Guild Wars 2

Vorz.7952:

Because imo the necro is the coolest class. The other classes don’t interest me right now and I’m having fun with the necro. That’s more important than comparing numbers.

This. As many times as I’ve tried, I just can’t get another class past about level 10 before becoming completely bored.

I find Signet of Undeath helpful, including the active in DEs, but CD is too long.

I would use Plague Signet if it weren’t bugged.

Signet of Spite active followed by Epidemic would be great but CD is too long.

I agree that the CDs are overall waaaay too long on these to be really useful.

I wondered about this alot. It does seem to me – at least in PVE – that if the mob is alive at the moment you hit Epidemic, then the conditions transfer, regardless of the mob dying during the lengthy cast animation.

Sugram.3106:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Sugram.3106:

this is my idea for my build, so What to u think of this build, i want to be sustain damage type, dose it need a bit change or is it good? & for what it is god for? PVE PVP WvW or for all 3?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjQah7VambM8JgJFfvd0DiHOZKFlnOA

Very similar to my build, with slightly different trait and skill choices:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQNArYWjMat7VaSb87JgJFZPe0DiHOZKFrXOA;ToAqmMNJay2krJZTLCGLsLYGA

I use Knights armor & Runes of the Undead. Its been a good all-around build for PVE, but I don’t PVP or WVW so I can’t speak to those.

it says bad link for some reason, maybe u can make new link
i will consider ur build & ur opinion when i see ur build

i have 1 thing in common with this guy whos video link is below, curses 30, he uses S/D in WvW & also switches to Staff in WvW when he feels its necessary, it shows his build & gameplay, he uses 10 points for Spite but i think its useless, well its useless if he did it to get power, even 30 points to spite is useless to spite if he just wanted to increase power, power is useless for DPS/CON/SUSTAIN DAM build, it gives so little to it, well that’s my opinion, maybe some people disagree

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr1vmSweqM0

i’m not sure about my build & hes build but i can say for sure that this play stile he has works in PVE & also WvW as this video shows

You need to copy/paste the link text. For some dumb reason, ANet can’t handle semicolons in external URLs.

Sugram.3106:

this is my idea for my build, so What to u think of this build, i want to be sustain damage type, dose it need a bit change or is it good? & for what it is god for? PVE PVP WvW or for all 3?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjQah7VambM8JgJFfvd0DiHOZKFlnOA

Very similar to my build, with slightly different trait and skill choices:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQNArYWjMat7VaSb87JgJFZPe0DiHOZKFrXOA;ToAqmMNJay2krJZTLCGLsLYGA

I use Knights armor & Runes of the Undead. Its been a good all-around build for PVE, but I don’t PVP or WVW so I can’t speak to those.

I agree with instantcoffee that traits won’t matter much at your level. Instead, what mostly defines your “build” at those levels is which skills you choose to unlock, and in what order, as you accumulate skill points.

Edit: given you focus on wells, the next skill you may want acquire is Well of Corruption. Blood Is Power and Epidemic are also both worthwhile skills.

Nuhj.8372:

Area of effect abilities are limited to five targets determined by proximity.

Well, I’ll be darned, I didn’t know that. But the wiki does say that:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aoe

FWIW, this is my current build(copy/paste):
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQNArYWjMat7VaSb87JgJFZPe0DiHOZKFrXOA;ToAqmMNJay2krJZTLCGLsLYGA

I use Knights armor, so there is alot more Toughness, Power & Precision than shown. And, as Ascii pointed out, Undead runes will convert some of that Toughness to Cond dmg.

I think it’s an “well-rounded” PVE build…which also means it doesn’t shine at any one thing.

This has the ground-targeted wells, which I do enjoy (after 79 levels of ignoring that trait!).

I tried Dagger/Dagger instead of Staff for secondary wep set, but in most situations it hasn’t offered me much benefit over Staff.

Looks like you are going vampiric with those siphoning traits. But siphoning doesn’t scale well.
See this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Vampiric-Knight-Would-this-work/first#post646910

Good to hear!

1) Your build is low on Vitality, Healing and Toughness. I’d take the points from Spite and put 20 into SR and 10 more into Blood.

2) Get Toughness on some of your gear.

3) Well of Suffering instead of Poison Cloud.

4) For 1st Blood major, I prefer Dagger Mastery (instead of Evasion), because Dagger 4 & 5 are so important.

5) Try Runes of the Undead as an alternative.

6) For gear, I bought rare Knights gear off the TP and I’m liking it. No, it doesn’t boost cond dmg directly, but with Runes of the Undead, it does.

