d/d was popular as soon as people started playing it, partly due to frustration with other ele builds, and it was fun then it really took off with the healing builds. I stopped reading this forum long ago because almost every post has been about them for many months.
As per above axe/scepter is not ideal for this kind of build. Also as a power glass cannon necro you’re going to be weak in general if you try to dps anyone down – this is not a strength of necro. You need to have dagger offhand for deathly swarm, save your consume conditions until you really need it and you could also try shrouded removal.
If you really want to 1v1 with a necro you’ll need to use other tankier builds.
I have 2 necros so I can leave one set up as a marks/wells bunker. After a lot of fooling around I still haven’t found runes I am overjoyed with but since I started using Sanctuary I haven’t swapped them out.
I’m playing my Guardian again actually since my fear/condition necro got borked with the patch. I’ve been mowing through necros all night. Burning is generally a byproduct and won’t tell you anything about their spec. Unless they are blatantly tankey or heal/support most of the better ones are specced for some offense, toughness, lots of retaliation and boon duration. This is difficult for a lot of classes to deal with because even if you strip retal they have several ways to get it back on. As per above Well of Corruption hurts and dagger is good because it heals you and is steady damage so won’t destroy you when retal is up. Ultimately the key to beating the best Guardians with these kinds of specs is to out tankey them.
I’d say a staff/scepter condition build is best all around, there are still a few ways to go with these. Tinker around in spvp to find out what you like to play. One of the best things about this game and best way to learn a class is the unlimited free lvl 80 respecs in that mode.
I’ve done the best 1v1 against them with 2 builds. My d/d-d/f chill build and my tankiest marks, wells, healing build. Not that I can kill them but I hold my own and they eventually get bored and run away. I play an ele too and getting constantly chilled as one is as bad as it gets.
Overall they made steps mostly in the right direction. Nerfing d/d elementalists is good and I also play an elementalist. The many bug and exploit fixes are all good too. I was getting pretty sick of the engineer crap. It does seem odd that of all the things to buff with necros they helped minion masters but we’ll see it goes.
I cant quite work out the attraction to spec into a Death Shroud build, just seems so limiting with only four skills to choose from, I’d soon get tired of that as a play style.
You use death shroud for the skills, to extend fights and to recycle other skills. And to take long falls … No need to stay in it for long. You actually have 4 sets of skills with 2 weapon sets, DS and Plague or Lich and to be the best you can be you cycle through all of them while other skills recycle.
Specced for power/crit, Life Transfer can be a monster as you watch it go …3k…4k…5k and I’ve wrecked groups dropping Well of Blood to get AOE retaliation combo field then doing this. I’ve also killed a lot of glass cannon thieves under 50% health with a 5k Life Blast. Necros have almost no other way to do this kind of spike damage other than a lucky dagger hit. And yes you’ll be a glass cannon yourself but it’s fun for a change when it all works.
Hey I just saw this thread. I’ve done a lot of dagger builds and any kind of pure dagger build is weak for sure so the main question is what to run with it. The two builds I now use a lot, with d/d and d/f are a chill build with Chilling Darkness and +chill/freeze duration and a power/DS build. It’s fun to build might with Reaper’s Might/Blood is Power and see how high a crit you can get with Necrotic Slash.
I run 2 necros also and have done many many builds across wvw and spvp.
For power builds I always run 30 Spite for Close to Death but not always 30 Soul Reaping, DS is available often enough without Near to Death, the bigger problem is getting lifeforce up. For the other skills I pick between Reaper’s Precision and of course staff with Greater Marks is hard to avoid with any necro build. Transfusion or Vampiric Precision are also good in the right situations.
I use dagger/dagger or dagger/focus and staff. If you have decent crit and Vampiric Precision you can get health and lifeforce off live or downed people. I also always run Signet of the Locust AND Spectral Walk in any PvP now. Life is to short to run around at 0% speed boost. Then with power builds like this Spectral Grasp is a favorite.
Strength – Cool because they are necros, challenging to play if you want that. To be fair their one strength is they can be a survivable support class for groups.
Weakness – They have no greatest strength and are worst overall class in the game with lack of mobility, lack of damage, bad down state and lack of effective stomp boost. Death Shroud is a third set of skills that you are forced to use to play effectively which other classes do not have.
You’re fighting one of the most OP classes/builds in mmorpg history there. They can stealth away and heal and keep coming back at you endlessly at full strength while you lose cooldowns and health and can’t run away. A little thing you can do at say points in spvp is put down a staff 3 mark (chill) and staff 5 mark (fear) in the middle of it then stand on them. This takes away the first attack from the dumb ones and gives you time to react. It’s kind of mind boggling that in-combat stealth was ever and still is in this game.
Nice video and shows how you run staff, scepter, DS. This is similar to what I do. It’s also why a lot of people quit necro I think lol. Brawling with target AOE and cycling through weapons and DS constantly? But it works with enough practice.
I am obligated to add the standard disclaimer. It goes down differently against equally geared and skilled people which is why I test in spvp and wound up with more fear and Terror.
I wonder if this is a joke but I feel obligated to answer.
Necro appears to be a “support” class which means they can’t run or chase or kill anything. I’ve done great duoing with a ranger in wvw but not solo with any build. You can always gank other necros though. Rant over.
Unfortunately probably the best all around 1v1 builds for necro are bunker or minion master. They are also the slowest necros because there are no free slots for speed skills.
If you’re desperate to try I would go with either a d/d-d/f chill necro or what I use in wvw which is staff/scepter, condition damage and fear. Mine is 0/30/20/0/20. People have named these funny things and there are some builds and gear to start with posted in these and other forums. Chillmancer and Conditionmancer maybe?
I’m zeroing in on 600 hours of play just as a necro, i’ve tried every weapon combo there is except axe/dagger. All i was ask was for theoretical builds.
I got that and tried to answer. I didn’t mention that I’ve tried retaliation builds because I haven’t found any that were any good. I think the main problem is retaliation effectiveness is so timing dependent. I personally do better with fear and chill. Talking PvP here of course – any and all. Maybe try 4x rune of sanctuary and 2x rune of monk for more retaliation and boon duration. Good news I guess is Spiteful Vigor is only lvl VII and Spiteful Spirit is in Spite line so 30/0/20/0/20 could be a decent DS build. Only other idea is work in Chilling Darkness but then you’d want focus offhand for at least one weap set. Hope that helps a little.
Axe is the worst Necro weapon, you’ll give up on it eventually. It’s main use is as the lazy man’s dagger where you don’t want to have to deal with the more frantic dagger play.
There are 2 main builds that can use axe but are better with dagger:
1) Minion master where you need axe or dagger for your minions to be responsive. You’ll move on from these builds eventually but they’re good for noobs.
2) DS builds where axe is ok for building life force. Real players don’t post builds but try 30/10/0/0/30.
I don’t post much in these forums but have pvp’ed since release, about half the time on a necro. I think anyone who doesn’t recognize that necros are the worst all around class are delusional. That being said they are complex and challenging to play which is why I keep at it. Fixing the broken classes/builds ie thief, mesmer and d/d ele and exploits are the first needs. After that necros still obviously need more damage output and more mobility. When I can’t even catch guardians … I don’t expect anything at this point as it’s been months and I pay them nothing and I’ll admit my interest is waning.
