Guild Wars 2

Or without any spite, just get master of terror and 2lyssa 2mk with the veg pizza buff. Alternative w/o master of terror is the stuff i list above

hackks.3687:

alright I just checked it again – I know I said I wasn’t interested, but you piqued my curiosity.

Tested on the Golems in HotM with 30 pts in Spite, 4pc Nightmare runes for 10% condition duration, Master of Terror trait (50% fear duration), and only applying a fear (no other conditions applied) I was able to get 2 ticks of terror dmg.

To summarize: 90% condition+fear duration = slightly more than 2 sec of fear duration and DID NOT require a summed 100% duration increase.

This is because the game rounds up float points. The durations for conditions always are modified in quarter of a second intervals, so when it comes to achieving 7.5/8ths of a full 2 second fear, you only need roughly 86% cduration.

Easiest way to get second tick.. 2 lyssa, 2 mad king, rare veg pizza, 20 points in spite. You’ll get it every time.

Right now they are. Unfor you picked the current two most underdog classes and the two most underpowered strategies. Really sorry for you, but there are many aspects of the necro that are fantastic.

The recent nerf to engis really took a toll.

Just to catch you up and save you hours of frustration… minions are the worst in gw2. Leveling with em, fine. Regen and play whack a mole.

Almost all the necros know that minions are garbage for competitive play here, but there are other strengths. Sorry to disappoint you as an early player, but its true. Once you get past level 20, they are more likely to get you killed than to kill something.

A thief with 30/30/x build in total dexked out berserker swag with orbs… p/p haste becomes the nubkiller build. Instant destruction. I have an 80 berserker thief that i only log into to troll with. And spamming cb is just lazy troling fun. Run into zerg, 222222222, profit. Lol.

I remember my first day on gw2. I thought, oh cool! a jagged horror must be some awesome flesh abomination minion with huge jaws and blahblah whatnot. I spent my first five points there. I got a flesh rat. Lets just say that was the first time i ever retraited and ever wanted to spawn a single one again.

When the first impression of a trait results in repulsed disappointment, you know the dev effed up on that one.

Lich form, i spawn an army of rats. Nice.

Seriously, not one guy up on mount arenanet thought it was a crap idea?

Oh god my apologies, just take my arm if anything to keep from facepalming

Very nice breakdown on cond duration rennoko, thats why when i work with power pushed hybrid builds, i try to get the most out of it through cond duration because cdmg is hard to work in and balance.

Yeah, our class mechanic is only a hp buffer with some gimmick skills save for ds4, and theres only so many builds you can run with this class. In my head i can think of 5 viable and unique builds on this class and all suffer from weak blood magic traits not performing well enough to be used, and severe lacks of mobility… namely a charge/leap skill that all other classes have abundances of.

That, and sad state of minions. Other than those three crucial things, the class is good. Condition cleansing is a game wide issue that i do not consider a necro-only problem.

But in all seriousness, mesmers have an insanely powerful toolset that needs balancing.

So, over 7k kills and you claim to have not much experience with wvw. I smell… lie? Also, with 7k kills you would have over 3k badges minimum which could get you a whole blown ptv armor set… yet you also claim to have only few exotic pieces.

My advice wasnt build advice, it was addressing your low WoS numbers and why they were low ticks, which is probably because of lack of gear.

And you think it costs 50g to buy ptv gear? News flash, you cant obtain it with gold.

Why does this feel like a megatroll?

Ramiah.5648:

Are you kidding me? I HATE playing my Mesmer. Sure, it’s really incredibly fun for short bursts in certain battles, but the basic mechanics of the class annoy me to no end. No consistent run speed buff, summons tied to a creature and that wipe as soon as the enemy is down, long recharges on any of our AOE, and a lack of it to begin with. Honestly, Necromancer is a JOY to play when I run one. I level more quickly as I can get to events/hearts faster, I die less because I can hit Death Shroud and either finish off enemies, or run like the screaming banshee I become. I can summon my minions whenever I want, not just when an enemy is around and alive. AOE is fantastic with Marks/Wells.
Oh kitten it, I think I just convinced myself to play a necromancer…
I see what you did there Sheobix, you evil genius.

bwahahaha

necro has its quirks, but it is very fun to play.

