Necromancer - Core Condi Roamer

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

Focused on: Condition damage

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on March 19, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A condition based core Necromancer build for WvW roaming centered around Fear chains.

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.

• Warhorn remains a perfectly viable option even for expansion owners, offering an unblockable Fear and better mobility in exchange for longer cast times and lower Fear duration (unless traited). You can read more suggestions regarding the Warhorn variant below.

Utility

For the optional slot:

• Corrosive Poison Cloud - excellent sustain tool against both ranged and melee, it's even good at pressuring targets.

• Well of Corruption - great AoE pressure against groups, and could scare off melee enemies for a few moments.

• Summon Flesh Wurm - more mobility and a stun break with a bit of Life Force gain on the side.

• Spectral Armor - medium CD stun break, defense against strike damage and excellent LF building.

• Corrupt Boon - on-demand boon removal, post-nerf this is mostly a tech-option against builds with Stability spam. You're not guaranteed to hit the right boon but it's your best bet at countering specs with high Stability uptime.

Elite

None of the options are that great for this build, they are just different shades of passable:

• Plaguelands - area denial tool that can scare off attackers, make it harder to rez downed enemies, or inflict heavy damage on targets trapped inside Spectral Ring, forcing them to either tank it or cross the ring and get feared. This skill isn't hard to avoid however outside of these niche scenarios and has a fairly high CD. Also takes quite a while for the damage to ramp up.

• Summon Flesh Golem - the idea here is to use a weaker elite with a low recharge time and grab Relic of the Nightmare for another source of Fear.

• Lich Form - this elite mostly scales with Power, a stat this build is lacking. Still it offers some minor burst damage and an AoE Fear.

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Specializations

Variants

• Banshee's Wail lowers your survivability but makes your Warhorn skills stronger, most notably improving the Fear duration on skill #5 and the Swiftness uptime from skill #5.

Variants

• If you feel like you're not getting enough value out of Dhuumfire in your fights because you often find yourself Life Force starved or focused too hard and don't have opportunities to use shroud autos, then consider picking up Eternal Life 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.

Equipment

Head
Trailblazer

Shoulders
Trailblazer

Chest
Trailblazer

Hands
Trailblazer

Legs
Trailblazer

Feet
Trailblazer

Backpiece
Trailblazer

Accessory
Trailblazer

Accessory
Trailblazer

Amulet
Dire

Ring
Rabid

Ring
Rabid

Pistol
Trailblazer

Warhorn
Trailblazer

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Trailblazer

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Relics

• Relic of Speed - significantly improves your mobility (which is the biggest weakness of the build), works best with Warhorn and Banshee's Wail. The only reason we're not recommending this as the main option is due to the lack of consistency against boon removal. Necromancer lacks frequent access to Swiftness or even a decent amount of cover boons, which makes it very easy for enemies with any amount of boon removal to strip our Swiftness and render a relic like Speed ineffective.

• Relic of Evasion - better survivability.

Sigils

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing over Generosity - if you're having trouble dealing with conditions. At this point you could also consider dropping the Rabid rings for Dire for a slightly more tanky but lower damage option.

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Agility over Generosity - the brief Quickness makes it easier to get a Fear off right after weapon swapping, while the Swiftness fits nicely into the Warhorn + Relic of Speed variant - adding another source of Swiftness makes you less susceptible to boon removal.

Runes

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Traveler - the stats on this are fairly weak, but it could provide better mobility when playing with offhand Sword.

Consumables

Food:

• - passive damage mitigation and great stats.

• - more active damage mitigation via dodging.
  • - budget version

Utility:

• Optimal:

• Budget: (found in Canned Food Crates looted from WvW Skirmish Chests)

Usage

General

• If taken Use Summon Flesh Golem before you mount up so you don't have to cast this at the start of combat right after dismounting.

• Consider building up your Life Force on critters and hostile NPCs before setting out to fight players.

• Both weapon sets have access to Fear: Reaper's Mark on Staff and either Wail of Doom or Devouring Visage on the other set.
  • The Staff and Warhorn fears are also unblockable but the Sword one isn't.

• All of your marks are unblockable and generate Life Force.
  • Tip: enemy players who block Staff skills can work against themselves. Long duration blocks such as Shield Stance give you more than enough time to land important staff skills like Chilblains with little to no risk of being avoided as blocking players normally don't dodge.

Damage

• Fear is the strongest damaging condition in the build thanks to Terror.

• Pistol/Sword (or 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.

• When playing with Scepter Feast of Corruption 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.

• On Pistol Vile Blast can be used to quickly set up a Fear chain.

• There are 4 sources of Fear in the build, try chaining them together when you're going for the kill on an already pressured target:
  • Doom - Shroud #3.
  • Wail of Doom - Warhorn #4 OR Devouring Visage - Sword #5.
  • Reaper's Mark - Staff #5.
  • Spectral Ring - 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 Scepter autoattack chain is far superior to Staff's in terms of damage, it could even apply Poison for healing reduction.

• Putrid Mark is a Blast finisher, you may combo this with Chillblains for AoE Weakness or Spectral Ring for AoE Chaos Armor.

• Life Blast with Dhuumfire is a great filler while in Shroud.

Sustain

• The build has above average condition cleansing by Necromancer standards.

• Both entering and exiting shroud removes conditions thanks to Plague Sending and Unholy Martyr.

• Spectral Walk (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 ⇒ Spectral Recall when your enemies jump after you.
  • Activate SW ⇒ Necrotic Traversal (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!

• Even at maximum health you may consider activating either Spectral skills before entering shroud. The added LF generation and sustain can prolong its duration significantly.

• Consume Conditions 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.

Related Builds

• Core Condi Necro - the Conquest PvP version of this Necromancer roaming build.