Guild Wars 2

look at this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAoY3djEat69ama07JAZGRT9MjuBnSh7oD-jkyAY/BRTZgJRgEBIqAQyrIasNiioxqrxUuER127ioVLFQEDjA-w

and the more minion reliant alternative:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAoY3djEat69ama0bKCJFRjaTK6G4gU8epRVwdA-jkyAY/BRTZgJRgEBIqAQyrIasNiioxqrxUuER127ioVLFQEDjA-w

Actually, now that I think about it.. only need 10 in Soul tree.

zerk+emerald slotting gets you to roughly 50%/50% on both crit chance and crit damage.

20/0/20/20/10

Vampy siphon MM with path to midnight and might stacking from LB.

Stx.4857:

I would never choose clerics over soldiers or knights, healing power as a stat just does not provide a point for point benefit compared to precision, power, toughness, or even vitality IMO. The scaling on HP is just too low.

This.

Healing power is most definitely a wasted stat on any gear, it simply has not been tied in very well with our skills.

From playing SE, CoE, and some WvW yesterday… conditions are simply not cutting it for viability these days. Gone are the days of just pumping massive condition duration and condition damage and dropping BiP, MoB, Enf x2 from DS and Critting like mad to keep the stacks maintained.

People are cleansing like crazy now. They even released runes specifically designed to combat necromancers and conditions. Is it time to push the power based necro?

And while people think “oh god, power based necros.. why not grab a warrior or thief?”
Really consider the DS mechanic for a second. People who play a tanky toon like I do know how amazing DS is for damage soaking and dealing damage once you get your armor rating high. Just consider it.

Crit chance and Crit damage% have always been the keys to amplifying DS damage through the roof.

Might stacking has always been a reliable way to amplify damage, this is most apparent with axe based builds.

DS still retains life force when getting hit with high armor rating.

Minions have been getting somewhat subtle buffs lately. What better way to give a zerker geared toon armor than to roll with minions and drop points into the death tree? We’ve seen the spite tree lose its glamour over the months.. time to reroll those traits?

Seriously— with golem, bone fiend, shadow, and wurm… you’re looking at at least a 2k DPS static advantage from them while they’re all alive. And they’re not that squishy anymore. Given that in WvW people don’t try to kill your minions in duels and in dungeons its all about stacking so they don’t get focused on that much anyways…

Is the time for the MM returning?

Okay guys… just spent all of yesterday catching up with the changes in the last 6 months.
I woke up this morning and had a few moments in my head trying to conjure up a build that would still work after all these odd nerfs and buffs.

PvP aside since its a whole different beast and meta..

Has anyone tried rolling up a zerk/knight based Minion master?

Okay, consider roughly a 0/0/30/x/30 build. You yourself would play mostly damage out of death shroud, while minions stack in additional physical DPS. When you pop out of DS, you have their secondary abilities to choose from. In my ideal bar setup, I’d roll with golem, shadow, and bone fiend at least. third slot is a mystery so far for me.

Max armor from minions and death points, boon duration% means you can also pick up retaliation to compliment your defense. Can either go knights+ruby slotted or Zerker+Emerald slotted. I’d pick zerk+emerald because that gives you just enough armor to be around the 2.1k mark to gain EHP and with dark armor slotted in the death tree, you could potentially be a good duelist with a d/d + a/f setup.

If you think about it… enter with death shroud, pop torment and fear, exit and blind opponent, golem ram stun.. immobilize blind and chill trifecta from dag ->axe swap… DS would be regened long before then and just autodump damage from life blast. If you put BiP into that 3rd bar slot and roll with some strength sigils and perhaps grab some of that might stacking from spite tree.. you could be a pretty hard target to take down even with a zerky setup. (with the ideal sigils and 10 points in spite, getting 13-16 might stacks when prepping for LB autodumping is really fantasti DPS… 4-6k per hit easily.)

yeah. slot rubies in your gear, go balls to the walls and go 30/20/0/0/20 straight d/w + staff and be reckless.

Celestial is reserved for the rich gods of necromancy who know how to change their fighting tactics mid fight despite skill rotations and build beliefs.

Tread lightly, all whom trespass in the realm of Celestial builders beware.

Amazing thread. My name is Sheobix, and I approve this message.

Try looking at http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIRdG2IjWne8m2G9miQqQzgK8+IFFbZUPKH6OHA

Just better trait selections, why cast enfeebling blood on entering DS if your condition damage and duration isn’t pumped very much?

