Guild Wars 2

I think i posted some footage of my endgame dagger/dagger necro and from what you can see, its extremely durable and long lasting in PvE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_wrqBWFZDw

1:38 pretty much sums up what pve necro is like

pve necros… yay

necro bread and butter for pve is epidemic and blood is power. You can gear into either power or cond dmg and you will be fine since both contribute to bleed damage.

I use rampager’s and i pump out 14k dmg on BiP+epi and that’s AoE tactic #1. Necros have a lot of utilitarian uses.

http://youtu.be/l_wrqBWFZDw if you wanted proof of its complete power and survivability. Cooldowns are so easy that you could chainkill on and on.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.304.308.312.0.0.0.331.0.0.350.347.0.0.0.0.30.5.10.20.5

this build would be much better for the playstyle you’re describing.

Dagger2 Siphon
Hit DS, Life Transfer (All the while, +400 armor makes you pretty tough)
Drop a BiP on one mob
Use Plague Signet to transfer the remaining 2-3k of bleed to target(You now have 13 stacks of might, use it….)
Epidemic (Spread massive 12-14k dmg AoE)
once all the mobs are below 50%, your Spite mastery trait kicks in. Use the 13 stacks of might + 20% dmg bonus and literally go to town and facemelt everything in your path.

If low on health, pop Dagger2 for siphon. (if you have good + power gear, your siphon numbers upscale i believe)

That is a real damage-soaking glass cannon vampire.

my current build is similar, (20/30/0/20/0)
And hit 4-5k easy on dagger2, my Auto volley comes out as 770, 770, 1600,
my BiP alone drops 14k damage (if transfer last stacks) without critting.
If you gear up into +power and +precision +crit dmg (Berserkers) then your DS4 will hit very hard. All death shroud skills scale with more power, albeit DS2 which has 3 stacks of bleeding.

So for the first.. 13 seconds… its literally all siphoning/transfer while tanking.

p.s Toughness is vital in Arah and surrounding orr… I recommend you find some.
I’m currently running with full Rampager’s Exotics which is max damage with cond/power/precision but any brute type mob can 4-hit me if i’m not careful. Planned to either go Power/Critdmg/Toughness, Cond/Tough/Prec, and patch the precision holes with corresponding trinket set and a +5crit sigil on offdagger with a sigil of perception on maindagger.

I too have run into this problem today! I have been merching off the TP making gold and helping out friends, but now i can’t help craft gear for my guildies and such. I can’t move anything in or out of my inventory.. At least tell us how to expand our limit, please? Is it based off of the questline? xp? levels? hours played/ age?

Some people prefer the 20% lf bonus instead. using scepter+dagger has minimal LF generation

Replier contributes no useful input. Replier executes troll: critical hit!

I’ve personally rocked both condition and power necros, and I would say the power necro is much more fun. The reason being so is that when you spec with wells in your utilities, you dish out your damage in the 5 seconds it takes to pulse your wells and hit your finishers. Super quick AoE destruction. Also, power builds gear towards dagger+blah and tend to be fun because it takes less concentration and easy survivability due to the blood traits and siphoning.

Condition builds are exceptional at PvP/WvW and PvE simultaneously, but takes much more concentration to play because the person has to focus on stacking bleeds while moving and mitigating self-conditions. Also, the survivability is much less since its more of a scepter+blah geared build.

10 stacks of might shouldn’t be necessary to bring up our +power based builds, its a good utility, sure, but i think he was more discussing the discomfort of it being a required utility for all power builds. we get 3 utilities, one is obviously going to need to be BiP to output serious dmg, and then we get two slots left over.

I would say two mandatory utilities (for a power build) to almost never swap out are Well of Suffering and BiP. So what, that leaves us with one empty slot to fill? Using that slot for a spectral util or signet would be a waste since it would take extra trait swapping to utilize and BiP does condition damage, which rarely comes on gear alongside of +power. So we get BiP, which will do kitten bleed damage, drain %10 of our hp (since of the self bleed we can only get rid of if we prematurely pop Consume conditions or swap for staff4) and get the might. Is it worth it?

