Necromancer - Vanilla Condi Necro

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The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Condition damage and Boon removal

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:
Easy
This build was last updated on March 04, 2024 and is up to date for the March 19, 2024 patch.

Overview

A Condition Necromancer PvP build with a big focus on Fear Fear chains, made to teamfight. Usable by F2P players as well.


Skill Bar

Pistol/Sword
Staff
Utility


Skill Variants

Weapons

  • To play Pistol/Sword you need to own both the Secrets of the Obscure and End of Dragons expansions. SotO's where you unlock Sword and Weaponmaster Training while EoD is required for the Pistol.
  • Free-to-play players are going to have to play Scepter/Warhorn instead of Pistol/Sword.


Heal

  • - it's a better healing skill if you're expecting to face mostly Power-based specs and won't have to deal with conditions much.


Elite

  • - the idea here is to use a worse elite, but exploit the low CD with for another long duation AoE fear proc.


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Specializations

Variants

  • could slightly improve your Warhorn Fear Fear duration at the expense of survivability and group utility. This is also giving you better Swiftness Swiftness uptime so you may even consider droping Rune of the Lynx for something stronger (like ), although this'd still leave you vulnerable to boon removal.

Variants

  • If you feel like you're not getting enough value out of in your games because you often find yourself Life Force starved or focused by the enemy team and don't have opportunities to use shroud autos, then consider picking up instead. Eternal Life is a decent defensive CD in general, especially in a build that doesn't have a lot of instant cast defensive abilities.


Specialization Variants

Death Magic Death Magic over Blood Magic Blood Magic. Both of these are strong defensive specializations, DM offers better damage mitigation and condition cleansing while BM adds extra healing and group utility to the build:


Equipment

Pistol
Sword
Sigil
Sigil
Staff
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
Amulet
Relic


Usage

General

  • Positioning: Necromancer sustain is far from great. Keep out of melee range whenever possible and abuse spots which break teleport skills to make it harder to get to you. Don't stand on capture points unless you absolutely have to.
  • All of your marks are unblockable and generate Life Force.
  • Never spam your marks on the ground out of combat - they are easy to spot and a single dodge from the enemy can get rid of them. The only exception can be (because it's not a key skill and has a low CD), which you can freely place at an entrance or under yourself to potentially give away Stealthed enemy movement.
  • Both weapon sets have access to unblockable CC skills: on Staff and on Scepter/Warhorn.
  • can act as a counter to Blind Blind when used in melee range of any enemy. This skill frequently pulses damage around you which can "consume" the blind on you, causing a tick of Locust Swarm to miss instead of some important skill you're casting.


Damage

  • The build is all about keeping targets constantly pressured before finishing them off with Fear Fear chains. Fear is the strongest damaging condition in the build thanks to .
  • Scepter/Warhorn is a bit more bursty while Staff is more of a utility weapon used to snare targets, transfer conditions, and CC/build Life Force from range.
  • is a strong burst skill but only when used on targets with at least 4-5 different conditions. It also corrupts a boon which means with a little luck this could add another source of Fear Fear to the build.
  • is taken for its synergy because this is the shortest CD core Necromancer elite skill. The Fear Fear proc itself has a delay and should go off after the Golem's Charge, which means it won't override the knockdown.
  • There are 5 sources of Fear Fear in the build, try chaining them together when you're going for the kill on an already pressured target:
    • Either when playing with Flesh Golem or when using Lich Form.
    • - Shroud #3.
    • - Warhorn #4 OR - Sword #5.
    • - Staff #5.
    • - utility skill. The ring applies Fear Fear whenever an enemy crosses it, and you could force them to cross by using other sources of Fear on them. The duration of Fear stacks.
  • Both the Scepter and Pistol autoattacks are far superior to Staff's in terms of damage. Scepter could even apply Poison Poison for healing reduction.
  • is a Blast finisher, you may combo this with for AoE Weakness Weakness or for AoE .