Squeeze the extra power out of your DS and get tankier with your weapon selection. Both axe and dagger have a channel skill, and Dark Armor will keep you alive when those pro warriors and thieves try to HS and charge/leap at you.

with a mix a knights and soldiers, I’d be slotting straight rubies I assume. Your head is in the right place, maximizing the use of those might stacks from swapping weapons.

Proc’ing boons from natural gameplay is a good mark on this build.

Keeping that static power really high is important, as is bringing up your damage curve with crit chance %. DS benefits from this the most.

My opinion though, about the blood tree… Its very very lackluster given that Anet has nerfed the traits there into oblivion. You’d be better off grabbing Dark Armor from death10 and some extra power and condition duration from spite10 as well.

if you can work on might stacking with LB, you can turn your DS into more than just a damage soaking tool.

I think its time for me to pay my respects to Nemesis—

He puts an enormous amount of time into providing these resources for new and old players alike, and gives his unbiased input on why his builds work.

I learn things from this guy every time i peek into the forums.

Cheers!

1. Find a rich guy with 200-300 excess gold.
2. Hustle him into giving you said gold.
3. Craft everything imaginable, and break down those things and re-craft them.
4. Get the “Master Crafter” achievement and title
5. Look at your xp bar. You’ve hit 80… 20 levels ago… in 12 hours maximum!

Aphix.9846:

Don’t go PTV gear, it’s pointless and not needed if you use skills properly and know how to position, go zerker/cavalier. I run 90% crit dmg, 41% crit chance without fury, 2.8k power with stacks, 1.6k toughness and 22k hp.
BIG numbers while being very tanky.

A while ago I did research on the effectiveness on going full zerk on a necro build.

If you go full zerk, you exclusively set your playstyle to one or the other, in the case of max physical DPS from ruby gear, you’ll find almost all your success in the folds of a zerg.

Roaming.. heh three auto attacks from any smart WvWer and you’re necro toast. Unless you walk around in DS like a paranoid clutz.

Even if you know how to position yourself, you give yourself a miniscule window of opportunity to react to anything your opponent does. It is just not a smart idea.

And to the OP: Alternatively you can find a good balance with the new Dire gear. It’s all i ever wanted when I used to play, and since Anet finally made it a real thing… you should at least have a set of it in possession.

When gw2 came out, and i got to endgame, first thing i prayed for was C/T/V…

Then long after I leave from the imbalance… they release Dire.

Everyone should be on top of that stuff.

fist weapons. like claws.

From an experienced old fart necro commander who can take ten men and clean a whole BL solo commanding…

Roam play: Full Rabid + S/D or S/F with Staff (gear+ rabid crests on trinks, bleeding% runes or chill% runes) x/30/x/x/5+ [recommend: 20/30/10/x/x for max damage, or 0/30/20/10/10 for pure condition pressure playstyle]

Zerg play: Full PVT (Soldier) gear with D/W + Staff (full soldier crests slotted in everything, all of it) 30/x/20/x/x base template.

roam play you build like a dancer. You pressure and control your opponent with conditions, and can either stack bleeds easily or lock down your opponent with chill rotations. Your choice.

zerg play you build like a tanky bruiser. mazimize power output, always roll with lich in your bar. See a kitten on the field? like a Warrior pwnstar commander running banners and shouts? pop lich, pew pew pew and wellbomb on exit. selective assasination within a large group. make sure to slot the warhorn trait for perma swiftness, as you’ll be running a lot.

Edit: commenting on the post above mine, if you choose to play in the soul tree, you’ll be in death shroud 80% of the time you’re fighting. So instead of slotting soldier crests, slot ruby jewels. You’ll need the power and crit ramp to get those life blasts up in the sky and the AoE siphon to scare the masses.

Draehl.2681:

Warhorn is a great weapon. The only change I would make is in PvE in regards to so many enemies being immune, especially champs. This is a more sweeping change for CC across the board, however.

When they made the change for champs to be immune to interrupts from the skill, a lot of players left that day, i’m pretty sure. That was around the same time my original guild started moving out of GW2.

its more of a gap closer than anything. If they’re running away, you’ve let your conditions clean out of them. keep them locked down if that’s the issue.

dark path is useful if you hit it as you exit DS mode, and you start chaining control conditions like chill and cripple before it lands. I usually do chill, so by the time it lands it extends my chill.