Gryph.8237:

greatsword on a caster just grates on my nerves. Jesus, fix axe, and create a scythe like blade on a short handle and I am happier than running a greatsword. 2 weapons gives a chance for 2 sigils anyways. Staff is the only 2 handed weapon I care about.

I say just up the kitten axe damage and you will make a lot of necros happy.

+1

I like the “Vampire-Knight” idea, but I also don’t see siphoning as currently being effective enough.

Although I am more condition + DS than I am power, yesterday I did go with Knight’s armor to have a more well-rounded (aka “not great at anything”) character. Runes of the Undead add more cond dmg and toughness.

I do find that the Precision has made my DS1 much more effective. Although 1% crit change = 0.5% direct damage makes it sound weak, if I boost my crit chance by 20% I boost my damage by 10%, which isn’t shabby.

I have to say that I am not sure if the toughness is really making me less squishy, which is disappointing.

My current build (for PVE):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQRArY4YjMat7VaSb87JgJFZPe0DiHOZKFrXOA;ToAqmMNJay2krJZTrKGLsJYSA

(The “bad link” issue is due to Anet’s inability to accept semicolons in an external URL.)

Shafi.8952:

Wrong: Ranged – mobs will attack your minions before you.
Right: Melee – make sure monsters attack you

Can pulling aggro off of minions be done reliably?

I like the overall concept. Although I kinda like the name “Minion Support Master”.

@Aexrael, that’s a great idea, since that list shows us what they’ve already coded for at one time or another.

One Minor that might be a good replacement for Reanimator:
Venomous Inscriptions…..Staff….. Minor…..Foes hit by Reaper’s Mark will be poisoned.

Yes!!

There are some issues and quirks with necro, but for me there is just no other profession that offers the interesting kind of playstyle that necro does.

The bugs don’t make it unplayable; its just that we want to see them addressed.

sorrow.2364:

Buff —-——————————————————————————————
- Axe damage: it is way too low than expected and the 3 second channeling of Ghastly Claws isn’t that rewarding when speaking about raw numbers. Right now I think that most Necromancer feels that Axe is lackluster.
- Vampiric heals, traits and damage: the heals vampiric skills grant are way too low to consider them as viable, nor when considering them about damage. Life Siphon is just like Ghasly Claws but it last longer for less damage. It can use a buff in both the base heal amount that the raw damage. Traits also heals for really a low amount to be considered enough.
- Plague condition application: some people complained about Necromancers spamming blindness when in Plague form. It is true in my opinion, because there is no point to spread other conditions. In my opinion Plague should have a better bleeding stacking capability.
- Wells duration: wells are powerful, yes, but they last way too short. 2 seconds more on their duration feel perfect to me.
- Death Magic traitline rework: as stated many times, Death Magic traitline needs a serious rework in minor trait redistribution.
- More Death Shroud variety: Death Shroud, right now, feels too much useless to some builds. In my opinion at least 1 skill (Life Blast or Dark Path maybe?) should change their effects depending on weapon set.

Nerf —-——————————————————————————————
Epidemic: this skill is outstanding when compared to the other Necromancer utilities. It needs an increased recharge time in my opinion.
Plague blindness: it is true, Plague grants Necromancer too much defensive capabilities that fell into the overpowered category in my opinion. There should be a sort of balance in the Plague skill around offensive and defensive capability.

Please, keep this thread polite and constructive, remember to reason every buff/nerf you propose.

Axe – Agreed.
Vampiric – Agreed.
Well duration – Disagree: seems balanced to me.
DM minor traits – Agreed
DS variety – Mostly disagree: its already a unique mechanic. Would be cool to have more variety, but that would be a nicety, not a buff.

Epidemic – Disagree strongly: Epidemic is highly situational in effectiveness and has a long cast animation.
Plague – Disagree: it is an Elite skill on a long CD.

Are there any other profession-specific damage types?

As much as a I like this idea (and the name ‘Necrosis’) I imagine it would end up giving us an unfair advantage in DEs.

+1
The only fix for the Jagged Horror is to remove it. Like the OP, I’d take a blank trait over Reanimator.

It’s that bad.

+1
I’ve heard this is now possible here in the 21st century.

@Kardiamond: "By the time I target somoene with a lot of conditions and epidemic, the mobs die so fast I miss half of them. "

I do notice that the Epidemic cast animation takes waaaay longer than is necessary and you can lose out that way.

Bots are so depressing and annoying. (Most bots I see are Rangers…often 5-10 running around in a train…half of them are naked.)

Overkillengine.6084:

But there is no Condition Damage/Toughness/Vitality gear.

