Guild Wars 2

Sera.9750:

Power does affect bleed strength. If you ever try using Blood is Power, note the damage you do before; then after. As for percision…its to add a secondary form of damage and or offense so your not simply slapping bleeds on a person on waiting for them to die.

A common issue some come into like noted in WvW; or SPvP. You make yourself a one trick pony and rely on simply trying to bleed people to death but if you can’t outlast a person to simply dot them to death…then your pretty much useless. This build posted is more to give yourself some versatility so your not pigeon holing yourself into one strat in battle and can supplement your offense other ways.

incorrect. Blood is Power gives you stacks of might, which is a two part buff that adds power and condition damage. read the tooltip carefully. Don’t get confused that power adds to bleed. it doesn’t.

DS is a strong skill if you actually know how to build it.

Aexrael.5918:

Sheobix.8796:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

just in case you ever need to find a specific combo in game

I made a spreadsheet a while back that might help as well.

the spreadsheet isn’t needed…
the wiki link i put there has a Karma subsection that already lists each stat combo and their respective piece location.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Sheobix.8796:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

just in case you ever need to find a specific combo in game

Yes, it’s a handy reference, but that page doesn’t list the triple attribute Strong armor prefix, with its multiple combinations.

first off, if you actually achieved master crafter and understood how the naming system in gw2 works and the build ethic behind stat combos, you’d understand that Strong armor is only Rare quality and the combos therein found in Strong armor are variations of Traveler’s, Magi’s, Soldier’s, Cavalier’s, and Rabid armor.

condition builds are great on paper, weak in practice. If there was cond/tough/vit gear in game, i’d roll my necro that way, because even with condition removal, we can always come back really fast because all of our skills have conditions on them.

right now, gear for power/tough/vit and get DS up to a usable standard. rock the dagger/x + staff and go to town.

After rolling a thief, checking out its traits, utilities, gear options, and playstyle… necro really does have it well off in terms of stability.

imo, it’s hard to kitten up a necro unless you’re trying to be a MM.

Not many classes have that designed security.

Sorrow’s embrace is not that hard to run. It’s bugged, and can be difficult, but get one experienced player to help organize and run it. It should take roughly 2-3 hours to do all 3 paths for the day.

And as for karma spreadsheets….
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

this wiki page has ALL available stat combos in game already compiled and pre-calculated. I’ve been using the info from there to do my builds for a long time.

if you wanted the stats faster, just run AC, SE, Hotw, and pick up the last couple pieces from any uncontested cathedral out in Orr. Or check the entrance to Arah for the karma vendor that gives the boots. After that, check the WvW vendor for the “invaders” gear.

If you focus for a couple days, you can get a full set, easy.

ascended gear is a little harder to obtain. Traits listed in build link are flexible, please don’t take them as concrete slotted traits. I just run with greater marks/ staff/dagger cooldowns and might blast ramping for general building.

vesta.3170:

Wells are the top dps. I mix wells and conditions for max dps. Oh and any idiot that cant keep enemies in a well should not be playing a necro.

agreed. conditions (mainly bleed) when stacked takes ~30s to fully run through an opponent. if you’re not downing them within that period of time, you need to figure out your build issues.

Wells (nearly instant cast) can be put on top of each other and usually give you 5s until WoS/WoC drops a total of 5-6k damage if you keep them in your well. add that with Dagger Auto attack over 5s, you’re getting another 4k damage.

for a guardian, that’s a whole HP bar in 5 seconds. why complaining?

androidsheep.4271:

spectral grasp is described as something that

“Pull your foe to you, chill them, and gain life force.”

what i understand this to mean is that i will stay where i am and my foe will come to me, like that guy in mortal combat. the other day i used it and it pulled me from where I was into a large group of enemy players, the same way dark path does. i do not use this skill anymore.

hahaha that’s fantastic! was it a guardian’s reflection wall?

tl;dr sigils share a cooldown

here’s a kitten build of mine i played long ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_wrqBWFZDw&feature=g-upl
look at 1:42.

and tell me you wouldn’t want that with you in a dungeon.

power/vit/tough necro with max power. use BiP, signet+3 might trait, get 13 might to boot. Go to town with Ds4 and Ds1 with staff equipted.

as for your comments about life force generation, you just need to learn how to play the necro more to understand where you’re getting LF from. after a while, you’ll be able to build that bar up in sometimes less than 3 seconds.

get toughness, it makes incoming damage much less, therefore making your DS last longer.
secondly, get vitality because DS is a % of your max health bar. more vitality= spongier DS bar.

workaround: slot those same minions in the same slots for your underwater skillset. it keeps them from dying.

