ZeftheWicked.3076

In spvp dagger works, bigtime. I'm more tanky on core necro with dagger then on power reaper with gs, the life leech is no joke, nor is the lf generation via fast and hard to avoid auto, unlike reaper's gs huge tells on everything life-force generating.

Bone fiend needs better damage. Most minions are utility, but his immob is questionable at best as utility, while damage lackluster. There is the double projectile finisher utility, but necro casts his fields under enemy, not his own feet, And if he does cast them under self (wells) then they are dark fields that end up healing the minion - not exactly the benefit you'd call "slot worthy".

Your build is severely lacking in necro-themed defenses. Here are few ways to defend proper:

* DOOOOOOOOOODGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

* corrupt their boons - burst ain't burst if it's without max might stacks on it (or at least close ot it), fury and maybe some quickness - rip or corrupt those

* cc them - nothing like a nice fear to stop them in their tracks

* weakness - one of the biggest middle fingers you can erect vs power builds - their amazing crit can drop to less then 1/4 damage when this triggers. Corrosive poison cloud and Weakening Shroud (trait) are go to sources of it.

* protection and other damage reducers - pretty self explanatory. As necro you have bountiful access to protection if you build for it

* blinds - well of darkness or/and reaper's nightfall

* foot in the grave + speed of shadows + shroud - breaks stun, breaks immob, you're free to dodge their burst.

* spectral armor + shroud - unless a given hit depletes shroud, it'll take 50% of damage your health would. Your enemies can't do nothing about it. Slab some protection + 8% life force regen each second if you're getting hit and things will get way tankier.

* Paladin amulet - gives both toughness and vitality. Vitality is very good for your shroud. As said before, as long as it doesn't deplete your life force down to 0, any hit will deal only 50% to it of what it would normally. Bigger life force pool = harder to quicky deplete it and ergo lot more damage gets eaten up by it.

* stick close to your team, don't rush into the enemy. If yout team's got brains they will protect you.

He needs 40 for reaper shroud, first 30 let him use greatsword, but not reaper shroud. I assume that's the core issue of his problem, he didn't train it yet for one reason or another.

If you're starting from scratch then ranger, warrior and necromancer are recommended due to their natural tankyness and room for mistakes.

Exactly. This build will most likely work **in high elo** where teams know that necro needs protection and care about providing him such.

But in low elo you're often left to your own devices, forced to run to side node (cause nobody sees it gettting decapped/fullcapped), or are alone claiming objective cause once again you can't count on your team to be there as they should, and it's you or nobody. Such scenarios require a tough as nails build that can handle 1v1 skirmishes , 1v2 time stalls, as well as being a competent teamfighter often in the middle of things. A kiss out to rangers who just pew pew with longbow while i'm forced to hop on a node else it's a free giveaway to enemy team!

Here's the build i invented and run, my core battlemage:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBIhdu1IHN0Tj10gtNwhjDjha2DLQOQDiqYIi/cAMAA-jpxHQB0rMw3OCAD8gAAgTAg/eAAlb/BA

It's very tanky (while also doing respectable damage) and has huge amount of synergies between it's skills. Also the slot #8 (well of corruption) is the optional skill. You can put in there corrosive poison cloud, well of suffering, well of darkness...whatever strikes your fancy. It does not have the sheer boon corrupt of author's build, and the cc is bit weaker (no reaper's mark or chillblains). What you do get here however is:

* 4 stunbreaks + stab on shroud

* much stronger life leech (dagger + lich form #5)

* stronger life force generation (spectral armor, dagger auto, focus #4)

* strong condi cleanse (consume conditions, speed of shadows). You can also use Unholy Martyr if need be. Not everything here is a well, you have protection from other sources.

* much better for handling scourges then reapers!

I have fought and often given a run for their money with thieves, guardians, engies. I won't say spellbreakers, because i don't know them that well and that costs me painful defeats, but if you do know them - I think this build can put them in their place with small changes where needed.

Once you get your ass to high gold or low plat, you can switch the build to much more specialized one that OP proposed, at that stage it'll be better because it'll be focusing on doing what necro is supposed to do, at expense of being much more team-dependant.

Well that depends indeed on how it's measured. Is it by character profession on account, or time each is played vs rest across all accounts. Don't know their algorhitm, so can't say.

To be fair necro has a bit of red hidden here and there (life leech animations on blood fiend signet of locust and dagger #2). My necro look plays with that and result is very consistent with his kit.