On the flip side, Conditionmancers rely on BiP for their base stack of bleeds. It used to give 20% LF which is needed to keep Death shroud up to stay alive when the player realizes oh crap, I’m vulnerable! where is my dagger? oh wait, im a condi build. but it no longer grants 20% LF. now it gives a 25% damage increase for the duration of the bleed (effective through the stacks of might)

I don’t deny the fact that BiP does help power builds do more damage. But the way they changed it sort of shafted necros because why do we need a single utility to do good damage compared to other classes? Obviously our class design is lacking something if they decide to make both of our two only viable pvp/wvw/pve endgame builds revolve around one utility.

I have been playing between a power dagger+focus vamp build (wells+1util) and condition scepter+dagger (BiP+Epi+PlagueSig) build. The problem is, Condition build does good dmg, but takes FOREVER for all of the damage to bleed out compared to a power build. I think it is amazing in PvP, but in PvE, 30s is a long time to kite/stay alive when AoE’ing with epidemic. Also, chaining bleeds is a pain in teh rumpus kitteh.

The problem with Power builds though, is that we can’t get our damage curve ANYWHERE NEAR other classes similarly geared or sometimes geared worse than us and therefore have to take the recently buffed Blood is Power utility to get the 10 stacks of might, or use Spite Trait VI (might off of DS1) to get our power curve up temporarily to match it.

I have been really frustrated with our extremely clanky necro mechanics and stumbled upon a very concise post by Quillixx on GW2GURU. here is the OP url: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/68944-blood-is-power-disappointed-with-the-design/

I highly advise players to take a read at the post there, it really points out a vital utility that changed that sort of created a rift between our beloved power and condition builds.

For some reason, when looking at heavy armor, medium armor, and light armor, I get a serious impression that Heavy sets look way cooler than mediums or heavy, in fact, the only truly good-looking light set i can think of is Human Female level 55-60 crafted Winged set.

http://media-ascalon.cursecdn.com/attachments/1/515/634822448387463143.jpg

2 million sales of this game which equals at least $120 million… not to mention the sales made that were deluxe or ultimate purchases… i’m pretty sure these kittens have plenty of money to do whatever the heck they want.

Remember the good old days of 2001 ish era where new games only costed $40 or even $30? where have the days gone…

i know healing power doesn’t help vamp. it helps regen. (focus4 staff2) and I must have been confused because I’ve seen my life siphon tick for 400/600s without full pres gear. But the x multiplier in the tooltip makes sense now, thanks

Also, my build is updated. Its now 10 spite, 10 blood, 10 death with the traits: Bloodthirst, Dark Armor, Spiteful Spirit. (the main change is that i dropped focusing in healing power, 1 point in healing power = .125 healing in regeneration) and focused on vitality instead. I would have used power/toughness if it existed, but it does not. So i use Dark Armor (+400 toughness while channeling) to gain that extra defense while siphoning, which is literally 60% of the duration of my battles in PvE.

At level 38 I crafted full rare gear (wool) with +power and +vitality bonuses. then i got the bonuses on my weapons, and as well on my trinkets full set. All my gear is lv35 rare craft gear. (good gear, but not like WOW THATS GODLY) then I’m using a minor sigil of bloodlust ( + 125 power full stacks) which makes my life siphon hit for 629 x9 = 5661 damage. True stuff. My well of suffering does 1635 x5 = 8175 and corruption follows similar scaling. etc. All my gear basically adds +power and +vitality which allows me to fill a big Health pool with my regen skills and siphoning. (works really well actually, can usually kill 6-9 mobs at once without dipping below 50% hp… and when i get low i just double backflip and kite for a couple seconds and chain my heals together which bubbles me back up)

Guys, i heard they were renaming our minions to properly match the current 3d models provided to us.