SallyStitches.4096:

Hepan.2709:

meh..Good build.

but everytime i see one of these threads it always ends the same…i go into it think oh wow this might be something, then its the same everytime…using some unique, no longer obtainable or end end end game gear…i play WvWvW 95% of my play time, there is not a chance of me obtaining some of the items such as karkas, frac rings and such, so id be really glad if somebody made a build once a while that doesnt involve pointless PvE grind, but that fail from anet for the most part-yes i get WvWvW is suppose to be a gold sink, but when PvE/PvP rewards are so far off….im sorry something is F’d up.

I don’t know what you expect, if you want to be good, you have to put work into it. This isn’t World of Gimmecraft. This build is actually really nice. I made full Rampager’s gear and Chrysocola jewels, only invested about 3g for stuff I didn’t already have. For a full set of each, that’s cheap. Had weapons already from tokens. They aren’t ideal for this build, but they work until I get the ones I want. Even without having all this “end game” he has, I am still doing a ton better then I was. I am destroying stuff in PvE. Have yet to try it in WvW.

another thing, most of the builds that include ascended items do just as well with the standard rampager/etc trinkets used until you can or if you obtain the ascended pieces.

We list them in our builds for those who already have them because once you got them, might as well use them for your builds.

Some others like incentive for an end goal, so its provided as one.

This build works well with its berserker/ramp standard exotics, just like my jugg does just fine with emerald trinkets until you find time to get PTV or ascended stuff.

the overall gain from a full rig of ascended stuff is about eh, maybe +130 max to your desired combination of stats. That’s only going to be about 15% of the total potential effectivity of a real “end gear” build that is finished versus settling for the norm exotics.

Ramiah.5648:

Frankly, I can’t find anything wrong with Necromancer, which is really annoying me because I thought I had finally decided on Mesmer as my main, LOL. It’s such a great profession with so much versatility without the annoying frustration/stress of other professions like Elementalist and Engineer. I can’t think of anything I would want to do in the game I can’t do with a Necromancer, except perhaps combine two fun aspects into one build (I can’t support with wells AND summon stuff like I can with Mesmer).

mesmer is kind of Anet’s special favorite child. They won’t admit it, but there is plenty of evidence to show for it.

most of the GW2 closed beta reveal/demo videos were played and featured the mesmer. It shouldn’t have taken long to realize that they were going to make it the golden class to play.

as for necro animosity, I don’t really sense it except for a handful of haters who tell other people that they suck, their builds suck, and the only thing viable is to play conditions and L2P everything. Only thing we can do is provide supportive information that discredits those kinds of claims and ignore them.

Arianna.7642:

Rennoko.5731:

Truncated that a bit, but I wanted to just draw attention to a the fact that you have a class circle strafing and using two skills, and the occasional utility, and the requires precise timing, practice, and skill to counter; utilizing all or most of our utilities and weapon skills; including those on our swap.

If that does not point to a disparity in the classes, I can’t imagine what would. The read was excellent information for someone who doesn’t play or know the thief class that well however, and I appreciated the information.

This is more or less the issue I have with it as well; It’s like saying, ‘If you play to absolute perfection, have complete mastery of the Profession, and you simply rely on the opponent to kitten something up somewhere in the fight, then you will win.’

I don’t understand that line of thought. How is that even a plausible solution? Should it not be that, ‘If you have complete mastery of the Profession, and play to absolute perfection, you will simply annihilate anyone that stands in your way, unless they play with very similar perfection and mastery.’?

Regardless, that was a nice read. Thanks for the information.

this to me is how necro vs guardian is in sPvP

XiL.4318:

The highest possible damage output you can achieve comes from a hybrid build. Period. In all content the hybrid is superior, if you are focused on damage.

Not a single syllable of the mountains of text matter beyond this. You cannot focus Necro in any single direction without nerfing yourself.

For once, god help me, i have to strongly agree with xil. Hybrid builds are the golden key to the best dps. This is found in curses25, and both grand traits for spite and curses. If you flush both types of damage in a generally balanced manner, you can get enormous dps for very little setup.

There are mant ways to do it so that defense is gained through crit procd vampirism, or ds, or both.

I run every hot build i get my hands on through my holy grail excel sheet, and i can assure you that hybrids rule.

