Guild Wars 2

ANet, see this issue in the traits section of the necro buglist:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-Bug-Compilation-Mk-II/1216747

Wayfarer.2051:

Is this a good start? So far only tested it in the Mists, because I currently have no money for full on rabid gear.
If this checks out I’d go to whispers and get some rare equipment.

You can get rare rabid gear off the TP also. It’s one of the several stat combinations using the “Strong” prefix.

Working on Tarnished Coast – just used it within the last hour.

Tarnished Coast server / Harathi Hinterlands map

Had 3 disconnects in the last two hours.

There is currently a huge snowstorm passing through New England, but since I can reconnect immediately, and no other connectivity has been lost outside of GW2, it does not seem to be a local or ISP issue attributable to the storm.

Lolicia.6502:

Sylvari! I love the angel of death tier 2 armor. Here’s a picture of mine (with her new Frostfang!):

Very nice!

LameFox.6349:

Where/how are you levelling? Every time I try to raise my necro a few more levels, I just end up going back to another character or logging off. It’s infuriating because it seems more fun/complicated than the warrior and engineer I’ve got to 80 (though not as funny as watching the engineer w/ rifle and jet-powered boots bounce all over the screen), but at the same time it needs so much more effort to just barely handle the same things that are easy for them.

What kind of build are you running? What weapons/gear?

As I level my second necro, several things are apparent to me as to why the first seemed much harder to level:

1) I used staff. There, I said it. For PvE leveling, unless you are have a full army of minions dump the staff completely and use scepter, axe or dagger for your MH weapons, depending on your preferences. Staff is a crappy solo PvE leveling weapon, unless it is to support a bunch of minions.

2) I tried to run a partial minion build, and gave minions up at around level 23. I think for leveling you either want to be all the way into a minion build or not. (Flesh golem as elite is an exception.)

3) I didn’t gear. Gear every 10 levels with blues/greens off the TP (preferably for Vitality/Toughness until you get 40-50ish). Don’t bother with sigils/runes/etc. though, until 80.

4) I didn’t understand damage mitigation was so important. Weakness especially is quite potent, in a defensive sense. Since we are officially an attrition class, lengthier killing times mean using blinds, interrupts, cripples and weakness when available. So, Dagger4 & 5, CPCloud, WoDarkness, Chilling Darkness/Withering Precision/Weakening Shroud traits., Scepter2, Dagger3, Focus5, Warhorn4 & 5, DS2&3. That’s alot of CC and mitigation abilities. (Asuras also get confusion (Pain Inverter) and their own version of CPC (Radiation Field) as racials. Nice.)

5) I thought AOE damage = wells. Not that wells are bad, but the long CDs make them situational utilities, not repeatable attacks. Epidemic is your best AOE friend. Even untraited the CD is short, and you get to leverage the conditions others put on targets.

6) I used DS as a last-ditch survival tool. DS4 is a good kiting AOE. Use it. While leveling, DS1 won’t hit for alot unless you have vulnerability on the target, so pair it with Axe or Focus4 attacks for some nice damage. DS3 is a great interrupt.

7) My lifeforce bar was empty. I didn’t plan or use my skills or traits to intentionally make sure my my LF bar was filled, whenever possible. If I’m in trouble, using DS with a full LF bar right after using Consume Conditions lets me survive and burn alot of CD time off of CC so I can perform a second heal shortly after coming out of DS.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. YMMV.

Right now Im fighting with a dagger and warhorn offhand/ and a scepter dagger. Im finding that the dagger/warhorn is better for single target and the scepter is better for groups. Is this true? Is there another combination Im missing?

I prefer scepter/dagger + scepter/focus. Good for single or multiple targets.

Is there any really great leveling spec/weapon combination that I should try in later levels (20-80)?

There is no one super-duper build; there are several viable ways to play a necro. I prefer a hybrid: 20/30/0/10/10. Start with building 5/5/0/5/0 and then fill out the Curses line first, and fill out the other next.

Right now I feel pretty OP at leveling. When does this end? When does Necro get weaker?

Shhh! You’re not supposed to say such things on this forum! Actually, I never found necro getting weaker, only stronger, with levels.

I dont do much PvP but how are necros in PvE?

Quite fine. We’re just not speed killers.

Why dont I see more necros?

They read this forum and decided against it? I usually see a fair number of them, though, at least leveling; not as many in Orr. It is one of the underdog classes, and not being bursty, necro may not give alot of folks the gratification they want.

I’d keep Epidemic (too invaluable for many-v-1 and events) and instead trade out Signet of Spite for BiP.

Going 30/20 instead of 20/30 is unusual. If you are using 30 for Close to Death, that trait doesn’t boost condition damage, IIRC. So it would help your direct damage only.