I like this. d/d for dueling and a/w for bubbling up. finally a non-staff build that makes it work. I saw the 0/x/0/x/x format and I had to take a closer look.

Very very defensive. personally in my opinion since you have offhand dagger, i’d drop corrupt boon and slide in either the wurm or the well of corruption. (or even signet of spite for the plethora of conditions.)

+1!

personally, I wish they’d make the swiftness an AoE buff sort of like mes wall, and increase the daze skill to a large AoE cone just like the Mesmer attacks. (if they could even lengthen the daze by an extra second, it would actually be a useful tool.)

They buffed it once before. It’s not really surprising you can catch up with it given you’re completely specced into sprint to the point of nerfdom.

Shush, enough with the semantics. Bringing it back to the topic.

From what I’ve personally experienced and seen in my time (I know, I’m pretty much a legacy player at this point since i just barely keep up with the times) Necromancers have performed the most consistently and well by not focusing on dealing damage so much as controlling their opponent. If any of you have the time to take some quick peeks at gameplay by Ascii and Tokyomurai (to name just a couple of many others) you’ll find their build ideas and playstyle does not revolve around their damage output being at the forefront of their mind.

When they focus on keeping chill, weakness, cripple, and bleed applied… Their damage adds up quickly as the small numbers rack up. They kill their opponents not by being so in-your-face and arrogant in their movement, but more as a killer focused on keeping the target in their control. CC’d.

Our CC skills all do damage. poison, chill, bleeding all around. Weakness, cripple, and fumble make it exponentially harder for other classes to execute their “escapes” and mobility movements in tandem when they’re loaded down like that. People who play the necromancer as a headhunter more often leave themselves open to attack and escape… which means they’re either ending up dead or simply not killing the target.

Wurm is a great tool. It does fair damage, provides a meager distraction to get players in a certain place for attack (like thieves trying to auto attack your wurm, leaving them un-stealthed and open for a lockdown) and can be placed in some areas that are normally hard to jump to, which can give you either an escape, or a closer. Sure, mes portal can provide large transport for other players… but give the wurm to the right hands, and it can do so much more.

I’ll never advocate for the necro as being perfect. It is far from it. In many ways, it performs less than sub-par in comparison to other classes. But the necro class itself is a very good and effective tool if given to a really good player. I think it takes a higher curve to master, and when it is mastered it can do a lot more than what most mediocre players can accomplish on their own QQ OP classes.

When dhuumfire and tainted shackles came out, I saw it as a weak attempt to fix the problem I brought up in my last post.

dhuumfire is a nice way to increase the static damage output by tying additional proc’ing condition based damage to your power based damage. This helps us apply conditions without actively trying to, pressuring our opponent and theoretically makes them want to cleanse their conditions too early.

I saw TS as a cheap patch to the issue of this OP, which is to combat mobility by punishing the opponent with condition damage based on how much they move. Too bad we only have a single skill that gives us access to this type of condition, which does not do anywhere near enough damage to take down the target, nor is it always available due to the cooldown. You just can’t fix the problem of there being no system of condition damage mitigation by making one single condition attack being un-mitigatable.

So there, just two cents to get the gears in everyone’s heads turning. ArenaNet introduced those two things in my opinion to try to help combat the current issue, but only to avoid re-working the condition application and removal system (as they probably should, despite how complicated that work will be and how much time it would take).

I don’t want to simply call ArenaNet lazy, but their avoidance of reworking the conditions system is understandable. dhuumfire and conditions like TS are just simple quick-fixes. Or smaller band-aids to a bigger wound.

Hello guys

Necromancer mobility is not hindered by a lack of escapes or the current methods of movement being lackluster as most of you would like to believe. It is easy to blame ArenaNet and their design methods and the “overpowered” nature of other classes in relevance to the Necro.

Keep in mind that your outcome of a fight depends on which 10 meager skills have made it into your hotbar. We’ve been given a lot of strong tools in our toolbox and asking for changes to them or even asking for additional ones will not help us, but leave us with the same problem and only waste human resources that would have been used to satisfy a small percentage of the general population seeking some sort of solution.

Take for example the situation that they change our skills and give us similar chainable abilities that allow us to “hop hop hop” out of a fight. What stops your opponent from executing the same moves and keeping up with you? Nothing. Most of what we experience in gameplay is mobility that is inherent in other classes main abilities tied to their weapons. These have shorter cooldowns and are more frequently used than any sidebar ability put on cooldown.