If 1v1 or 1v2 roaming is your gig, a fully decked out rabid gear 0/30/10/10/20 scepter conditionmancer with stacked bleed duration is going to be your best bet. Only downside is it blows just like any other condimancer that suffers from the unbalanced cleansing issues in the game. Recently my guild just found ourselves playing awesomenauts for fun because the balancing in gw2 is total crap and the developers are preoccupied with perfecting the mesmer and producing obnoxious large scale holiday content that disrupts normal gameplay. Wvw is getting boring because no matter what class you play, your build will always be screwed by one other class. The jugg is a solid ptv playground, nem has a crit hybrid that makes axe users proud, and any condition 30curses build with rabid base will do you fine in wvw.

ZeroArmada.9426:

Why is dagger the “worst” melee choice?

its.. not? its like, the best bro.

its.. not? its like, the best bro.it just doesn’t cleave, like every other dagger.

I’ve always loved his playstyle. He is not a selfish player, and doesn’t get held up on wasting time with finishing people when there are others who need his help. although that match was a close cut because the team was being sloppy, he still had that epic +2 revive at the edge of being finished. that probably dictated the 10 point rift that won the game.

He also goes and flat out shows how well this class can run. and run… and run!

he definitely moves well, and knows what he’s doing with his toolset.

At the end of the match, nobody wants to remember a defeat. People have fun when their team wins. I think that’s his ultimate goal and he does it really well. +1 subscriber to him because he knows how to rank on the board without being preoccupied with kills like every other fail pvper.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Reason why is because Karka don’t have a lot of health, but they have extremely high armor. Condition damage ignores armor, so they go down pretty easy to it.

conditions have their nice moments when compared to power.

or… how about just keep applying conditions until they run out of cleanses and then drop your mother load BiP on them and kite?

cleansing is a problem, but honestly.. with no cleansing, conditions would be the norm and the game would be filled with auto-kills.

my only problem is shake it off combined with shrug it off trait. a double-cycle AoE cleanse I think is extremely punishing and should have a lock-out between the utility and the pre-cast trait. Too many warriors running around cycling both every 15 seconds or less.

i love fighting p/d thieves. its like dancing with a ptv build.

what i do is i mentally divide my toolset. one part is the immob/daze/fear/fear or fear/immob/fear/daze combo. while you are interrupting or locking him, do your power dps. be calm and worry about setting up your fields for when he stealths.

a lot of p/d thieves will double evade after stealthing right behind you, a direct 180 degree LoS break move, because they want some range to open up bleeds on their pistols.

near the end of your CC chain, you need to drop2-3 of your marks. chillblains being the one farthest from you. if you can, cast right as he pops out. the trick is to stay calm and learn how that specific thief moves when he stealths. some strafe right out of range behind you to get lucky with a CnD if they’re ballsy or double evade once unstealthed to gain range to re-chain.

lock, dps.
field drop, bubble. those are the two modes you swap between. and whenever you can, throw those bleeds back on him with staff4. anything else, pop a spectral util while he closes in on your with dagger to generate LF to soak bleeds when he’s ranged.

edit: but p/d thieves are definitely challenging to the class, as long as they’re competent. expect a draw, where he leaves with caltrops or evades off an edge or around a corner. in those cases, enjoy the sportsmanship and the fact that he realizes you’re a solid match for him.

he’s using a 30/30/x/x/x tourny build with just the right amount of power/prec/crit/cond-dmg. I really prefer this to tPvP

insanitymatrix.9240:

Lich Form gets a small PBAoE of fear. I mean, seriously? People aren’t gonna stay calm as they’re faced against a giant floating green monster that does a lot of damage.

and then everyone’s camera gets locked onto the lich and say to themselves..

lets get that motherf%$king green kitten.

Leadfoot.9071:

I think one issue I had, and granted I did not try it for very long, was that the uptime on the elite minion was pretty low so his knockdown was not available to me very often. This could very well have been a l2p issue. Therefore, the only immobilize I had left was dagger #3 but the enemy typically had a stun breaker ready for that. So some more tips on faking people out to get the immobilize off may be useful since that seems to be key to getting a well bombing build to work.

I have no problems with burst thieves on my necro as long as I have some life force ready and I see them coming. Popping into DS to absorb their burst is pretty awesome. I can see the blind well working really well too.

another strategy is use lich form, open with knockdown right after they try to open a burst move. unleash your DPS as much as you feel is useful, drop the poison boon field, un-lich and perform a immob/daze well bomb move. it will take them down a little more reliably.

getting them to expend their toolset before you go for the well bomb increases the chance of success.