I use scepter/dagger & scepter/focus. Focus4 is great for life force refilling, regeneration and vulnerability. The latter goes very well with death shroud Life Blast, as long as you have decent Power.

I use 20/30/0/10/10 or 20/30/020/0, with Rabid gear with Crests of the Rabid, mostly Rampager trinkets with Emerald orbs, and Rampager/Carrion mix of weapons. This gives me a nice mix of condition dmg and direct dmg, with about 50% crit chance.

I think the idea is that rather than remove conditions, we are supposed to be apply to manipulate them and apply them to targets; hence, Dagger4 and Plague Signet, although I think Plague Signet is way too long a CD.

I’d like to see another means of manipulating conditions – perhaps along the lines of Consume Conditions, but instead of a heal, this skill or trait would convert conditions to Might or Fury or Regen or Malice.

Sigil of Purity/Generosity can be used, but now we’re using up those slots.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Bas.7406:

I have noticed being knocked immediatiely out of DS on any form of interrupt or KB last night during tPVP play. I did not notice it in pve play.

thought I was the only one that noticed this, glad I’m not alone >.>

I noticed this tonite in PVE. It happened several times, most notably with the giant’s stomps in Nageling in Diessa Plateau where it happened multiple times, but also with some other encounters.

In addition to the math in the wiki table that Panhauramix linked to, higher crit chance also adds value in the form of more “on crit” procs, such as Barbed Precision.

If you could rely on having fury up alot to supply extra crit chance, then crit damage on your gear makes more sense. But necros don’t have alot of fury sources.

Lalangamena.3694:

regarding the runes, the wiki states that only PVP version of these runes (lich or nightmare) give 20% condition duration, can anyone confirm that it is so in PVE also?

Yes, it works in PVE. See:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Superior-rune-of-the-Nightmare-4-rune-bonus/1151254

Actually, Nightmare and Lich are +20% duration – the tooltips are wrong.

I think you are just experiencing the display error, which does not show the total duration properly in the UI.

Test it by using Blood is Power on a target and look at how many sec it has remaining on the bleed. You should see 42 sec. (30 sec * 1.4)

Some others reported the same post-patch issue in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Death-shroud-3/1320135

I’ve not experienced it myself.

Yes, you can salvage them (destroying the armor in the process). BUT, your success rate depends on the type of salvage kit you use. You’d want the Black Lion salvage kit for 100% success. See:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Salvage_Kit

slowpoke.1894:

At least 9 out of 10 links, I cannot open. Always says bad link whether I click on it or copy link location to address bar.

What is the deal and does anyone know how I fix it?

Using latest version of Firefox.

Thanks.

The forum does not allow opening links with semicolons in the URLs…and of course, many of the links – especially to build editors – have semicolons in the URLs.

I suspect this is likely to restrict the possibility of putting SQL injection attack links on the forum and having people click them and thereby causing the attack to look like it came from them.

So, you can copy the link manually and paste it into a new browser window and it should work fine.

Or, with Chrome, you can highlight the URL text, right-click and choose the “Go to [URL]” choice to open the URL in another tab. I’m not sure if Firefox, etc have that ability. I know IE9 does not.

TheBitterness.6912:

Mark of Evasion: now the Mark of Blood triggered by this trait actually works. However, it only puts out ONE Mark of Blood. I understand that only one trait-made Mark of Blood can be out at a time, but that isn’t the issue here. The Mark is made when I dodge, triggered and when I dodge again no second mark is made.

Mark of Evasion trait has a 10 sec cooldown, so if you dodge twice within 10 sec, only the first mark will be laid down.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mark_of_Evasion

Freyr Sieverson.8193:

Cattlepult is still bugged currently on Henge of Dervani. I cannot talk to Mad Mardine and when i talk to tigh snatchskull he says he cant talk he has to go get cattle.

Just experienced the same thing this morning on Henge of Denravi.

Lolana.9413:

Also, in my attachment below, my mesmer only has 5 runes of the mesmer equipped, but the rune is displaying that I have 11/6 equipped.

This is a display bug only. It is because you are wearing the same runes in your PVP armor.

The Jeweled Trident of Agony has the icon of a staff, not a trident.

Looks better to me. I think I’d go scepter or axe instead dagger MH, for range as well as function. Axe1 stacks vulnerability, axe3 is a nice AOE cripple; scepter2 is a nice AOE cripple.

Maybe take out Path of Midnight and put the 10 pts into Curses for Withering Precision (and get your crit chance up to 50ish%). Also, I’m not sure how useful WoC is in PVE – you might actually be better off with Corrosive Poison Cloud (unless you are Asura, in which case Radiation Field is better).