While its easy to see this as a class weakness for the Necromancer, I would challenge these thread participants to think of how else to combat mobility of the opponent.

We have access to a lot of hindering conditions such as chill, cripple, bleed, and even weakness. If you can’t manage to keep a steady roll of those conditions on them (particularly chill and cripple in this case) then there is another problem.

The problem isn’t that we lack mobility. The problem resides in another place, the condition application and removal system of the game. opponent classes have unfair skills that either Stealth+remove conditions, Fullheal+Remove conditions, Clone+Remove conditions, and so on so forth. Think about that.

This game lacks a vital mechanic that lived in every MMO before GW2. Spell resistance. There is no level of condition damage mitigation or management.

Just like Defense+Armor mitigates physical damage as it is incoming.. What is there to properly stop magical damage from incoming? In this game, the logic is that apparently as a Necro you can stack over 50,000 points of bleeding damage on your target within 12 seconds, and instantly afterwards, your target can get rid of it as if nothing happened.

So getting it straight.. you can cover someone in lacerations and puncture all of their internal organs magically, yet they can undo all of that damage by shouting, going invisible, or pounding the ground and healing themselves.

There is no proper way of handling conditions in GW2, which is why I ultimately stopped playing and only peek in to see what got updated. Damage and crowd control is all dealt by conditions for the run-of-the-mill Necro, and since it can all be dismissed, trying to perform conventionally as a power-based character is less satisfying or efficient when looking at our abilities.

There have been two sides of this argument. One side saying we’re fine, we don’t need mobility because we’re an attrition class. True, if we performed as designed at first impressions. And two, that we lack mobility and we can’t keep up with everyone else. This is also incorrect since if our skills actually had sticking power, and if our tools given to us actually performed as they were supposed to, we wouldn’t need to mobilize… our opponents would need to. We’d be crippling and chilling them left and right with ease just as they have the ease of charging, leaping, and teleporting around— thus bringing balance. But our attrition and condition application is rendered null by the inherent system introduced in this game.

Power sticks. Conditions do not. Fix this, and you’ll see that we actually don’t need mobility. But right now it seems like we do because we can’t control our opponent as our class is supposed to be able to.

Dhuumfire is really great. burn is so good because its a fast condition, it hits hard and finishes fast.

I think scept/dag + staff is fine. DS these days is really good. The fixes to LF generation and the addition of DS5 is fantastic.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

I use a variation of this build that subtracts some trait points from the first two for extra toughness in death magic.

Its definitely a strong build, both of them are, just one has more damage output and the other probably takes less damage. Gear stats though are the same for my build. My build currently is 20/25/25/0/0 but after looking at a trait in curses, I might make it 20/30/20/0/0 for Lingering Curse(I use scepter obv. lol). I’m considering it at least lol.

Lingering Curse is one of those traits you pick for DPS optimization. When you’re sitting on a tower wall or skirting off a Melee opponent, just focusing on stacking autoattack bleeds and poison can really help you build pressure on them until they make a mistake. I do this to guardians, because most necros open with their major bleeds, which guardians and warriors cleanse or shout off. I simply autoattack for a bit, wait to see their debuff bar clear, then drop my BiP and SoS. They instantly panic every time and either try to backpedal or stunlock. I usually have consume ready to go or pop lich to freak em out.

Lucas.9162:

Gonna start out saying that this is a really good build.

Personally though, I can’t imagine running such a condition heavy build without Epidemic. This skill is tried and true for me, and I feel it really increases condition damage significantly. If I was using this build, I swap out one of the signets, then switch between the two as needed.

Also, I’ve never really liked Lingering Curse. I used to run it, then I realized that it only affects Grasping Dead and the Auto-Attack chain, the latter of which I rarely find myself in a position to use. I would probably swap it out for Master of Corruption.

Again, these are just my personal preferences. It’s otherwise a very good build, probably maxing out at about 10k DPS under the best circumstances.

I too swap out locust for epi. When i see opponents i switch it on the run.

daimasei.4091:

Get a zerker gear (PPC) and go 20/0/20/30/0 with all traits related to minions (the key are Blood Magic II and VII).