You, my friend, have just won the prize for figuring out how to make our cleaving weapon. Why did nobody think of this before?

when we kite, we’re so slow that the target is always nipping our bum.. why not make it a melee cleave scythe?

you’re genius.

I’ve been running the latest builds in the community through my head, the calculator, dungeons, and WvW tests lately and I’ve found Nemesis’ latest hybrid crit build to be far superior to the Feral Shadowmancer permutated build due to its ability to defend through vampiric traiting and precision procs. It will also feature some of the best DPS available to the necro which will greatly satisfy many and it uses the tried and true 30/30 formula in the traits.

please take a visit over to Nemesis’ thread to learn about the strengths of “the best defense is a good offense” : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-ultimate-necromancer-dmg-hybrid-tutorial/first#post1121466

while it lacks toughness, it really does accomplish the DPS better than what you will get from using the PTV base with Minor/Major stacked precision and thin traits found in this thread. I highly recommend it.

Idk, I like the juggermancer because its such a simple build.

It’s nothing special. No bells and whistles, just pure, flexible, tanky goodness that lets you have fun playing the game. with a tad tweaking it can go from tpvp to PvE to dungeons to wvw and you name it.

i was lazy and slapped together a vid so you can see the output of the build, just sitting, face tanking and dropping WoS w/ a spite sig and BiP

http://youtu.be/ZyE1aWgaFDE

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Tuluum.9638:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I’m not running a power build so my numbers won’t look the same as you, but my WoS is running ~(5x) 2180

I’m focused more on surviability and conditions with some direct damage/high crits added in.

Ignore the skill bar, I was just messing around with things, that’s not my actual build, but the stats are my unbuffed stats.

Thank you so very much Are you seeing WoS hitting for ~440 a tick on non crits?

Yeah between 380-460 or so for non-crits and that’s with 0 power in my traits. (that’s on the test golems though which is using my pvp gear so my stats are a tad higher than pve, but there shouldn’t be a drastic difference). Crits were in the 600’s.

if people actually properly geared themselves, you’d have way more stats than PvP gear. Settling for rares will nearly guarantee failure in WvW if that’s what people are wondering.

okay, ill try to address some issues you’re running into here.

you say you have PTV gear and “some healing power in my accessories”

you do know that accessories are over half of your total gear stat bonus source?

if you don’t have a power major bonus in your accessories, its going to hit like a limp noodle.

secondly, WvW is a game of who is geared and who is not mashed up with who is level 80 and who is not. scaling is a big issue out in the BLs and if you’re letting yourself suffice with only the “conjurer” cheap crap lv80 Rares in the Trading Post like some do, you’re going to get hit in the face by a mosquito and die.

PTV is most useful when used as an armor base with a Death Shroud implemented build. From the information you provided, I’m imagining some guy picking up 5g worth of Conjurer’s X of the Soldier gear, slapping it on, ignoring the soldier crests, letting yourself roll around with sapphire trinkets, and excpecting a 20/0/20/20/x build to make the magic happen from converting from a minion master bunker easybutton build. (that’s what i glean from a 0/0/30/x/x trait spread you noted, nobody gets 30 points in death unless they’re running a bar full of dummies)

Minions do not deal damage based off of power or condition damage. they deal the same exact damage depending on your level. In some ways, you can argue it’s an easy way to play with an automated 1.5k DPS. When you switch from a build that allows you to spam regeneration and siphoning to a build that demands a much more in-your-face connect the hits type of gameplay, you have to be much more practiced to see more of your numbers pop on the screen.

While the numbers you are reporting are extremely low, They only get better to a certain extent. This class requires a lot of button pressing to work.

The first thing i’d do is ditch the axe. It actually does have a lower DPS curve than the scepter (but is a misnomer because scepter damage is a split ratio through power+cdmg).

Run with a dagger, find yourself at least 12 crests of the soldier, work in might into your build (no idea if you have already, which is why people are telling you to link your build properly) and start using Lich Form to help burst down large HP baddies since you don’t have any serious gear yet.

my non crits on WoS are 680-700 per tick. My jugg isn’t even fully fully geared yet because im lazy.