As for new colors - hell no! I play necro because of his death theme backed by green/black pallete with bit of ghastly blue and blood red in certain places. For same reason i'm not touching mesmer - i hate pink!

If a-net provided skins that change skillset colors like in League of Legends, I'd be cool with that, as long as the base elite spec stays a necro color wise. The vomit yellows on scourge were already a stretch imho.

Nice site! Also damn, the balance in player population for each profession is mmo dev's wet dream, almost everything has equal representation!

Least popular? Who told you that? There's a ton of necros in competitive modes and tons of us in open world. Necro might be the most popular profession of all or at least high up there with eles , guards and warriors.

Care to elaborate?

1. Did someone actually achieve legendary with this?

2. Instructions of use for aspiring core necros?

3. What is it's purpose (dueling, team fighting, holding a node, +1 from range)?

4. What about it's obvious flaws (extremely poor anti-cc, staff having very limited use in power build, clear lack of melee option when jumped) ?

From initial looks this build is so-so in my eyes, and if someone achieved legendary with this, it would be due to player's skill and having very good protection from team, not the build itself. I am looking forward to you countering my observations.

Bit late to the party but:

There are two stat sets that are available only via Living Story or having legendary gear:

Seraph (Condition damage + Precision main stats, Healing Power and Concentration secondary) and Plaguedoctor (same thing, except Vitality instead of Precision). These belong to respectively S3 ep 4 (Head of the Snake) and S4 ep 3 (Long Live the Lich)....which you can unlock right now for free if you got PoF.

Another big miss out is legendary accessory (Aurora). It is the final reward you can aim for from full set of Living Story season 3 maps. Other then that living story maps are generally a fun and well designed supplement to core ones. Core HoT maps and PoF maps will give you access to main features and gear stat sets.

Living Story maps will provide few useful additions, but mostly places to farm things you cannot easily farm elsewhere (karma, crafting materials for end game gear, laurel and guild currency free accessory sets).

Also am not sure about legendary weapons. Almost all releases had a new legendary weapon on board. If that's just a tag-along, or few of them are indeed locked behind having the episode they were released with, i don't know.

Anyway - farm up that gold, change it to gems and buy your episodes as you go ;)

There are few very practical yes also costy things to get for your gems. You already have a permanent crafting pass from Ultimate PoF edition, so that's one off the list. Other "must haves" are:

1. Copper Fed salvage-o-matic. And maybe his bigger brother - Silver Fed Salvage-o-Matic. Huge boon. Put that guy in shared inventory slot and no more salvage kit nightmares for any of your characters, ever.

3. Permanent gathering tools - gathering works wonders for your budget if you tend to stop at nearby nodes when doing map completion. Unless you're out, and who knows when you'll remember/care to resupply. Also some of these tools have extra effects like gathering additional materials that normal tools don't (Unbound & Volatile magic gathering tools for one)

4. Shared inventory slots - there's a sale tommorow for those. Highly desired and practical. Anything you put there is considered "held" by all your characters. Things like salvage-o-matics, and permanent crafting passess love sitting there. Also pretty handy for Living Story portal tomes (you get those ingame for respective map currency).

5. Living story chapters - if you didn't get them in some bundle, you will need to buy them to get access to Living story maps and other content that happened between xpansions (Living Story Season 3, and Living Story Season 4 (current)).

And proper body type of your character. This can make a single armor piece go from bad joke to pure bada**.

Necro staff should be a warrior weapon.

..because after 4s tops you wanna swap it out a.s.a.p.

Nvm i found option to shut it in the options menu.

Anyway to stop that visual trainwreck from displaying around the smexy symbol?

I'm gonna challenge you notion Nimon.

1. you didn't mention spotter in your calculations. Another free 7% crit in raid.

2. I lose 10 power and gain around 9k hp and ~ 70%-80% of that in life force pool.

3. Scholar bonus is tricky. On one hand if you screw up and eat big damage, then true, it will take time to get back up to full health. On the other a good necro should not screw up. If we assume you avoid big fat killing moves as you should, then it's simply a matter of healer outhealing the small, yet unavoidable damage. If he's doing that you'll be at full health, and it'll take more damage to knock you off the >90% hp state. Also shroud shields your hp, so more life force = longer shroud uptime = longer time your >90% health condition is met and safeguarded.

4. we're having this convo just outta boredom i think. A **pro** group, that needs a pro necro that values 10 power over survival does not exist. Because pro groups don't take necros since your damage is still below 30k mark no matter how you flex your muscles. Not so pro ones on the other hand may need a beefier player with ability to quickly ress the rest when things go south, instead of getting downed along with the rest.