Sustain

  • The build has above average condition cleansing by Necromancer standards.
  • Both entering and exiting shroud removes conditions thanks to and .
  • (SW) is great for preventing condition pressure from ramping up on you. Activating its chain skill which "ends" Spectral Walk does not stop the cleansing. This skill has many uses, for example:
    • Activate SW jump off a cliff while being chased when your enemies jump after you.
    • Activate SW (if using Flesh Wurm) teleport back when they catch up to you. This works for stomping downed enemies as well, the channeling isn't interrupted by either of these teleports!
  • should be placed well before entering combat, preferably at a spot where your enemies can't reach it easily. Wurm provides you with an escape route and makes it easier to travel around the map in general. Last but not least, teleporting to the wurm with grants 10% life force, which means you could consider using the teleport before even leaving spawn at the start of a game in order to start off with enough LF for a activation.
  • Even at maximum LF you may consider activating Spectral skills before entering death shroud. The added LF generation and sustain can prolong its duration significantly.
  • is more of a last resort option that should only be used at or below ~50% HP and when other forms of cleansing/healing won't suffice.


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Ratings

This build has a rating of 5 stars based on 12 votes.
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5 stars
Hanz gave this build 5 stars • September 2023
Updated for the Relic patch, it's still quite good. Great CC and damage with decent sustain. Far from meta but definitely solid in ranked.
5 stars
Guirssane gave this build 5 stars • January 2023
Been a strong build since 2012. Good teamfighter, versatile, tanky, positioning is important though.
5 stars
Gkhougaz gave this build 5 stars • October 2022
Extremely comfy teamfighter and surprisingly proficient in 1v1. Very tanky and survivable, and very uncomfortable for teams to play against with large AoE condi spam. Secretly a support build with vampiric presence and if you drop your Spectral Ring in the middle of a teamfight, the prot and fear together can singlehandedly turn the tide of the battle. Personally, I run Lingering Curse for the AoE boon strip and +200 condi dmg, and my secret sauce is replacing Spectral Walk with Signet of Undeath. Signet of Undeath gives you like endless shroud, 500+hp every 3 seconds which supercharges your sustain and a res too, but you have to time it well because it costs 1/3 of your hp.
5 stars
Acedia1092 gave this build 5 stars • January 2022
Amazing sustain and dps, perfect for any situation and has basically 0 skill cap
5 stars
Devil sivad gave this build 5 stars • November 2019
This is one of the best build for the necro. Simple but tankier and better sustain than scourge and reaper.
5 stars
Jonas Wolf gave this build 5 stars • July 2019
I've being playing core necro exclusively for about 6 months and I must admit, I got pretty good with it, i fell like I can play it better than with the expansions. And now after the new patch uhuhuh, I need to say that being able to use skill 4 and 5 on shroud with lower CD is very good, just the skill 2 i would say that now is kinda crap. Regardless, any 1v1 against reaper, scourge, all types of engineer, warriors and guardians, I can deal without much of a problem. The only traits that I change are blood Bond and terror, and I'm good to go 😄👍
4 stars
Baescons gave this build 4 stars • April 2019
Good if you want blood and curses. Tanky is the best word for this one
5 stars
QQSOHARD gave this build 5 stars • January 2017
Lol, I honestly thought I would do bad without reaper, but it's actually VERY good, nice condition damage.
5 stars
Chillaxebro gave this build 5 stars • January 2017
Call me crazy, but this build is amazing even though it loses out on the superior dealers shroud, it has amazing Condi damage, plus good survivability, anyone who says this is garbage is smoking.
5 stars
Tttt6 gave this build 5 stars • January 2017
Quite literally the best f2p build out there, good Condi dmg, good survivability,
5 stars
Zyke gave this build 5 stars • February 2016
Necro without Reaper is still decent as boon corruption is such a big part of it. That being said, I can't give it great rating since Reaper brings much more burst, damage, and CC that vanilla Neco just doesn't have. However, if you don't have HoT, this Necro build is the best you can run.
5 stars
Novuake gave this build 5 stars • February 2016
A little hard to give up the Reaper shroud, but necro is in such a good place right now that even non-elite gets a good recommendation!

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