SeductressEclipse.8294:

Hi, Sheobix

I’m very intrigued by your build and I think it suits my playstyle out of all the Necro builds out there. But it seems there’s is alot of grinding in FotM to achieve this build accurately. For someone who just turned lvl 80, and dont have any of those items. What’s the best gear/build to “start” off with via TP or any other place, so you can grind lvl 10 FotM for those items? Any help is greatly appreciated!

knights gear. or if you want ptv accessories, just pick up 2x nightmare coils, an emerald pendant, and some invader earrings from any leftover badges in wvw you may have.

http://imageshack.us/f/11/gibsgibs.png/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/593/gw025z.jpg/

so good. and that is missing 10 stacks of might too <3

TheWalkingDead.7298:

Sheobix.8796:

I love all the times when I was running in our guild 4thief/1necro camp flipping strike team and whenever a 30 man zerg flew by, they always told me “sheo, go run through that zerg, we’re busy over here”

I’d run through the zerg, live, and manage to benny hill people off of cliffs with spectral walk.

Not to mention hitting BiP, using a signet, having spite siggy to add power, having every single power buff in game on me, stacking up 20 stacks of might, and going into lich to throw Gibs around for 5k a hit, non crit. “MOAR POWER!!!”

lets just say you should never let this asura get into alpha siege golems without expecting zergs to fall to my gib awesomeness.

I honestly have no idea what I just read.

I Like the look of the staff as it casts.

gibs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5InSqkR6sbw

its a closely guarded secret, and should NEVER be nerfed in WvW

I love all the times when I was running in our guild 4thief/1necro camp flipping strike team and whenever a 30 man zerg flew by, they always told me “sheo, go run through that zerg, we’re busy over here”

I’d run through the zerg, live, and manage to benny hill people off of cliffs with spectral walk.

Not to mention hitting BiP, using a signet, having spite siggy to add power, having every single power buff in game on me, stacking up 20 stacks of might, and going into lich to throw Gibs around for 5k a hit, non crit. “MOAR POWER!!!”

lets just say you should never let this asura get into alpha siege golems without expecting zergs to fall to my gib awesomeness.

thank god I have a level 80 thief with decked out berserker swag. I can go relieve myself by ganking with him if this all goes to sh00ts.

they should increase the radius of wells to make a 1600 range diameter >.>

recently I’ve just been might stacking, BiP’ing, dropping WoS, going into lich, and using Golem In a Box to instagib everything in sight.

I feel like the class needs some lubbin.

in terms of support, manticore sums up what a lot of our "support has been reduced to recently with the defiance patch.

otherwise, for support-like things that the necro can do…
aggro-swap with high-aggro skills like life transfer, wells, spamming marks, and AoE blind.
picking up the life-transfer trait in the blood magic line gives a nice 2-3k AoE quickheal when you use DS4.
Shroud-ressing is a dungeon must.
if you’re REALLY built for regen, spamming well of blood and Staff2 and mark of evasion trait can help supplement regen uptimes. but really, guards and water ele can smoke you.

speaking of which, ascii, I covered the mechanics utilized in your old freeze build.

Manticore Five.9867:

I hope anet fixes conditions so that builds like this one can shine better.

agreed. The current issue is, other classes have more potent bleeds on their skills. They have much shorter durations, and much higher condition damage ratios which means their ticks are larger even with less investment in condition damage. Every time someone hits a skill that has a bleed that deals a total amount of damage greater than the damage a long duration bleed will deal before its time is over, it overrides the stack with a shorter duration, large number per tick bleed that nullifies a lot of our bleeds.

This has angered a lot of condition users.

The reason why it affects this build is because this build focuses on stacking condition duration so when you hit say, BiP, the 8k damage bleed stacks last a lot longer, allowing you to fight between applications. It’s not relied on as a damage dealing utility, but as a supplement to power/crit/vamp play.

But yes, a recap of the condition dilemma is that because of builds who want to use condition duration focused bleeds will be fish-slapped by stacks of greater damage potency. While a player may run into this on a somewhat regular basis, it’s not so bad as to invalidate the usefulness to the build. Because the fact is, the bleeds are already easily available due to the trait set.

Manticore Five.9867:

It’s basically a gimmick build whose numbers absolutely relies on the target having no condition cleansing whatsoever. Note that I didn’t say the BUILD requires this, but the posted numbers do.

The numbers look great until you realize you’re playing to the worst aspects of the current problems with conditions: filling the limited amount of condition headroom with low damage ticks. So the moment you get a condition teammate whose condition damage actually matters, he’s going to overwrite your bleed tics (bad) or you’re going to overwrite his (much worse), or for poison you’re going to send his more powerful procs right to the end of the line.

