Necromancer - Vanilla Condi Necro
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 November 05, 2023 and is up to date for the November 07, 2023 game patch.
Overview
A Condition Necromancer PvP build with a big focus on Fear chains, made to teamfight. Usable by F2P players as well.
Skill Bar
Scepter/Warhorn
Staff
Utility
Skill Variants
Weapons
- Pistol over Scepter - Pistol is a faster weapon, which is quite handy in a build infamous for its long cast times. It works better under pressure and requires less setup, but while the extra CC is quite strong, you do have to give up a boon corruption for it which could otherwise be used to turn
Stability into
Fear (your most important condition). The only real weakness of Pistol is its reliance on projectiles, this could make it harder for you to pressure certain specs like support Tempests. Pistol is usually worth it, but requires the Secrets of the Obscure and End of Dragons expansions so it's not an option for F2P players.
Elite
- - adds burst damage to the build and has some
Fear synergy, but doesn't work quite as well with due to its long CD. It's still a good option but you should look for a different relic, like Evasion or Fractal.
Template Code
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Specializations
Variants
- could slightly improve your Warhorn
Fear duration at the expense of survivability and group utility.
Equipment
Scepter
Warhorn
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.
- Entering Shroud triggers . If you're CC'd and getting focused you can enter shroud to rip boons and apply
Weakness as a defensive measure.
- can act as a counter to
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 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 to the build.
- is taken for its synergy because this is the shortest CD core Necromancer elite skill. The
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 in the build, try chaining them together when you're going for the kill on an already pressured target:
- - use your elite skill to proc this once every 30 seconds.
- - Shroud #3.
- - Warhorn #4.
- - Staff #5.
- - utility skill. The ring applies
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.
- The Sceper autoattack chain is far superior to Staff's in terms of damage, it could even apply
Poison for healing reduction.
- is a Blast finisher, you may combo this with for AoE
Weakness or for AoE .
- Shroud burst rotation (in melee range this doubles as a defensive rotation):
- to proc
- just before Dark Path reaches the target
- Spam
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.
Top Streamers
- Twitch: Naru
- Twitch: Bel
Related Builds
- Core Condition Roamer - the WvW Roaming version of this sPvP build.
Ratings

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.

Been a strong build since 2012. Good teamfighter, versatile, tanky, positioning is important though.

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.

Amazing sustain and dps, perfect for any situation and has basically 0 skill cap

This is one of the best build for the necro. Simple but tankier and better sustain than scourge and reaper.

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 😄👍

Good if you want blood and curses. Tanky is the best word for this one

Lol, I honestly thought I would do bad without reaper, but it's actually VERY good, nice condition damage.

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.

Quite literally the best f2p build out there, good Condi dmg, good survivability,

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.

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!
Comments
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