Traiting solely for a CC necro is like building a hotrod only to put in bouncy air-ride suspension.

You’re going to kitten yourself.

even when you use the best runes, traits, and attack combinations, you’ll only squeeze a couple extra seconds out of your fears, cripples, dazes, and immobs.

Staff 5, Staff 3, Dagger 3, Warhorn 4, Ds 3 are our main sources of CC.
mind looking at the cooldowns on each of those? even if you use all of them, you’re going to be a sitting duck.

Roll a warrior. it does a better job than us powermancers.
Roll a mesmer. It bleeds better than our conditionmancers and causes headaches. plus it has portal, time warp, and awesome phantasms that can perform nasty favors on your character and all your friends.

I’d recommend dropping 5 points in both death and blood tree (well siphon trait is minimally beneficial due to Well uptime being 45-60 seconds, removing 1 condition on DS exit is a waste, we have many condition removals/transferrals) those extra 10 points are better spent elsewhere.
with those 10 points in another tree, you can get might on lifeblast (good for power ramping in DS), any of the Soul Reaping Adept Major traits (which are all good imo), or Banshee’s wail (15% cd mod on horn), focused rituals (targetable wells), or Spectral attunement (extra LF on Spectral util usage and longer duration)

around the midlevels, dagger+healing vamp necro works really well in solo play.
once you grow out of it, as ascii said, it’s not effective at max level.

Toughness>vitality
power>precision
Condition+precision=NO
Condition+Toughness=Yes

14 builds later.. i realized precision is almost worthless to a necro. only benefits are found in a lot of gimmick traits or sigil of the earth. (advice: don’t make a gimmick build that relies on traits)

My main problem with S.grasp is that Aegis blocks it.
Good luck grabbing any heavy armors.

it really does work 30% of the time…

time to slot in well of power/corruption!

Swadow.6213:

Unfortunately as it currently stands, people have started going the way of “LFXM need guardian, warrior, thief or anything besides Rangers and Necromancers.” I believe that it’s all the result of abolishing the holy trinity and forcing every class to fight with each other for viability.

So in short to answer: Don’t be a necromancer. And your signature pretty much captures that whole thing in essence. “Anything a Necro can do, other classes can do better”

this is really wrong.
My guild asks for me to run dungeons with themm all the time because i can do the job like a Warrior/Guardian lovechild with Control Wells and Deathshroud mitigations.

most of these posts are minimally constructive and serious towards answering your question.

for dungeons, a good way to spec is Cond/Tough/Prec if you’re not planning on being an offtank Power build.

if you are a power build, go Power/Tough/Vit gear with Carrion trinks and play as a high vit, high armor Daggermancer not only do you avoid bleed caps, but you have consistent graytyped damage from an autoattack, giving free choice for utilities.

Soulutions.6450:

Too many minor traits that only work with minions but wont do anything in your build imo

I don’t think any necro player specs into death magic for the minor traits. points were put into there for +250 toughness, +25% boon duration, and the two staff related majors including the opportunity to slot in Dark Armor for channeled skills.

thanks for your two cents though, /troll

Miniacalz.5697:

This build seems interesting, and I was testing it out in the mists against golems using the power/vit/toughness amulet/gem.

Even with 10% more dmg from marks traint and 3000 attack the damage on the marks is still kind of lackluster. Stacking them all on a light golem does maybe 30% damage? With the biggest being putrid marks hitting for like 1.3k? Am I doing something wrong? How does this almost instadown an opponent?