This would be nice!

Overkillengine.6084:

My ideal build uses as little Precision or Healing Power as possible given the low returns on my abilities for those stats…

Does Precision not affect Condition damage?

I just swing away with Scepter 1/3 endlessly and hope no one laughs at me too much.

In Orr DEs, I use Scepter/Dagger and Well of Suffering, Epidemic and Signet of Undeath.
Plague for Elite skill.
My traits are 0/30/0/20/20.
My armor is rare-level, nothing great.

Drop the well.
Target (preferably) a champion/veteran which already has alot of debuffs and hit Epidemic.
Use Dagger5 & Scepter2 AOE abilities.
Use DS4 situationally (e.g. several nearby mobs low on health).
Use all the above whenever off CD, if viable.
Profit.

Epidemic is awesome in these situations. Don’t worry too much about Scepter 1/3 unless you need to stack debuffs for Epidemic.

I guess it depends how much it heals the minions. If it was “cast regen on minions for 4s when you kill a foe” I could see that. If you mean that it would completely heal minions, then it would be OP.

I don’t use minions, but at least I would mind it less than Jagged Gerbils.

Silverrey.2471:

How many stacks can a bleed focused necromancer reliably get on their own? I was curious how close we can get to that limit without a party. If it is to close then they REALLY need to up the limit.

I get about the same: 8-12 without really trying.

I’ve noticed in DEs that quite often a Champion/Veteran mob is sitting constantly at 24-25 stacks of bleed and I can’t tell how many of those stacks are from me.

It seems as a necro that most of my weapons damage output ability is in the form of bleeds, which means I’m adding very little in the way of damage via bleeds.

Direct damage weapon skills have CDs, as do wells/marks. DS output falls with lifeforce.

I just wonder if our bleed-centric damage is a problem or not.

On the other hand, I usually get gold in DEs, so I don’t know if it makes a practical difference.

I agree that GS don’t really fit the necro. Besides, with our luck, the tooltip for a necro version of a Whirlwind GS skill would be:

“Whirl in a random direction, causing daze and blind to self for 3s due to dizziness, while enemy is crippled for 2s due to laughing hysterically at you.”

I tried emailing money to one of my alts but the email disallowed it (it essentially said I was emailing myself).

I’d drop the mony in my bank but I don’t see a way to do that.

androidgeoff.1347:

My necromancer. Bone face paint!

Nice! Now you made me want to reroll my new Charr warrior!

Here’s a page with all the stats laid out nicely:
http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

Very disappointing. Very.

If you want to stick with that original trait point allocation, I’d just toggle some skills and traits which don’t require respeccing. That might be enough.
Something like:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmWDbkRrSPTzdjfPBIp45rne094iHpg4hB;TsAg2Crouxcj4G7Nubk3s2YsxuBA

StormcrowX.9236:

At this moment on Tarnished coast server:

Tactician Footi is bugged (she is nowhere in sight and the undead waves keep coming endlessly) People are congregating there farming the infinite mobs.

Same on Borliss Pass. Its just a botfest.

Fear my necro! (I mean, be afraid of it, don’t cast Fear on it!)

Nice intro to the Necro. Wish I’d had this when I first started out!

Re:

2) Agreed. There is no good reason why the deathshroud UI should be any different than, for example, the Plague UI.

PS) Agreed. The Jagged Gerbil needs to go away.

Kayotik.5790:

As for TheAgedGnome, did you make sure you weren’t being down-leveled? Or that you weren’t using a vitality food buff when you noticed the 28k health pool?

Yes, I was in the same zone last night as previous nights and it sill showed me as 80 (I too thought I was being down-leveled) and I don’t use food buffs (I’m so n00b!). But maybe I did eat something I picked up as loot, and didn’t pay attention? Hmm, I’m not sure now.

Well, for what its worth, this is the build I am using for PVE. It feels pretty robust and I can absorb a lot of beatings.

(you need to copypaste the link):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQIQNAW7YjMaZ6VaSb87JApCXP9o7xFn6x6s7OA;TkAqoMRJiyGlLKZULIGFsXA

I use 6 x Runes of the Necromancer and most armor pieces are also Power/Vitality/Cond Dmg. I have a large DS pool due to having a large health pool.

(I swear Anet changed something in the last day or so – I used to have 28K+ health and last nite it was only 26K+).

+1. The clipping is ridiculously bad, especially on Charr’s. It really looks like amateur work.

But then again, I also wonder if the designers were hamstrung by having to conform to some wider performance mandate that came from on high, like limits on polygon counts, etc., in order to make sure GW2 would run on the widest number of PCs (in other words, it’s sales-driven).