So a lot of the numbers here are vanish on contact in real-world play, unless you’re not grouping, but this build’s survivability kind of assumes you have a group.

I’m not saying it’s not a good effort – this is probably the some of the best the necro has to offer. I’m just saying the current mechanics of conditions means that you do your cdmg fast or get your butt off the condition queue.

this is a extremely frustrating problem to many, and you’re right. The condition overhead is too close right now because of the stack limitations and random overrides for condition damage and who the “source” is.

While it’s not a guaranteed that when you enter an engagement where there is a condition based player, and your conditions don’t have any room on the bar, that you will still be able to bleed the target, same problem goes for anyone who wants to use conditions.

At the very least, terror will always proc when applied to a player, and you’ll get the damage ticks from it. as for bleed, poison, or chill, chill is more likely to stick since its the least common condition to lock in with.

Every condition user has to worry about the cond cap. But it’s not a persistent problem that hits you in the face all day.

I believe Anet needs to change and tune the ways conditions are applied, how they manage condition hierarchy, cleansing, and Cdmg ratios, but for now, it’s still working decently to the extent of what it’s used for.

Bleed is the overbloated condition that everyone deals, and they need to change that.

and either way, the bleeds featured in this build still work as intended. But you’re right, that is a very problematic issue with relying on side-condition application to not interfere with dedicated condition dealers.

p.s This is why I try to stick to power as much as I can, and use conditions only as a means to control fights.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/How-to-Hit-Like-a-Truck/first#post649058

Lordryux.9785:

xD thats actually the build im running now but i always thought scepter was just for condition builds period so idk i might have to try that weapon i guess

scepter is the 2nd highest DPS ratio’d weapon in the toolset. it behaves much like the dagger, except at a range.

Hellgaunt.1734:

I didn’t try the terror aspect yet. Does Fear damage tick in on creatures with Defiance in PvE?

Otherwise I think a setup of 0/30/10/0/30 for permanent fury might be a better setup?

that is an extremely tempting choice to make. near 100% uptime on fury means that extra 20% crit chance which bumps 57 to 77%.

for people who run this with a dag/foc that might be the way to go. And if losing out on 4 seconds on focus cd’s and 100 power and 10% condition duration (which I REALLY hope does not drop the duration needed for terror)

Hm, to get the 30 pts in SR for perma fury, you would then need veggie pizza buff to make sure terror gets 2 ticks.

it IS doable. But to put it up for discussion, what do other people use fury for? the extra floppy 20% crit chance, is it really worth stretching the build thinner for?

As for defiance, i’m not sure if the condition pokes through and deals damage without the CC aspect of the casted skill.

Please, if you’d like me to add a guide or video, please request in comments on the blog, or on this thread.

necronotes.blog.com

a blog on help for new/old builders.

Hi guys, lately a lot of people have been sending me messages and whispers on what sigils I use, the runes I pick, and how to get the gear I use as well as “what gear are you using exactly? I cant find it”

Some other people are also asking how in the world do I find all these ascended items, sources on where to get things, and how to I keep track of all the finishing buffs and stat calculations are the end of my guides.

To avoid throwing separate guides into the forums only to see them lost in the fray over time, I chose to create a simple build blog here:

http://necronotes.blog.com

There is only a few posts as of right now, but I’ll be covering more content and mechanics of the necromancer as I find more time. I’ll put this link in the stickied thread as well so people can find it again if they wish.

some current things I’ve posted in the blog:

• Overview of important stats for power based necromancers

• How to calculate your stats using tables taught in 5 minutes (includes info on orbs, crests, and jewels)

• Insight into Attribute=>Attribute conversion minor traits (Spite 15, Death25, Blood25, and Soul Reaping 25) and why its worth spending your last five points into corresponding trait lines for those who don’t know what to spend them on.

Hope this helps!

Kouta.4159:

Eviator.9746:

Edit: 5. I forgot about shroudstomping and shroud rezzing

How do you do those? I’ve seen them in videos, and know how to start (pressing the 2 buttons in the same time). But whenever I manage to get in shroud and get the finishing animation, done it, and nothing happens, my enemy simply doesn’t get finished….
(Would cry tbh but I agree, sounds funny)

For those who dont know how to do it, you actually have to hit f1 before you hit f. I just roll my fingers in that manner and it does it every time. Or you can macro it to be f1 plus f.

