop of damage out of your necro (probably using rampager’s or carrions) but 2400 armor vs. 3000 armor and 25khp vs. 30khp w/ the 3k armor is extremely noticable.

It’s really all about what you want. it’s a trade-off of DPS vs. Survivability.

After monitoring the numbers and calculating effectivity in WvW, staying alive, resurrecting multiple people, and doing really solid damage (1-3k per hit is solid. Don’t get me wrong, the extremes: bad player dies in 5-9 seconds from DPS alone, vs. good player, you hold out very well and duel their HP to nothing within 40 seconds TOPS)

As I said before, Going full knight’s gear is one alternative to using my PTV setup.

The only difference is, my setup can get higher numbers in stats because of the beneficial trait setup bonuses (25 in death and blood.. 250 tough and 2500 hp) and ascended availability. Also, there is a reason why WvW invader gear is all PTV stat.

There is also a reason why Rabid and Soldier prefix armor are THE HARDEST TO GET.

Seriously. Check it out, Cond/Tough/Prec and Power/Tough/Vit are the hardest to obtain.

CTPr gear can be obtained though farming the harder dungeons, or purchased in expensive Khilbron’s gear.

PTV gear is obtained through full invader’s gear that will take forever to obtain badges for, or through Sorrow’s Embrace (least fun and most bugged dungeon aside from Arah) or TA/AC. The trinkets are near impossible to find. Same with Rabid gear.

Helequin.2608:

I love this build. It’s a lot of fun, but as mentioned wasn’t great in sPvP where I was testing it out. So I started tinkering and got a quick something that may not be the best thing in the world, but worked pretty well.

30/0/0/30/10, using Dagger/Focus and Axe/Horn. Soldier’s everything.

Okay, first off I know I lose the toughness from traits and I’m using axe. The axe is there to have a switch for the horn mostly, and a bit for vulnerability and one more cripple. I may even just keep the dagger in the second set…

Triats:
Close to death, chill of death and whatever you want.
Dagger Mastery, Quickening Thirst and whatever you want (or take 5 points and throw them elsewhere)
Spectral Mastery

Skills:
Consume Conditions, Spectral Wall, Spectral Walk, Spectral Grasp, Lich Form.

I know, the wells are gone. Remember, this is sPvP, everyone is running around like chickens.

The idea here is you get speed, and a bunch of snares or slows. You still have incredible health and high armor. The spectral skills on lower CDs make for good escapes. Judicious use of DS is of course there to increase survivability. Dagger 1 with the stacked power is the main damage. Getting vulnerability from the axe and focus helps here too.

Basic strategy is to pick the person on the opposing team least expecting it and run them over. Typically a warrior I imaging grinning as he closes until I rush him and he tries to figure out what I’m doing. If some tries to escape a team fight, run them over too.

The soldier amulet gives much much less bonus to your stats as PvE gear does.

The build really relies on the full fleshed out numbers to work well.

otherwise, in PvP I go 20/30/x/x/x and go s/h or s/d

edit: as a cond build.

There have been a lot of impressive builds and footage posted in this forum (go through a few pages and find them) that showcase different strategies, and different styles of necromancers. They show really impressive cases of the necro winning, and they weren’t done by absolute mistake or by playing against a crappy player.

The best players learn from their own mistakes and try to learn how to make themselves better. For me, I have tested each of those builds which have found some amount of success and I’ve already figured it out for myself. I don’t come on here to post “L2P” threads. Nor do I come on here to call people idiots and that they don’t know what they’re doing at all.

But to go and post things as a community that only shows that some people just don’t know the strength of any aspect of the class… It’s frightening. There is a lack of positivity, and it has to change.

As a separate P.S, my guildmates have told me they NEVER reveal their successful builds or strategies in public. They stay away from forums because once you learn how to win with your class (after a lot of losing like everyone else) you don’t want to give it away, or waste the time to explain it to people.

many of my irl friends who play GW2 and are really strong fans of the game itself absolutely shun the forums in general because they too have told me “It is filled with whiny little ******* that don’t want to get better” I don’t share this sentiment. There are a good portion of people who want to share their knowledge and are good players.

Look, it’s getting very difficult to pull the separate arguements together back to the original topic, or point of the OP.

Minions are crap.
Some of our traits suck, or are bunk.
In PvP, Conditionmancer>Hybrid>powermancer. Some people are mad at this.
Necro isn’t easy to play, and isn’t as easy to make into a god like thief/war

But the class is far from broken, period. None of those things above make the class unplayable, or total junk compared to other classes. Don’t use minions, Don’t use the gluttony minor, and figure out when to anticipate popular moves (seriously, it isn’t a l2p thread, if we’re complaining we can’t 100b or CD/backstab/HS someone to death, you’d think millions of people would get smart to it and learn to avoid it by now)

As for PvP, which many players are pissed at because they bought GW2 to play the PvP as an “e-sport”, congratulations, most successful players rely on super hyped DPS or nothing builds to take out people. In a 5v5 where most of the players are really close to being total glass cannons, a non-glass build will only lead to death. That’s the gist of it. Even with a good staff guardian or D/D thief, you can pretty much stack on them and down them pretty quick.

I know lots of people are going to hate this, and will fight tooth and nail to say otherwise, but is nowhere near as bad as you think it is.

Someone said much earlier…

People who are satisfied with the class don’t come on the forums to praise it, or try to share their success. People come to the forums when they’re dissatisfied with something and need to verbally express their shortcomings with it.

There will always be people dissatisfied with their class. There is no such thing as perfection in an MMO (But this gets pretty kitten close, and will only get better over the years) (also, this doesn’t mean we’re excusing the failures as OKAY matters)

But in the end, the real problem is, we have a Necromancer subforum that is mainly made up of posts raging against the class, probably more so than any other subforum, and it needs to stop.

ANet kindly advised and requested players used the forums constructively to benefit other players who come to this sub to either figure out if they want to play a necro (which they should, they are one of the most fun imho) or if they need help with their necro.

Imagine if you’re one of those players, either new or experienced, who comes on here and sees a jumbled mess of “we are trash” threads. I really, truly, do not want that to be our outwards appearance to players coming to GW2.

Because the fact of the matter is, a class with more players playing it gets the attention of the developers first. (doesn’t mean they only work on those classes) but they get to those first. If we drive people away, claim EVERYTHING we have is total bunk, and fill the majority of the forums with claims that is how we are, we will lose our playerbase, lose respect (people will assume we are useless… which is not true at all!), and developers will be less keen to comb through this subforum to pick out constructive insight and suggestion as to how to change or improve the class without unbalancing the 1v1v1v1v1v1v1v1 battle we’re going through.

again, the 10000th post someone has plagued us with about minion failure.

We know already, please use the search function and just type “minion” next time you visit. you’ll see the wall of sympathy

i usually focus on bleeding downed people. 1, you can eat their downed HP really fast, and 2, you can spread it to everyone around them, making it hard for them to resurrect. By the time you’re done bleeding the dead, there is usually another bozo who downed because they tried resurrecting and didn’t focus on cleansing themselves. wash rinse repeat.

I have much respect for you War Mourner! I fully agree 110% with every breakdown you’ve made with the skills here. It’s actually uncanny how my point of view matches yours entirely.

+1000 to this post. I vote for implementation ASAP