Flesh Wurm will now be the Pink Predator Phallus. They prefer the players to nickname it PP…P.
Bone Minions will be the Death Rats.
Flesh Golem will be the Bipedal Hugging Rhino.
Bone Fiend will be the Toothpick Crab.
Shadow Fiend will be Cartman’s Flaming Fart (for it likes to attract to the opposition)
Blood Fiend will be Squid Kraken Jr.
and the Jagged Horror will be the Post-Accident Fetuses. (Or Fetus, since they die before you can give them any love)

jk, they would never do that. They don’t care nearly enough. haha.

actually, crafted jewelry is great… <level 35 full set of rares of a chunk of silver got me +100ish power and +1k hp at level 38.

it pretty much just slowly charges LF and is a sorry excuse for a kiting tool. I would like it if it applied a 1.5s blind each hit so that in pvp when people close in on us and try to do burst CC/dmg they get interrupted

if you have points in spite, you could just slot out well of darkness for near-immunity for the duration and use the Dark Armor trait to gain toughness during life siphon. But yes, I agree its pretty much a given that i’ll build a precision based model of my necro when i get later on in levels. (As the op suggested, early-level precision building is not fun, gear wise and trait wise. its just a little too scarce until lv55+)

I know that the healing and siphoning abilities don’t happily scale with the levels but from levels 10-40 it has been really fantastic. nearly button-mashable easy.

almost forgot, using the signet to break stun has a long cooldown. Taking on 3-4 basilisks will guarantee chain stuns.

I too have noticed the shoehorning into being either a conditionmancer or minion master build for PvP. The main thing i’m unhappy about is the ridiculously short CC, if none at all. We’ve got a couple of freezes on hand, but they’re short and don’t end up lengthening the cooldown of our enemies as much as what proves useful. I would really like to see staff5 to reach 2s or even 3s(like others) fear.

Countless times have i seen and experienced a 1v1 between a necro and thief and watched it end in less than 10 seconds. I’m pretty sure we know how pathetic our burst potential can be.

Also, fix the siphon health and healing power scaling confusion please, it shouldn’t take 25+ points in the blood magic tree to do decent healing.

Andele.1306:

Sheobix.8796 – Id rather see you fight 5 risen krait (or skelk if you are low level) since basilisks, ettin and a ton of other mobs all have nice taunts out of that you dont even have to dodge, just walk out, either way dont try to sell necros if guardians straight up do more condition damage just with 1 condition than our whole arsenal with same gear while healing for more just via traits.

Skelk are actually easy to combat with, since i usually just lay staff #2, #3, #5 to bleed+regen, freeze, and fear them back and kite as they shadow walk into the mark boundary. then its just a matter of dropping wells, siphoning the lowest one, and finishing up the rest with dagger dps, DS siphon, or swap back to staff to repeat CD’s.

Doing 3-4 basilisks at a time is actually much harder since they drop a 1.5 second LoS immobilize ray and a melee stun. With a bunch of those, its like Milla Kovovich in Resident Evil trying to avoid the laser corridor.

I’m not trying to sell bs, and i’m not here to brag about my build. it would be helpful if people actually asked questions about parts of the OP.
Also, my current build at level 38 drops 8k from well of suffering, 3k from well of corruption, another 5.6k from life siphon dagger #2, all in the course of 11 seconds. that’s 1.5k damage per second which is nothing to scoff at since siphon with blood magic traits regenerates roughly 35ish percent of the health bar, and with two regeneration skills on fast cd on top of that, its a solid pve build.

Is it just me, or do i sense some flaming? I didn’t write a post like this to try brainwashing people into making clones of my build, the intention was to help people out. I used the build i play (since obviously I relate to it the easiest) as examples.

The Boz.2038:

Resetting trait points often in the first 15 levels?
What?

+50 to any one of the attributes given from the first five points into a tree (plus the adept perk) can really skew the balance of a toon in the first fifteen levels. I began playing the necromancer trying to choose between +power, +vitality/ +healing, and the +precision tree. at level 15, resetting traits is like 16 copper so I tried to play around with it a lot to see what worked best.