I’ll be creating a blog that makes notes on the different aspects of power based necro building, and it can be found here at http://necronotes.blog.com/

I’ll be adding posts, content, memos, notes, videos, and more in the future while i can.

I will still answer questions on this thread, as always, and I welcome players to PM me on the forums, send me in-game mail questions, or whispers in-game while i’m online.

Stx.4857:

Thank you for all the work you have done sharing your build. I have played it in wvw and I have to say that even with 3500 attack, I feel like my damage is horrid. Never critting just doesnt take players down in bigger battles.

I have had some nice 1v2s with this build and easily lived(and it kills thieves like a champ which is always a good thing). But in larger battles when my enemy can retreat to the support of his team, I can usually never kill anything.

Not sure what the secret is, even fully traited for marks with sigil stacked (so probably higher than 3500 atk), my marks tickle people. I can do decent damage with dagger, but in larger battles that just doesnt cut it.

Any tips?

focus on locking and snaring weaker foes. if you go after a full hp player in a huge 20+ man zerg, of course you won’t take them down before you go evading off into the pack. (immobilize, well drop, focus snare, DS fear back towards your zerg, staff fear even further, DS2 gap close, spectral walk further into your zerg, spectral grasp them further towards you, repeat immobilize and snare)

with good timing, you can manipulate players who are usually found spamming cluster bomb, AoE fields, or other bread and butter skills. You’d be amazed how quickly you can lockout someone from their bar when they don’t think it will happen in large engagements. “oohhh… nobody is going to pay attention to me… ill just spam this awesome skill! pewpewpewpewpew!”

those are the people you should go after.

berserker glass cannons can take down people faster, but more often than not you’ll find yourself dead on the ground waiting for a res in the middle of a fun battle if you kitten someone off and make them fight back and kill you.

edit: if you want to try something that has more killing power and less tanking power that can benefit from the covers of allies, try out my feral shadowmancer. you’ll be able to tag them with bleeds to finish them off as they run.

2nd note, if you want to burst them down, stack might from Life blast in deathshroud, target a new player, pop BiP, enter lich, and mow them down.

Quillixx.7034:

@ Druitt. Vigor is important due to the meta in sPvP and tPvP, granted more so than the other areas of the game. While yes, we have the indirect ‘condition to boon’ ability to gain vigor, it is no where near the level of access the other professions receive. This also was the first statement made in my list because ANet specifically calls out necros as having an attrition playstyle. The hypocrisy of the situation of imposing a playstyle on a profession and not following through with the abilities that assist in achieving those ends is only highlighted by that fact. But, different players spend their time in different facets of the game, I can see why Vigor would, for instance, not be of substantial value to a person that PvE’s primarily.

As for the ‘only profession’ comments, they are made because most abilities are spread across 3 or more professions, yet in many cases, we are the ONLY profession out of the 8 that can’t do something.

7 of the 8 professions have access to vigor, 7 of the 8 professions have a cleave attack, 7 of the 8 professions don’t have 4 out of 5 staff weapon abilities that don’t affect downed players… etc. These items weren’t to call out one off abilities, but to point out where the Necromancer profession is the only class without it when all others have it.

For the combo fields/finishers, I was adding them all together, fields and finishers. Effectively showing an aggregate participation in the combo field mechanic of the game as a whole. Again, there was a slew of changes for other professions to add to their participation level of this mechanic in a previous patch, but not for the necro.

I agree with a lot of what you just said.

My only feeling about vigor is that its not that important to this class. We have one trait that triggers on dodging and it has an internal cd.

I don’t like how the ele has many different close quarters cleave skills, and i think we should have something similar to help compliment our power builds.

What i’d like to add is that we have no actual move skills, like grenade jump, mesmer portal, charges, leaps, shadowsteps, ride the lightning, etc. And because of that, we have some of the crappiest mobility. Ds2 doesn’t cut it for mobility because it requires a target and connection for it to work.

There are a few minor things that we do in fact miss out exclusively just as you say, and i agree, but some of those things are minor.

Hm, its using vampiric play to make up for low vit. The build is pretty good because you work in the curve of berserkers a little without turning into a water balloon. Its a little dicey against bunkers and control builds though, so it may feel like its spread thin. Whenever a build puts more points into soul reaping, i cross my fingers to hope holes dont appear. I like what it has to show, i dont see too many knight/berserker mashups that work but this will definitely do it. +1