This allow you to have maximum dmg (not as high as a real cannon glass but very close) with a great survival (way more than any cannon glass).
Also, if you get bored of minions (or they just turn useless in certain situation since minions are useless against anything with a strong AoE) you just need to change your traits for wells/staff for maximum AoE dmg without resetting trait points

Finally, PVT is just good to tank and though the dmg is “decent”, against champs and bosses, you will spend a lot of time if you are at your own.
In WvW, against zergs, is like being in god mode but for solo, is just not the ideal.

So yes, having both should be the best but don’t mix them. that just make all the secondary stats somehow useless IMO.

I really like this post. As he says, in a zerg, PVT is godmode. You’ll rarely get killed because you’ll be such a dense target. But anytime you’re trying to do things alone, it will be slow.

20 pts. in Death and investing in a lot of the blood tree for supporting features may be a good mix with zerker gear and MM utilities. That way you can go full vampiric spec, omnom foodbuff for more vamping, benefit from the crit on zerk gear.. and have large staff AoE and minion traits. 20Death 30Blood may be a bit much, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the blood line…

either zerker or soldier gear works fine with mm. but as HiSaZul states, axe would be better overall dps. This is because closing in the gaps to connect your hits with necro is incredibly difficult compared with the mobility from other classes. axe lets you… “duel” with opponents.

PTV is only good if you focus on carrying BiP and SoS around to keep your static power up to do good damage. Then you can pop lich for omgwtfzor faceroll damage.

since it seems you’re more interested in WvW i’d recommend the set inbetween zerk and soldier. Knights. You can increase your DPS curve through critical hit and still gain toughness and keep a decent power base. Although I don’t see many knights players these days, its more of a default easy-button choice for those players who aren’t into complicated playstyle. You get ++Toughness/Power/Crit so you can pretty much throw your trait points into any line and still play well enough.

It really does boil down to what you want… personal damage? zerker. You’ll be squishy though, but the high risk gives high reward.

PTV is pretty relentless when you go dagger/x because autoattacking in it just fills your LF bar in seconds… it makes your HP go a long way. 1v1 you’ll always win, 2v2 will be challenging but most of the time you’ll win.. versus underleveled players or inexperienced.. you could play 1v4 or 2v6 and win easily with good self control over your utility usage. But its slooooow. And the damage is situational. If you’ve got might, or you pop Lich, it’s easycake. But when you’re left to your own devices, nada. you’ll be whittling your opponent down. Especially vs. regen guardians.

I remember in the early days as I first got my gear for necro.. i had full zerker gear and I had barrels of fun because you’ll feel like a d/wh or axe/x paper shredder. Everything just melts away. But as soon as someone even dares to look at you, you’ll get smushed. Pretty much how any zerk build goes.

I would simply consider hybrid builds or conditions solely on the most recent updates to necro. I personally hold a zerk set, soldier set, and rabid set in my bank for whatever the meta is at the moment with our class.

ninao.1208:

no i actualy play my necro in wvw and im at lvl 209 so… i just think ur build dosent fit my play style. im not forced to like it… sory. it dosent have stun breaks, and it dosent have plague that i love to keep enemyes blinded. keep in mind that im not saying that is a bad build

you are aware you can slot out locust sig for s.walk and you can also use consume conditions or your ult? besides, its not like you can’t simply slot in plague form instead of lich. rofl

And by level 209.. I assume you mean you’ve already hit 80 and you have a measly 129 skill points left over. It’s not impressing anyone really.

Never said you had to like it, I just think what you claim against the build is incorrect and unsupported.

for the OP, the build you linked is a great fail, the person who made it didn’t understand what they were trying to achieve. The terror traits are useless unless you have a specific rune setup (its like, 2 of 3 different types of runes to boost condition duration) and you need rare veggie pizza running 24/7 to get the second tick of fear damage.. and even then it’s mediocre.

Curious as to what you’re trying to do.

Bhawb hit the mark on his comment.

Power necros are good if you have a defense, i.e a team to cover you. Otherwise, you’ll get CC’d, leap finished, and burned and kited all over the place. To deal damage, you have to connect your hits. We’re known for our sucky mobility so it’s not our strong suited playstyle.

Conditions are good, a little slow to fully run its course, and hybrids (if you find the right flush of gear and trait points) can be ultimately enjoyable. Hybrids can either be built for maximum DPS, or sustained mediocre damage depending on how badly you wish to live from fight to fight.

ninao.1208:

Sheobix.8796:

ninao.1208:

believe me, in hardcore fights it not enough armor…
and when i said “zerg fights” I was talking 20+ vs 20+

You do realize that this is essentially the highest toughness you’re going to get other than rolling in full Knights gear, right? Every bit of rabid gear gives +Toughness.