I stated that it nearly instadowns opponents in WvW. Please read carefully.
please understand that most players in WvW are running berserker glass cannons or pre-80 toons that go down really fast. (i’ve been using the tactic lately and have had roughly 65% success)

Also, take into account that all tooltips are calculated using a heavy armor target. light armored or toughness-lacking mobs or players will take much more damage from your marks.

Second tip: PvP amulets don’t give anywhere NEAR the stat bonuses you can get from PvE gear. You won’t achieve the same results in the mists. if you want to truly test it, obtain the gear specified and try it in Mariner’s in Lions Arch w/ the dummies.

Edit: This post is now irrelevant. Updated Armor setup is now in the OP

second thought, when it comes to death magic tree, you could drop the staff cooldown trait and swap in dark armor for the extra +400 toughness when you use dagger2 and DS4. great synergy when soaking up burst damage/using ds4 by Popping DS.

Edit: This post is now irrelevant. Updated Armor setup is now in the OP

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

just in case you ever need to find a specific combo in game

I solo vet karks so easy as a necro. l2p dude.
on top of that, necros are a lot more useful than guards in general.

/wells

Actually, Ressing in Death shroud is amazing. If they only made it easier by allowing us to hit F options while in DS, i’d be fine with our lower lackluster traits.
(currently, hitting F1 and F at the same time works.. you can rez in DS)

A much more efficient way to boost your stats and crit damage is by slotting jewels of your choice into all pieces of your armor. (if you didn’t know that you could use jewels instead of runes)

Xom.9264:

Mega Skeleton.8259:

RockonHarder.7235:

If you look threw some of today threads someone said that the number one rated player in spvp is a necro and when i looked up his build it was alot of Vitality. Unfortunately he didn’t have gear on the page just jewelery and runes.

In the end though it’s all about your play style.

Eh, sure, but not for this conversation. For this conversation it’s a lot about the math. What gets you the most bang. Playstyle choices may derive from getting traits or runes that benefit from toughness, but aside from that it’s straight math. Which I haven’t done. If I had to guess I’m guessing a balance of both gets you the most for your money. But as necros already have high base HP, I’m not sure what the magic numbers are.

You can not even stack vit over toughness in Spvp/Tpvp unless you go the terrible carrion path…. Every high rank 40+ or tpvp necro that impressed me I have talked to runs with 1600+ toughness at least.

This is right on the money. As i said before, the good sweet spot for HP is around 23k hp, and figuring our base at lv 80 is 18k hp, you’ll only really need to find about 500ish vitality points to add on. Pick up an amulet with that stat in it, and then find toughness.

I’ve stated in another thread that 2700 armor vs. 1800 armor(our base) equals roughly 50% damage reduction. And that’s only the medium area of how high you can get it through toughness. Necros can manage 3100+ armor through toughness and other sources in the trait lines but there is only so much toughness you need before you start unbalancing your build.

~2700 armor (or 1600-1700 toughness) is an amazing way to double the lifespan of your character. LITERALLY.

just make sure your HP pool is high. I’ve currently specced in to hold a 31k hp pool in PvE and that’s the highest it can go right now w/o ascended gear. (I’m not saying you should stack vit though, it’s just something i challenged myself with)

A very strong baseline for Necro tPvP is 2700 armor and 23-25k HP. That alone will make you last over twice as long as any Necro glass cannon build.

Swadow.6213:

Unfortunately Necros have no ways of negating any damage they receive , and no using DS isnt negating damage. Dodging(Vigor is required to do it properly), blocking, stunlocking etc. are all negating damage and Necros have none. It’s just the way ANet unfortunately designed Necros.

We cant kill fast enough to not receive damage like Thiefs and Warriors for example, and we cant negate the damage either like everyone. ANet might think that conditions like Blind, Weakness etc. are the replacement but they suck kitten in reality.

this is the most hilarious thing i’ve heard on this forum.

Well of Darkness can give you 5s of absolute untouched bliss in the middle of 20 orrian Juggernauts.

vit+toughness invested toons can literally /afk in deathshroud in the middle of a group of 5 risen krait and slowly tick away.

We don’t have any sources of blocking. So please go back to the guardian or warrior forums.