Andele.1306:

Hope that you know that you are leading people into a death trap of AC since 99% of our traits and vampiric skills dont scale with healing power(nor normal power what would be the even more obvious choice since vampiric does indicate more damage – more you steal).

I’ve actually run AC with multiple builds (And I have the gold to craft myself full set of rare gear for each build); a conditionmancer(bleeding), a Minionmaster+Kiter, and An altered version of my vampiric based necro. Each do well in their own respects, and the conditionmancer did the best in the sense of pulling conditions off of allies and allowing the team to survive much longer, but my vamp proved to be hard to kill since I swapped out all the gear/traits to support power/toughness instead of power/healing power.

Healing power does improve the following boons: Regeneration, Consume Conditions/Well of blood. With dagger+focus/Staff, you end up with two regen skills (ranged focus #4 and staff bleed #2) and utility cooldowns that fit very snugly between the short cooldown of each of those. I use the power/healing power focused vamp build for standard PvE— NOT for AC.

With the healing power instead of toughness in regular PvE, it is easier to dodge+siphon than bunker up and siphon like in AC. I wish I had a recording of me taking on a constant line of 16 basilisks (chain-pulled and without EVER entering DS) with the vamp build. It simply is able to go on forever with relative ease if you know how to dodge billions of immobilize-rays.

Otherwise, I tweaked it and went power/toughness on gear and such to take less damage in AC to compensate for the lack of healing scaling which you noted.

I don’t really advocate for my build being the best one in any way, or being the safest. I simply broke down the important mechanics of the GW2 system so that new players would have an idea what they were dealing with. I fully understand that superior runes gives better bonuses. (Minor<Major<Superior) But from levels 1-38 only minor runes will be available. (Hence why it is most effective to go with three pairs of minors). At level 39, major runes become available and thus the effectivity does as well. I strongly suggest players to play with their own builds and gear, this is only a tool to understand those parts.

I just noticed some people not being able to understand people’s copy+paste build information like noted here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-Mr-Freeze-Build-SPvP-Video-Fun-CC-Damage-Build/275630

And I thought it would be nice to have some sort of breakdown on the parts of “builds”

P.S I think it is appropriate to realize that not every single player is a level 80-capped toon. There are hundreds of new players all the time looking to learn and to share information.

I would recommend you try out a real solid conditionmancer build such as this one: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Post-Your-Build-Thread/462406

You can spread a lot of conditions with epidemic.

I know there are some fantastic videos created by Nemesis, linked here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-tutorials/221328

but some people wanted a careful-read type guide so I went ahead and took the time to do so.

Trait selection, Conditions, Boons, and how you play
Luckily, resetting your traits is inexpensive for the most part. I found myself resetting 4 times a day in my first 15 levels on my Necromancer. What kind of combination makes you tick? To get an idea of how you wish to go about keeping yourself alive while killing things, you should probably take a look at each of the inital 5-point trait bonuses (adept level initial perk) listed here.

Pay attention to the stat and attribute bonuses listed at the head of each trait line. when you max out that trait tier to full adept (10 points in that trait line) you will get either a +100/ +10% bonus to those things listed at the head. this is a significant bonus that only gets bigger as you progress to the next mastery levels. Don’t throw them away! Use those bonuses to your advantage and build your Necromancer around them.

The following build is the current build I use:
The Necrovamper

I began putting points into Blood Magic, then Spite, then Curses.

Here are some images of the build:

Screenshot 1 Hero panel, main attributes

Screenshot 2 Traits

Screenshot 3 Skills taken

If anyone has questions, or would like to see more/less information in a section, regards to how any part was written, or would like to help improve this post, please post replies. If needed, pm me if you wish to add a written block.
Feedback appreciated!

Gear selection, upgrades, and Crafting
If you took a look at the Necromancer page on the GW2 wiki, you would see some recommended crafting disciplines listed to help support your equipment holes and attribute-boosting needs. For Necromancer I picked Weaponsmithing (Daggers/Axes) and Tailoring(Light Armor). You can also double into Artificing for staves, but I found purchasing one off the AH sufficed.
Craft/Buy a weapon that has attribute bonuses that benefit your traits and skills.