So i have very little to say about your claim that it can’t survive in 20v20 zerg fights. It does just fine, if not really well.

edit: 20v20 isn’t a zerg fight btw. 40v40 is a zerg fight.

…

Just to bring up another point, took a quick look at your cumulative posts on your profile. You’re pretty bum out on the necro class, and i believe you even stated you were giving up on it. So I’m not sure why you’re trying to critique a build you’ve never played nor are you seemingly ever going to try. If you’re going to troll the forums just to throw negative feedback on the possibilities of this build, might not even bother to reply.

Just saying.

To let players know, when you’re flying around with 13 stacks of might, you can throw down about 52k bleed, 7k poison, and god knows how much burning from the dhuumfire proc. That’s a heavy condition blanket. (BiP, SoS, Mark2, Scepter2, Dag5, DS-Proc)

ninao.1208:

believe me, in hardcore fights it not enough armor…
and when i said “zerg fights” I was talking 20+ vs 20+

You do realize that this is essentially the highest toughness you’re going to get other than rolling in full Knights gear, right? Every bit of rabid gear gives +Toughness.

So i have very little to say about your claim that it can’t survive in 20v20 zerg fights. It does just fine, if not really well.

edit: 20v20 isn’t a zerg fight btw. 40v40 is a zerg fight.

As a MM, the only thing you would need to focus on is stacking some source of toughness. power does not modify your minion’s damage, so it doesn’t matter how high you stack it.

usually I see successful MM’s roll with rabid or carrion, simply because high health or toughness combined with condition damage and precision allows for the necro to attack from afar, and let the minions take the beating.

power precision condition gear i’m assuming.. or rampagers..

It changes how you play completely. Rampagers gear is more hybrid or crit-condition focused gameplay. PTV (soldiers) on the other hand, is all power based.

If you want D/D necro with rampagers gear, your survivability will not come in the form of vitality or toughness whatsoever, and is generally bad for dungeon running. What you can do though is build with points in the blood line and focus on vampiric buildstyle with the help of vampiric foodbuffs.

That way you can regen about 3k-4k hp every time you use dagger2.

Rampager gear is hard to rock, but its also the stat combo that yields the highest DPS potential in game.

actually, it has ~2600 armor with reliable DS generation. I’ve ran through groups of 4-5 for long periods of time without dying. Necromancers are quite resilient in nature with high toughness.

Where can I get the gear?
Rabid gear comes in the most readily available sources:
Khilbron’s Gear
Mystic Wand (Scepter)
Bramblethorne (Staff)
Malefacterym (Dagger)
Book of Rabid Deeds (Back)
Colossus Fang (Neck)
Plague (Ring x2)
Tortured Root (Earring x2)

Ascended items are chosen by the player. With the new laurel system, it’s easier to pick and choose.

Hello GW2 Community, Sheobix here. former commander of KAIN, BBT, and newest commander to BCN (Eredon Terrace lols) You may remember me from December 2012, when I took a break off from GW2 to pursue military endeavors.

I’m back again to recap the most popular and recent changes with a new hot-button build that all people can love in Dungeons, WvW, and again, flexible for sPvP.

First, I’d like to recap on the now obsolete Juggermancer build from pre-sunshore update times.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Juggermancer-Final-Blog-Link/first
Juggermancer Link
The classic PTV tanky power based necro with situational burst through crit enhancement from Lich Form. High HP, super high Armor, with traits that can be swapped out per-playstyle.
Because of the recent updates to traits, the addition of torment, and the slight adjustments to utilities, its back to the drawing board.

I bring you the Voidhunter.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMap7FbKbM8JEpC8C0jdBXAxoHEzxkMA-jgxA8ghImDLiGbPoIasaGMVKRUtPoIa1CBsYNA-e

30/30/10/0/0
Full Exotic Rabid Gear, including trinkets.
All slotted with Crest of the Rabid.

Major Trait highlights:

Dhuumfire – Burning on crit. This triggers every time it comes off cd, and since you’re 30/30 with max rabid, you’re doing the maximum amount of damage with your burns w/o the help of rune set bonuses.

Chill of Death – Spinal shivers proc on enemy low hp is essential for solving the problem with necros lacking a leap based gap closer. As your opponent runs, you can pop DS4/5 and trail his life away.