Dodging with the mark of blood trait does wonders. offensive/healing/mobile ability wrapped into one. stop QQing because you can only dodge twice before you actually play smart.

Weakness can turn a thief’s backstab+hs combo into a half-kittened grazing hit failure.
WoD can also COMPLETELY negate their combo, revealing a CD-lockedout thief with a pale face.

Necros can achieve 30k HP and 3100 armor using Dark Armor trait with Dagger2, Ds4 and using vitality gear. That’s THREE consecutive Backstab+hs combos from a glass cannon thief, and over 2-1/2 minutes of absolute warrior dpsing. (if you play right)

are you aware of how well off necros are in terms of tanking?

as long as you maintain at least 23k hp, invest the rest into toughness or more sources of mobility and/or active damage mitigation (dodging mark of blood, DS mechanic, etc.)

Death shroud imo isn’t strong if you trait into it (like in soul reaping) but it shines when you have a power/hybrid based necro that invests in high vitality and toughness.

Vitality is ESSENTIAL to a necro because not only does it increase your hp pool, but it increases your DS LF pool, and your Plague Form HP add. this class, apart from all classes, gets 3x the benefit from one point of vitality (1 pt. = 10hp) than any other class or mob. GET SUM.

Toughness is extremely important to the necro because when you’re in DS, if you have 2700 armor instead of 1800 armor, you’re going to be taking 50% less damage (since its a division-ary mechanic… damage is totaled by dividing it by your armor rating) you can sit and output dmg in DS for ridiculously long periods of time.

The best way to “trait” for DS is to take 10 points in Soul Reaping and play with the 15% DS skill cooldown modifier or the -25% LF drain trait.

otherwise, save your trait points, find some vitality, toughness, or both.

Might ramping is a FANTASTIC way to play for a very skilled and focused player who has that mental edge and capacity to maintain might. my two cents would be to watch out for min/maxing and losing important or vital strengths in that kind of build, because the necro is stretched thin as it is.

tl;dr I love this type of necro. can’t play it for long because the APM stresses me out for all-day playstyle, but it is a great way to surprise people. (you can get dagger2 to hit for 10k in this way)

for leveling, power based with wells and marks will be the most efficient way to go. mob difficulty gets harder as you level up, so once you hit level 48-50 change to a heavy conditionmancer build that uses scepter/dag staff and use epidemic, blood is power, and any third util. elite should be plague.

for the conditionmancer days you’ll be spending from levels 48ish-80, work on getting some power based gear other than berserkers, as endgame playstyle consists of FotM, WvW, tPvP with guilds, and arah/cof for sexy armor. The good builds that fit each of those will be toughness centered builds. Best complement to toughness is vitality and that can best be found in power major bonused gear.
Knights/Valk/soldier/etc.

(some people won’t agree with that endgame build theory but i’ve tested about 13 builds now at lv80 and i find that toughness+vit just makes you the MVP and hardest to kill mofo in any situation)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/30k-HP-2-6k-armor-2-3k-power-Juggermancer/first#post780496

just use full soldier amulet and slot in soldier jewels into each armor piece.

Go dagger/dagger or dagger/focus with staff in the offslot.

Focused rituals imo is nonessential. more utilitarian wells like darkness,power, and corruption are more useful when they’re triggered on your position. Darkness counteracts melee burst chains, power converts harmful conditions into boons (like in Fractal- Giant at the fire part when you need 5s of purity to land the hammer) and Well of corruption helps to keep guards/wars debuffed to kill them as quickly as clothies without any buffs.

focused rituals is nice, but the points can be better spent somewhere else.

rofl hackks. sorry, the build editor putin two of the Death V’s. greater marks should be in the first slot.

New Build Link

[NEW!]Power Building Blog for Necromancers: http://necronotes.blog.com/

=Update [3.3] – Tweaks to Setup from Dec. Patch=

• 3.2 – Re-calculation of stats with new build (15/0/25/20/10) reason: perma swiftness and DS bolstering w/ +10% crit damage to compliment staff swapping in DS for high hits. recorded 3400’s with DS1 crits
• 3.3 – Replaced Warhorn with Focus, changed trait setup to reflect changes, dropped perma swiftness in favor of other traits. Updated list to include which crests/sigils im using, and noted Bloodlust. Removed Shukov’s launch codes due to not being a viable way to obtain earrings, recalculated stat spread properly to reflect the changes.