Well that's you. Not every necro can say that, and since vitality = larger lifeforce pool as a bonus, valkyrie builds aren't pointless.

And also if that sigil of accuracy hurts your eyesight to much, you can always use berserker gear here and there instead of valk to get that missing 7% crit, keeping rest valkyrie. Nothing lost, and some sustain gained!

Passive ICD is good, because it keeps healing value high (least when traited). You want no icd? Say hi to vampiric in blood magic and check out it's healing values. Few pixels right and you get vampiric presence that has 1/2s icd - check out it's healing values. You sure you still want that icd removed?

Also moving on to higher level of thinking - vamp signet is not a crappy damage reduction. It is **awesome** damage reduction finisher. Each layer of damage reduction you put is weaker then the last. Example:

Enemy hits you for 1000 damage normally (no defense skills involved).

You set up protection - damage drops by 333 to 667.

You call Rise! for another 33% damage reduction. Now damage drops to 445, but that is only 222 units reduction. First layer was 333.

Each next defense will reduce damage by **less**. But vamp singet is static, it does not geat weaker due to other defenses being in place. If you pair it up with damage reducing skills, you'll be amazed how much sustain you get for it.

What you seek is anti-burst or at least anti-multi-hit. That is indeed job for healing skill we don't have. As said above maybe changing the active to lift the icd for few seconds, leaving rest intact....but passive needs to be left alone, it is good, majorly thanks to Signets of Suffering.

Let me put it this way - If someone told me the necro dev had a house break in during night, only to discover nothing was destroyed nor stolen, but he woke up with bigass tattoo on his chest saying "Fix the gooddamn Death Shroud!" i wouldn't be surprised.

As for eyes....who knows...we have a bit of green flame to our dhuumfire, though i prefer it would carry over to burning effect on enemy not just the application visual. And that asides Death Shroud is extremely boring playwise, visuals aren't half the problem if you ask me.

Hardly a surprise. Spellbreaker is a heavy tanker, which in a way defies what warrior is supposed to be. Berserker is simply "warrior +" so he inherits the core weakness of warrior - being made for short, high dps brutal skirmishes, not for elongated mass brawls. Warr is supposed to go in, and kill it before it kills him. It's the necro that can go in there and fight for 30 mins if need be, as long as he build for it and doesn't miss his life leeches and timed shroud entries.

500k is not much. I had 3 mils and now am down to 960k..

Let me give you bit of advice. Before spending, go to your favourite Living Story 3 or Living Story 4 map and see if you can purchase karmic retribution there (not every map has it). If you can don't be stingy, buy it to full (lvl 3). Then you'll have a place to farm yourself up some karma, you will thank yourself down the road for this.

As for what to spend it on - these maps themselves have few karma sinks. There is also the Pact Supply Network Agent willing to suck you dry of roughly 30k karma daily..

And as ppl said - stuff for legendaries....AND ascended in some cases (fulgurite needs obsidian shards). Easiest way to get those is buying them with karma..

No. Not everyone.

I run trailblazer on my chars. Crusader is an old time favourite for my power reaper build when i need sustain with good damage, and default reaper tools just don't protect me well enough without defense in stats. Valkyrie reaper is a well known, staple choice for near-berserker damage with nearly 10k more max hp, and around 7-8k more in life force pool.

Apothecary (or settler) scourge is known for being disgustingly tanky and supporty. Shaman scourge has less resiliance but big McDonald's level fat life force pool to use for shades.

Renegade can work well with wanderer's stats for power build, as he lacks herald's active defenses, while having huge trait-based crit chance and some nice ferocity boosts. Wanderer's gear gives him stat based defense he needs, and concentration he can use for his alacrity and might casts.

So yeah, there's a ton of berserker clad players, but it's not the only way to play. I personally have no issue with killing my mobs let's say 30% slower, but in exchange not getting downed in every bigger skirmish, and i like to jump into thick and go one man army vs enemy horde.

You think that's bad? Try looking over at condi weapons. 0 damage staff with weak power aa, or recently gutted scepter, as if it wasn't bad enough already with it's uber slow condition stacking and being 1v1 weapon save the grasping dead casts...

I say only reaper enjoys good weapons - his **great**sword can actually become best condi weapon he has if he traits for it, and even his shroud produces very viable melee condi output if he so desires, leaving the "dedicated" garb...i mean condi weapons way behind in the dust where they belong..