Between With. Prec., Enf. Blood, and CPC/RF, you’ll apply nearly perma-weakness, with some condition duration. Add in the blindness/chills, cripples, vulnerability, and cond. transfer/spread it looks like a pretty nice support build.

As for gear, I’d look at Shaman, Apothecary or Rabid, or a mix thereof. It’d depend how much you want to be a healer (e.g., swap WoB for Cons. Cond.) or not. Since you aren’t using Plague Signet, you won’t be loaded down with extra conditions, which to me is where Vitality might trump Toughness.

Also, on your runes, you may want to swap out Grenth/Ice for 4x Lich or 4x Nightmare. Despite the tooltips, 4x of either of those give 20% cond dur. So, you’d lose 20% of the chill dur. you’d get from Grenth+Ice, but gain 20% on all your conditions, which boosted with food could get you 50-60% cond dur. Depends on the value to you of chill vs all conditions.

Check out all the sets:
http://www.gw2armor.com/
http://gw2armorgallery.com/

It looks more like a DPS build than a CC build.

None of those Spite traits appear to give you any CC. I think it would be better to go for the CC-specific traits elsewhere and then use food/runes to give you the condition duration.

Plague (blind) also would seem to be a better elite for CC than Lich.

1) Yes, it is worth leveling to 80. If you’re having fun with it now, then it only gets better, not worse, with levels. As you look around this forum, you’ll see alot of different build threads. There are alot of different ways to play a viable necro, which also shows that necro is not a one-trick pony.

2) There have been some bug fixes along the way. The stickied buglist is out-of-date. The current buglist is in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-Bug-Compilation-Mk-II/first#post1269319

As to why bugs haven’t been addressed sooner, that’s a broader question, which relates to all professions, artwork (e.g., clipping, tearing, etc.) and gameplay (e.g., broken events). They’ve seemingly and consistently put more effort into content updates than bug fixes. Each new content update usually also adds some bugs, so its a puzzle to me what their overall priorities, testing methods, Q/A, and quality philosophy are.

If you also have another weapon equipped with an “on crit” sigil, only one of them will proc.

In addition, the Sigil of Fire has a 5 sec CD, so multiple crits within a 5 sec window would only proc once.

The other 6 are from your having the same runes equipped in your PVP gear. It is an annoying display bug only.

I think this is a really bad idea. The last thing I want is to have to pass an ingame captcha test or something just to prove I’m a carbon-based lifeform.

Thanks for the explanation! That’s good news!

I’ve noticed recently (since Jan 28th patch?) that the world populations seem to be decreasing, at least for NA servers. There are no Full servers, and where there used to be just a few High compared to Very High, there is now sometimes about 60/40 Very High/High.

I’m not trying to say the sky is falling. I’m just curious. Is this a reflection of population changes? Has ANet upped the capacity per server?

Downleveled still seems pretty easy to me, regardless of whether its my lvl 80 or my lvl 17 being downleveled. I can die, but not easily.

I run a scepter/dagger + scepter/focus build. I think scepter/focus is good for a hybrid build.

More details here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-build-assistance/1335127

Rennoko.5731:

Well… I don’t come from an Spvp background, but in the regulard world, I can maintain 20+ bleeds rotating from staff to sceptor and back fairly easily. Against people generally 12-15 is the max they will let you get on before the cleanse or run.

As far as staff in general, if you are playing conditions, the staff is not your “go to” weapon. You should be on sceptor always to start because Scept 2 is the most powerful effect you get. Aoe 3 stacks of bleed (more with barbed prec, and Earth sigil). And if you use dagger OH, dagger 5 gives two more plus the weakness.

At this poing you should use sceptor 3, though it doesn’t hit hard, just for the life force, and BIP plus dagger 4. Swap over to staff for 2/3. If you have conditions on you, I would suggest using staff 4, and if they are aggressively attacking I would go ahead and use 5. Now you can hop into DS to chain a fear if needed, interrupt a heal, and drop DS 2 for the chill and bleeds. Hop out of DS and staff 2 should be back up, use it and swap back to sceptor.

I get what people say about not wasting mark 4, but as a condition build you cannot just sit on staff, or use staff swap only when you need 4/5. You need the 2/3 abilties to be used as often as possible, meaning if you save 4 and 5 on the staff, and swap away, you cannot get them back for 10 seconds. Sometimes 4 is worth it just for the blast finisher ability, and 5 is worth it for an interrupt of a strong attack skill or area deny. What you want to avoid is being on sceptor, with DS fear on cooldown, and your swap skill down. That situation means you have no chance to interrupt a heal.