Royal Signet of Doric
Lost Seal of Usoku
Koss on Koss
Emerald Pendant
Invader’s Earrings
Sorrows Embrace/ Ascalonian Catacombs/ Invaders/ HotW gear
Invader Weapons (Or PTV Fractal Weapons if they come out )/ SE/hotw/AC weapons

• Ideal setup: Invader Dagger/ Focus + Invader Staff for skins.

slotted upgrades
All Crests of the Soldier x14 (weapons, armor, accessories) unless user decides to use sigil of blooslust in MH dagger.

Utilities:
Wells, and 3rd slot open for a non-well utility. I use the new locust sig for running but i swap it for Spectral Walk in most cases. This relieves the now gimp warhorn and saves 10 points from the old soul reaping lineup.

SSS weaponsmith consume buff: “Superior Sharpening Stone: Gain power equal to 6% of your toughness; Gain power equal to 4% of your vitality”

And either of these two (these do not stack with each other):
1. Plate of Orrian Steak Frittes: +100 power, +70 vitality, +10 Experience from kills
2. Loaf of Omnomberry Bread: +100 vitality, +70 toughness, +10 Experience from kills

Total Stat Spread:
+2355 power
+2153 Toughness "
+2153 Vitality "

Boil down:
2355 power + 1111 staff attack rating = 3466 Attack Rating (unbuffed)
2153 Toughness + 920 Graytyped Defense from Armor = 3073 Armor(unbuffed)
Base HP + (2153-916) = 18,372 base HP+ 1187 vitality = 30,242 HP (unbuffed)

with buffs:
SSS power= (2153 × 0.06) + (2153 × 0.04) = 129.18 + 86.12 = +215 Power
+ Steak Fries (100 power 70 vit) = +315 power
or
+Omnom Bread (100 vit 70 toughness) = +1000 hp and 70 armor

• Buffed final Power and rating: 2,570 power / 3,781 Attack Rating (w/ Fries)
  • Buffed optional final HP and Armor: 31,242 HP 3143 Armor

I would like to give special thanks to the necromancer community and Glock for giving insight and changes/advice on new items, different bugs, and things i did not catch in the initial version of this post.

BUILD THEORY AND PLAYSTYLE
Hi! Welcome to the Juggermancer. For many of those who do not want to read the following posts to this thread asking about the viability of this build in _______ area of the game, I will highlight the strong points of the build.

• Incredible Tanking ability in Dungeons, PvE, and WvW
• Ridiculously high Attack Rating and Power base, no need for crit stacking
• Utilizes the best gear in game
• Minimizes the weaknesses inherent in the Necromancer Class
• Is a duelist/holdout build that relies on player placement and skill to win, not combos
  • note: Strongest play comes from these areas (in order) : WvW, Dungeons, PvE, tPvP
    • note: This build requires more condition damage for sPvP or pug tPvP. Please refer to a critmancer rampager build or bunker/cond build for heavy PvP play.
• Always last man standing (Improves Deathshroud through the roof) Even above tank warriors and Staff Guardians

If you have any questions, you can pm or whisper me or Glock in the forums.

what you’re looking for is this list… http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

has every single stat combination listed, as well as the source.

Hi, i have an idea similar to Ascended gear (which is getting a lot of hate lately)

but what if we could craft gear (after exotics) that are another tier of weapon/armor that allows us to pick and choose each of the bonuses on our weapon by completing the fractal dungeons and obtaining specific bonus gems that we slot into the armor in the mystic forge to craft a final piece of armor?
Not only will this introduce more gear variety in the game (since each combination would need a name prefix… 3x however many bonuses there are available) but players would have a real motivation to obtain end-game gear past exotics other than just armor skins.