Example: For Vampirism based Necromancers, I picked up a Dagger with +Power and +Healing Power.

+Healing power directly benefits your regen skill, healing skill, and siphoning amount. +Power directly benefits all of your damage scores.

When it came to choosing armor to craft/buy, I did the same: +power/ +healing power.
Take a look at the Tailoring Recipes and see which insignia bonuses work best for you.

By the time you have all your gear picked out, you might notice that there is an “Unused Upgrade” slot on your items.

For Weapons, there are Sigils.

For Armor, there are Runes.

Starting with weapons, choosing a Sigil that most compliments your build center (for mine it is self-healing and high weapon damage) I would choose a sigil of Blood, Life, or Bloodlust.

Bloodlust allows me to stack 25 stacks of a +5 power buff which equals +125 power when loaded.

Life allows the same, but allows 25 stacks of +7 Healing power. In total, +175 healing power. (But there is no Minor sigil available for low level gear currently. Sorry.)

Blood allows 10% chance of life steal on critical. With a precision/power/healing power build, this can be beneficial.

I chose bloodlust for quicker leveling.

Choosing Runes for your armor set is a different story though. Starting with minor runes, we start off with a 2-piece completion bonus per pair of runes. How does this work?

You have 6 pieces of armor. Head, Epaulets, Tunic, Gloves, Leggings, and Boots. Minor runes allow a two-set bonus, so get 3 pairs of runes of your choosing. Hopefully you pick three pairs that complement each other.

My choices for vampirism were all minor runes of Vampirism, The Lich, and Dwayna.

With 2 of each of those set into the slots in my armor, I was able to gain the following:

• +10 power
• +2% lifesteal on hit
• +10 Vitality
• +10% condition duration
• +10 healing
• +10% regeneration duration

These bonuses are very much worth the 9 silver i paid for them in total. Take a look at the wiki link referenced in bold above to help research and choose which ones you need.

Healing yourself and why it is so important
By the time you hit level 35 and hit your first dungeon (The Ascalonian Catacombs) You will probably realize that you are dying quite a bit and that perhaps running headfirst into things isn’t the best for your current life insurance plan. Being able to kill things quickly is great and all, but not being alive to do so is a shame. The way this new non-trinity system works is that everyone has to contribute some level of healing, DPS, and damage-mitigation. Don’t let yourself fall victim to old-MMO habits of “he has aggro, let me nuke it now. buttonmash”

Make sure your character can handle any position! As a healing-centered player I would brazenly suggest picking up the Signet of Undeath skill to help out at the time you hit your first dungeon. Figuring out when to dodge, heal yourself, revive allies, and “bubble up” is just as important as knowing when to strike. plan your traits, skills, and healing ability accordingly.

Utility Skills
Much of what I’ll put in this section has to do with your own personal freedom of choice and whatever tickles your fancy. Utilities are all useful in their own way and in my mind they mostly change your pace of attacking. No, you cannot reset skill points. You can, though, get more than enough skill points in the game and unlock all of them. Instead of screwing up your selection and then regretting it, though, I would recommend you go visit the Mists through the PvP tab in your Hero window. It will allow you to play around with a level 80 version of your character with everything unlocked. Take advantage of this mechanic!

Weapon Skills of your Choosing
Each type of weapon has a combination of effects designed to make the player (you) attack and defend in a certain way. Take a look at the skill effects and choose which ones utilize your attribute scores, your traits, and to cover your weaknesses.

Example: In the given Vampiric build, I use a combination of Dagger+Focus and Staff. Why did I choose this?
Here are the following benefits from using the Dagger+Focus:

• Siphoning Health (Healing)
• DPS (Skill 1.)
• Ranged Immobilizing Skill

• Ranged Bouncing Regeneration/Bouncing Bleed
• Ranged Chill(Kiting/dodging tool)

Scenario: Immobilize fleeing mob, close gap, and start auto-DPS. Apply chill, dodge backwards to maintain health, siphon health back to full. Repeat between Siphoning and utilities (such as wells/signets/minions) and swapping to alternative weapon while on cooldown.