Signet Mastery – Signet of Spite (SoS) is an incredible tool for the condition necromancer. It is hard to explain, but it bridges power<->condition mancers much like BiP does. using this trait not only adds might stacks to the rotation, but applying many conditions instantly not only amplifies damage through Curses25(Target the weak) but you can fight OTHER necromancers and consume these same conditions if the opposing necro decides to pass them back to you. SoS causes around 5k+ condition damage in the form of poison and bleeds, as well as cripples, blinds, and weakens the target. Zerker opponent? No more. open with SoS and unleash your Might-based burst. (SoS>Bip>Lich = 5s kill against tanks and zerks)

Lingering Curse – 33% condition duration from scepter. necessity.

Weakening Shroud hitting Dag5 and popping DS = double the enfeeble. defend in close quarters fights with this, it will build pressure on your opponent.

Hemophilia – bleed duration. self explanatory.

Spiteful Vigor – Same mentality behind retaliation, having retal on heal+DS means you’re doing more damage without having to think about it. This trait slot is swappable for Dark Armor, Staff Mastery.

Minor Trait Highlights:

Target the Weak The clinch of this build, TTW amps your damage depending on how many conditions you have on your opponent. popping SoS not only adds might to you on use from the Spite line, but you get additional non-typed amplification from this minor trait. You’ll feel it when you’re hitting consistent crits of 1.3k-2k on DS1 just by rolling in with Bip+SoS.

Furious Demise – Fury, adds to your crit chance. ’nuff said.

Barbed Precision This one is incredibly important when you stack in precision for high crit rate, having a static 50% crit chance with this build is essential for making sure every attack has a chance of bleeding the opponent.

Other minor traits are negligible.

Why does this build work? why does it use both condition damage and power without having any gear for power?

Although this build does not showcase any power in its gear loadout, it uses power to a substantial point. 30/30/10 builds have been around for a while— being known as the “glasscannon” necro builds, made popular by s/tpvpers like Tokyomurai and Powerr.

BiP might, SoS traited might, Lich form critbump and high ability power ratios (Lich1 hits hard.. no matter what), and the 300 power from full spite ramps up the necro’s power level to a high-mediocre level. In fact, with 13 stacks of might, it’s at a slightly higher level than the Juggermancer w/o any might.
By using your situational might and the lich ultimate ability, you can deal very high amounts of power based damage, assisted by your high crit chance. Precision is the bridge between the condition world and the power world. Make sure you keep it when you’re tweaking this build!

footnote This build is a community driven build much like the Juggermancer. Please feel free to post input, insight, comments, and information below. The post is subject to change and updates as deemed necessary.

on another note, try looking up nemesis’ old hybrid critmancer build. he pushed full power+cond and crit to take down targets in seconds.

your build spread is good. 0/30/20/20/0 is standard for a solid condition based necro. but since you helpfully specified SMALL GROUPS and roaming, I’d recommend you grab some rampager gear and slip some of those death magic points into spite magic tree and try out d/d or s/d gameplay w/ vampiric buffs running. (trading toughness for access to regeneration through siphoning/vamping with increase to crits, splashing in power and maximizing bleeds.

ArcticRed.3068:

timidobserver.7925:

Yeh I can see where playing a thief would dull your skills lol.

Well a Necro ain’t a roaming class, and if there are like 4-5 ppl on each map doing their own thing you can either quite the game or re-roll, i re-rolled.

Anyhoo, i was asking for advise, not a debate on how hard it was to play a thief.
:D

i disagree. a Necro is a fantastic roaming class, given that is can dispell/manage conditions very well. combined with perma swiftness and access to an ablative 2nd HP bar through LF… necros are fantastic roamers. Especially vs. smaller groups or 1v1.

tbh the whole new game design adopted in GW2 kind of screwed the thematic design of classes since they wanted a more slim down bar UI and combat system.
The trait system is extremely shallow in my opinion, which lends to the fact that players don’t feel like they’re making a big difference in progression with their character unless they get uber gear.

in the end, yes… the necro isn’t really necro-y. in fact, our well of suffering animation has hearts and puzzle pieces in it. like, really? wow.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Lala, the problem with boon removal is that alot of classes, namely Ele, Guardian, Ranger, and Engineer can all reapply them as fast as they lost them. Ranger even has strong passive Regen, which can get even stronger with certain runes.