The bonuses would not have to be higher than what is currently available on exotics, just customizable.

for example, i would really love to have Condition/Vitality/Toughness for my necromancer or
Power/Precision/Vitality
Healing Power/ Vitality/ Toughness

for armor..
We already transmute armor a lot in endgame and it would be really cool to run fractals for specific gems (minor and major gems for the major bonus or two minor ones)

it would be really great if we can save a certain trait setup in a preset and be able to swap between those when going to our trainer to re-train traits.

Also, gear presets would also be nice..
I go between berserkers, carrion, and rampagers for 3 different types of play on my necro and keeping track of those pieces in my inventory is a hassle.

in the end, +1, nice build, it’s not a standard cookie cutter and can compete with the hordes of conditionmancers we see swinging scepter1 saying trol-lol-lol in /m channel. don’t see why people have to be abrasive about the subject. There are some useful tidbits of knowledge gained from studying this type of build.

Badaboom.4216:

I think a lot of people here are being overly critical of OP. Sure he may have used sensationalist language & was vague (secretive), but it is no reason to be snide.

I agree.

The build isn’t a traditional condition spec, but combined with the survivability and focus on utility, in good hands this is a very solid pvp build to run with, even better if you’re duoing with a teammate in tpvp. The fact that it provides reliable ways to counter bs thieves is a nice addition, and focuses on controlling the opponent to win.

Not the most efficient build to kill people, but then again i think the goal of the build was to cover virtually all weaknesses inherent in the necro class and play to win, not play to kill.

^ this in a hybrid build is very hands-on active playstyle.
blood is power, wurm/s.walk, epidemic are great bread and butter condition tools. Focus in putting points in curses and go from there.

glhf

personally i’ve tested about 12 different builds with full exotic gear for each and find that for pvp, powermancers are considerably less useful. Being able to autoattack for 1-3k a hit is nice and all, but in practice it leaves much to be wanted in terms of survivability and being able to lock down nodes. soul reaping is great for spectral utils that help skyrocket LF regeneration (therefore allowing consistent use of death shroud to mitigate damage) but the 30% LF boost passive from the trait line itself was tested to be ineffectual.

I have a love/hate relationship with blood magic because i wish it was a more viable center for builds, but it still gives much needed vitality( which scales the base for DS hp) and sources of vampirism/healing.

As for dps on axe vs. dagger, the current hierarchy for BEST dps weapons starting from greatest to least goes: dagger, scepter, axe. Kind of funny that scepter precedes axe, but that’s what the numbers come out as.

chill is a good mechanic to pick up for the necromancer, although 10 trait points is a waste to get the one trait. Its more of a core thing you have to go for.. all or nothing. sort of.

Playing a power build in pvp limits your opportunity for support since you’re going to be focusing on closing distance and unloading burst damage. since power builds lack condition duration, fear traits, runes involving condition duration or % additions to specific mechanic lengths, you’re going to be limited with our CC toolset. (since when not invested, most of our fears/chills/etc last only 1-2 seconds. I tried playing tpvp with an organized guild team over ventrilo, and powermancer was not a fun nor synergetic build to play with others in pvp.

Fiesbert made a post about a ‘godly build’ he came up with prior to patch thursday that utilizes regeneration so i’m assuming they’re going to play with focus or other sources of such. but that’s just heresay.

otherwise, I favor scepter/warhorn with staff on 2nd with my pve/pvp conditionmancer build and a dagger/warhorn staff 2nd on my powermancer for wvw.
warhorn has a great instadaze and weak AoE w/ swiftness. Once you learn how to perma-swift, it’s hard ever wanting to change.

Added links to tezoz’s post on condition duration, as well as fiesbert’s notations on condition related and minion related utilities/effects

If any players have more information on how to max out on specific conditions and such touched on in the “List of Mechanic improving traits and sources” section, or have additional paragraphs that currently do not come to mind, please share your information and i will gladly add it in!
We have to squeeze every last drop out of our necromancers these days, ya know? : )

Gyler.8150:

What about if we use say Charrzooka?

you sir, get the post of the evening award. XD charrzookas are so OP. We should nerf them or make it a necro exclusive. ….

jk