Rizach.4852:

I rather see a faster cast time than more damage. The cast time is really really long.

+1. That would improve the overall DPS of DS1.

1) I dropped my minions in my mid-20s and IMO felt it was much better for my ease of leveling by allowing me to use other skills and avoid the random aggro issues with minions.
2) I switched to Staff + Scepter/Dagger after using Staff + Dagger/Dagger for most of my leveling. Scepter/Dagger is better; although I admit that when I tried Scepter out at lower levels I wasn’t that impressed (then again, I also didn’t really understand the game as well then).
3) So many trait possibilities. I run 0/0/10/30/30, which probably makes me an idiot to some, but I enjoy it (28K+ health, 20% CD decrease on wells & staff skills, large lifeforce pool, etc.)

Humanogrowth.8059:

necros aren’t really that good… they are like the shaman class in WoW..

Ouch! Now that’s just plain harsh!

Ah, thanks Barda. Yes, it was Orrian. Here’s the 3D model:
http://www.gw2db.com/items/51791-travelers-orrian-staff#

I like the one in the pics below. Alas, I can’t recall where I got it and I’ve since transmuted it, so I don’t know what its original name was.

Thanks, Jaha!

I also just found this thread which linked to a useful youtube vid:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Did-you-know-that-not-all-weapon-sigils-stack

Well, after hitting 80 the other day I started looking into these runes and sigils and such. But I’m a little confused on the sigils.

I run Staff & Scepter/Dagger.

SigiIs used:
Staff – Sigil of Corruption (gain condition dmg each time you kill a foe)
Scepter – Sigil of Bloodlust (gain power each time you kill a foe)
Dagger – Sigil of Perception (gain precision each time you kill a foe)

After running around killing things for a while, I saw the icon for 22 stacks of corruption, but no icons for bloodlust or perception. (Yes, I had swapped weapons back and forth numerous times during the various fights.)

Is it not possible to gain stacks of 3 different attributes?
If not, what might I use instead on my scepter and dagger?

(Please keep in mind that I am mostly PVE and I have only about 3 gold to spend.)

Cyndrome.7268:

Ok. Somewhat of a stupid question, but how is the staff utilized? I’m currently using Scepter/Dagger with Staff Alt.

• This is for PVE ONLY

Realizing that the staff is for AoE, I still find it odd to use. When I’m doing an event and multiple mobs are around, do I just button punch 2-5 and then auto attack with #1?

In general, I’d use 2-4 as CD permits. I save 5 for when I need a second or two of space, or I’m running from trash mobs. One thing you can do is pop 2-4, then switch to scepter/dagger, when those skills (especially 3) are on CD, flip back to staff and hit your marks again. Then repeat. Add in switching to DS, and you should be able to rotate between the three sets (staff, scepter/dagger, DS) and almost always be able to be in a mode where you are off CD.

Use Staff 1 if the mob is not difficult or weapon switch is on CD. Take Staff 1 off of autoattack.

I’d also recommend using Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption. BiP can be nice, but I find the wells more useful. As has already been said, drop Corrupt Boon. (I like Consume Conditions, WoS, WoC(or Epidemic for DEs), Signet of Undeath, and Plague.)

Dukkha.1267:

I’m just here to say that the Reanimator Trait in the deathmagic tree is horrible.

It’s more of an disadvantage than any help.
……
So.. if you won’t change this crap trait, than please give us the chance to opt out of the minor traits because I would rather get no minor trait at all than this one.
The best solution would be to split the traits from the attributes and schools at all, but this is something i will never see i guess.

Agreed.

Cyndrome.7268:

I’m using Scepter/Dagger for Main w/ Staff ALT – granted, I’m really not sure what I’m doing with the staff abilities from an AOE perspective.

With access to very few skills & traits, I haven’t found that niche of skills that feel right.

Does this class start to change in feeling in a few more levels? I don’t find it difficult to kill things, just have to run around a bit more. I’m not looking for the big numbers or insta-death to mobs, just for a bit more cohesion in playing.

EDIT: This is for PVE only as I don’t do much, if any, PVP

Yes…it does get better. I agree that Necro felt kinda mediocre early on. I didn’t feel like Necro really felt stronger and more flexible until my mid-20s and then it just improved from there. So, if you can bear with it until then, I think you’ll be happier.

I use Staff and Scepter/Dagger (I used to be Dagger/Dagger but recently had to admit to myself that Scepter/Dagger was better).

Once you start getting Consume Conditions, wells and some other skills, I think you’ll feel alot happier with Necro’s abilities.