If you have dangerous conditions on, and you are low HP it isn’t the worst idea to face roll your keyboard 2-5 when staff is up. What you don’t want to do is blow 2-5 at the opening of a fight for no reason other than to put them on CD.

Nicely said.

Delryn.7235:

Raf.1078:

Vary pale human w/ wraith mask. The mask makes for a good soulless eyes effect. I’ve kept it through 80 since I rolled the toon…transmuting as I go.

Also the masks, I am sad. My necro was the first character I made when the game first came out, making the character I didn’t know if it would be permanent or not – so I picked something discrete. Later found out I could just remove it, however I picked something lame, didn’t like it and threw away.

Now I wish I KNEW before doing all that, so not only would I pick the one I actually wanted, but would also KEEP it, not knowing I’d never get it again :c

This is also true for joining the orders (vigil, priory, whispers), when picking a side I didn’t know they had specific armors you could buy, even less did I know you could only buy the ones you joined, even less did I know you’d NEVER be able to buy any other… I mean we should have gotten told these things, somehow, somewhere in game when first starting the game.

I’m just sad I’m doomed to never have the necro mask I want, and be stuck with the choice of a HIDEOUS priory light armor.

You can create a new necro with that mask in another character slot. The mask will be soulbound, but if you transmute it to a basic white headpiece from a vendor it is no longer bound. Then, put it in your bank, and have your 80 character pick it up. AFAIK, that ability hasn’t changed with the last patch.

As for the Order armor, I agree that the player really gets duped by the insufficiency of advice/warning of the consequences when choosing an order.

You’ll have 30% crit dmg from points in SR plus crit dmg from Berserker weapons, if you go with them. The issue is that if you want to leverage that nice boost to crit dmg, you’ll need to make sure you get 50ish% crit chance so you’ll crit often enough to make it pay off. Otherwise, probably just go for power and survivability (Soldiers gear, Crest of the Soldier, etc.).

It contains a special guide on how to master Death Shroud and an axe with 50% more damage.

/sarcasm off

(Sorry…just had to do that.)

Lalangamena.3694:

one month for a BiS item on 100% probability is fine.

especially if you have to invest 20 minutes a day for it.

This is my view too. If you want the gear more urgently, go do fractals.

ANet has to balance laurel rewards in relation to running fractals.

I have a Charr and an Asura necro. I like them both (I’d post pics, but I’m at work.)

I do have to agree that the Charr light armor mostly sucks.

See also this stickied thread for many pics:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Lets-see-your-Necromancers/71832

I think I’d try Spectral Mastery instead of VP, since 60s is a long CD on SWalk.

You don’t specify a second weapon. If you’re not using staff I’d suggest focus OH, for LF refill, regen and vuln.

Looks pretty good!

Necro is the DoT profession you are looking for.

OP, read up on Epidemic. Its fine to stack conditions fast on one target, but when you can take any target with conditions and spread those to 5 others, that is your condition profession.

I use scepter/dagger & scepter/focus. Focus4 is great for life force refilling, regeneration and vulnerability. The latter goes very well with death shroud Life Blast, as long as you have decent Power.

I use 20/30/0/10/10 or 20/30/020/0, with Rabid gear with Crests of the Rabid, mostly Rampager trinkets with Emerald orbs, and Rampager/Carrion mix of weapons. This gives me a nice mix of condition dmg and direct dmg, with about 50% crit chance.

I like the new dailies. A little variety, goes pretty quick, and not hard (at least for an 80).

Just don’t ever put a jumping puzzle in the dailies – I hate those with a ragequit passion!

I’ve done this alot with DS, spaz-clicking F1 twice. Doh!

See the Juggermancer build:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Juggermancer-Final-Blog-Link/first#post772683

Avrilliest.2836:

Oh also – any good ideas on where Vets spawn regularly? I tried frozen maw … but I think there are better areas. Know of any?

Try Gendarran Fields and Harathi Hinterlands. There are several Veteran Harathi around there.

It is just a display issue. Same issue with the Lich runes. You can verify this by turning off your auto-attack, and using just BiP on a target and looking immediately at the number of seconds the bleed has left on it.

I wonder if Reaper’s Precision has an ICD? The wiki doesn’t state one. Just curious.

This is the case for all the On-Kill 25 stack sigils.

Whenever I’ve tried Reaper’s Precision, I’ve not seen any notable improvement in LF refill, and I usually have 45-60% crit chance, depending on my build at the time.

As to which is worse, well Reanimator, of course, since you can’t avoid it in DM.

No AoE nerf, some skill bug fixes and a minion AI fix. I’ll take it!

You could add those Ascended items into the tables on the sheets “Armor Stats” and “Trinket Stats” and then they’d be available.