3 months ago before i took a hiatus, I think I touched on this manner on how some boons are so easy to re-stack that boon stripping has a low viability for a center toolset on the condition necro, and the only way to win is to overstack conditions on your target.

we have the same problems with regen/tank/crit guardians. its an unending battle.

Bweaty.9187:

Minions have the advantage of not being affected by gear. So you can ware tuf & vit on gear and it wont affect there damage. Or ware power/pre/crit dam & it wont affect there life/mitigation.

….

As Bweaty says, minions are not affected by stats whatsoever. So you could essentially build any favorite flavor of necromancer and use as many minions in your hotbar as you wish and consider yourself a “minion master”.

If you’re worried about balance in dungeons, I would be tasteful in my choice of how many points i flush into death/blood tree to accommodate the minions.

But it’s viable, and it’s useful.

vamp builds are extremely easy to formulate, and works well with either rampagers or knights set. you pretty much have the bearings on what makes the proper vamp build, it just depends on how you plan on killing your opponents in wvw. These days, its very hard to play a power necro without faceplanting a move when you come up against another veteran player.

ramble ramble ramble

this looks like a confused build to be using knights. you’re spreading yourself thin over your trait tree.

so your UPs are:
+power
+vitality
+crit damage

and your gear ups are:
+tough
+power
+precision

the only problem is with those two varying stat combos is that you’re going to achieve extremely low-mediocre ability scores, and your damage and defense will be lackluster compared to everyone else. I see a few gimmick traits in there like SRVI and SpiteII, which can be traited differently.

axe/focus necros take a lot of time to kill things because the damage on axe main is weak, and the focus synergizes with it only to produce vuln stacks and light regen.

your sources of LF are slim, and close to death>axe master

hmm… no staff is just sad, the utility in the staff is invaluable. BiP is best used by DPS hybrids or crit based conditionmancers that use fury/high prec to powerburst when needed. Swalk is getting old now, speed is becoming more of a risk factor in PvP and Swall/Sarmor are getting more popular and useful. Signet of the locust is a waste of a slot unless you’re hot swapping it just to run. otherwise, use corrupt boon, well of darkness, or well of corruption.

You’ll want lich as your ult and tbh blood tree is useless nowadays without investment in toughness or healing power. (most optimal vampiric play for self-healing is to max out on food buffs, crit proc sigils for leeching, and to grab the crit trait combined with 50% efficiency trait.)

the average health gain from investing in the blood tree is about 15-25 points at most if someone fancies something in there, so only roughly a 1500-2500 hp gain from the ability bonuses. you could stack toughness instead, and run with lower hp and put those points in places that could utilize more toughness on your character.

players should invest in vitality until they reach a comfortable max HP. my sweet spot in about ~19-22k HP with the rest of my resources put in toughness for defensive abilities.

also, I just like to name builds for fun when i post them :P helps to make them memorable.

And yes, its for hot join pvp.

side note, this build is more of an insect repellant to thieves. popping SA to absorb their burst chains between their first fade and second BS chain upon reopening in pvp is really the killer. usually thieves don’t get players down in the first C+D>BS>HS combos anymore if your build is balanced out stat wise, and when you can hold them up on their second re-entry to try to do it again with recovered initiative, you can usually just pop DS and finish their health bar to a point where most smart players just back off and run in stealth because they realize its not worth it to die just to risk a third engagement.

if you’re lucky and see them unstealth when they run, just land a staff3+4 on them and pee on their corpse.

Panhauramix.2784:

I don’t see anywhere where he talks about burst. If you know the guy, he prefers a substain damage playstyle with high power build, not crit oriented. He made lots of testing for the community with his Juggermancer build, so I trust he knows what he is missing by not picking Furious Demise. Just look at his utilities, this build seems more to annoy than destroy the opposition in 3 crits.

By the way, welcome back Sheobix, hope you’re not too rusty

I have some rust to bust, but this build avoids picking up furious demise because for burst you can open with lich form with a knockdown and cast horrors + spam claws. Once they get low, you either take them down by sheer power stacked damage, or you end up forcing them to expend their mobility toolset or defensive maneuvers.. Because we all know players bubble and smack 6 while running for the nearest bit of terrain to jump around. That’s where marks come in and switching to the main set while using spectral utilities to generate LF rapidly while running dag1 for LF. jump into DS, ramp up might quickly (if you swap in might related traits in the tree.. wink wink) and just burn through ds4/1.