This sort of gameplay allows the player to maintain health, apply consistent DPS, and control their selected mob with chills and dodging placement.

Here are the following benefits from the Staff:

• 4 out of 5 are AoE attacks, auto attack is ranged/kite-friendly
• Bleed+Regen<<crucial skill!
• AoE chill
• AoE Self-condition Transferral <<second crucial skill later on in levels!
• AoE Fear

Scenario: Chill, auto attack, kite backwards, bleed+regen to apply DoT and healing, fear, drop wells, finish with conditions/high damage skill.

In tandem, using these two weapons for myself has proven to be great because their cool-downs are in tune with each other. I tend to run through my dagger skills, and when my health hits 65-70% I swap to staff, bleed and regen, drop all the AoE skills, and swap back to dagger for Ranged Regen skill+Siphon again. wash, rinse, repeat. I always have a skill regenerating my health active. That is my focus.

The Four Ability Scores: Power, Precision, Toughness, Vitality.
Each attribute compliments a certain part of playing your character. It’s not all about numbers! These four attributes will change how you play your Necromancer.
Power: Increases Attack
Precision: Increases Critical Hit Chance
Toughness: Increases Defense
Vitality: Increases maximum health

Keep in mind that gear begins with single attribute bonuses, and then progresses with two attribute bonuses per piece of equipment. Properly planning which four of these attributes you wish to focus on will effect which traits you should pick to utilize those numbers.

Take a look at the Necromancer Trait List.

For example, if you were to choose to focus on Power and Precision, you would most benefit from the Curses and Spite tree for the +Power, +Precision, +Condition Damage, and +Condition Duration. You would most like then build your Skill slot utilities and weapon choices with many Condition-heavy skills such as Bleed skills found in the Staff toolset, combined with slotted Signets/Wells. Going full damage is never really recommended in this game, though, because everyone has to be able to heal themselves, deal damage, and take damage without being unbalanced.

A key combination that majority of players will agree on is a good balance between Toughness, Power, and Vitality. Precision gear is hard to find or craft without kittening other attributes early on, and on top of that, the Necromancer does not benefit so much from critical hits as much as other professions do. At the end of this guide, I will post my Vampiric Power/Healing Power build to help clarify what this balance can look like. Remember, there are many ways to build a Necromancer, but no way is the best way. Build to your strengths in a way that covers your weaknesses.

Hello! So you picked up the Necromancer. Maybe you had the idea that by creating a Necromancer, you would become a minion-spawning, death seeping, ghoulish baddie of evil, am I correct? Well, good thing is, those are all true things of Guild Wars 2’s Necromancer.

While you play through your first 15 levels on your own, you might discover yourself re-setting your trait points often, trying to find a good build for your specific playstyle and needs. This is completely normal. The problem few run into though, is the crippled “I haven’t figured out how to work my utilities and weapon skills” issue.

The part about playing a necromancer that might frustrate many new players is the adaptation to the new non-trinity mmo structure. How to balance your death dealing superstar between Damage, Survivability, and Support? The key is the unique 4-ability score standard: Power, Precision, Toughness, and Vitality.

How does one adapt to the new non-trinity structure? by using all parts in compliment to each other: the 4-ability system, weapon skills, weapon swapping (available from level 7), utility skills, healing capability, gear, runes/sigils/gems, supportive crafting, traits, and combat boons and conditions; All must be combined together to form the magnum opus of your MMO career within Guild Wars 2.

-TOC-

• The Four Ability Scores: Power, Precision, Toughness, Vitality
• Weapon Skills of your choosing
• Utility Skills
• Healing yourself and why it is so important
• Gear selection, upgrades, and Crafting
• Trait selection, Conditions, Boons, and how you play