Necromancer WvW Zerg Build

This is my Necromancer WvW build. I’ve tried many different builds from condition epidemic builds to super tanky builds and even full glass cannon builds and I think this build is the best WvW build for a Necromancer that I’ve ever used. This build gives the Necromancer plenty of survivability while providing great AoE damage. The purpose of the build is to take advantage of the Necromancer’s exceptional AoE abilities.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3djMaV6Zaab87JAJFX/ckiiHm6x6sfOA-jUyAYrIjuAIIAEBIqAc2rIasthioxqtx0vER1yAUsAA-w

Final Stats
3267Power (with Bloodlust stacks)
50% Crit Chance
47% Crit Damage
2785 Toughness
21892 Health
20% Boon Duration
30% Life Force Pool

Food Used:
Loaf of Saffron Bread
-20% damage while stunned, knocked down, or knocked back
-20% condition duration

Master Maintenance Oil
Gain precision equal to 6% of your toughness
Gain precision equal to 4% of your vitality

The role of this build:
This build fulfills the role of a backliner but allows you to push with frontliners as well. At the start of a fight you should push with the frontliners to help absorb some of the damage. Even though Necromancers are a scholar class and a casting one they are some of the best frontliners as well. The death shroud mechanic allows Necromancers to frontline just as effectively as guardians or warriors. After the initial push the Necromancer should disengage and pull back into a backliner role. If you want to front line all the time then use full PVT gear with this build instead.

Trait Explanation:

20 Curses:
The first trait taken is Chilling Darkness which is awesome in WvW. This trait chills foes for 1 sec every time you blind them, it may seem underwhelming but it is an awesome trait to have. This will work with Plague form 2 skill which poisons, blinds, and also chills targets and its AoE as well.
Our second trait is focused rituals for targetable wells. No explanation necessary here.

20 Death Magic:
I absolutely hate this trait line but I go into it for the mandatory Greater Marks trait as well Staff Mastery. Staff is our main weapon and both traits increase the effectiveness of our staff skills. Faster recharge time on our staff skills is crucial especially for our 4 and 5 skills.

30 Soul Reaping:
First trait gives our life blast 1 skill a piercing effect which is awesome in large fights especially since life blast  hits pretty hard.

Second trait is Soul Marks which increases life force generation of marks by 3%. Marks give no life force generation at all and we lack skills that increase life force generation, in fact we only have 1 skill that gives life force generation and thats attached to the worst auto attack in the game, staff 1. This helps out a lot to increase your life force pool. This skill synergizes well with Greater Marks and Staff Mastery as well. Also the minor trait here gives a free protection boon that triggers when your health reaches 50%. This minor trait can save your life sometimes.

Third trait is Foot in the Grave which gives stability for 3 seconds everytime you enter Death Shroud. This trait is awesome and prevents the Necromancer from becoming a pinball in WvW. This also prevents interrupts to your Life Transfer skill. Life Transfer does great AoE damage and having it interrupted is a huge hit to damage output. The second minor trait in curses also gives fury for 5secs every time you enter Death Shroud which makes Life Transfer crit more often and thus hit harder. The minor trait here gives an extra 5% damage if life force is above 50%.

Videos of build in action:

I have many other videos under my Necromancer WvW playlist as well

Ideal Rotation:
Why is it important to follow a rotation?
If your guild uses combo fields and blast finishers to increase effectiveness Necromancers cannot just spam every single skill and cooldown at the beginning of a push. Our wells are shadow fields and staff 3 is a poison field. If we use these skills when guild group is calling for a specific combo to be used then you will mess up those combos. Therefore a rotation that doesn’t use those skills with combo fields is necessary.

What do I do if I can’t follow the rotation and have to improvise?
Whatever you do don’t use wells or staff 3 if you have to improvise

Start off pushing with the frontliners with a staff and use 4 > 5. Switch to Axe/Focus then grab a target and use 4 > 3. Go into death shroud and use 5 > 4 then you can start using wells and switch back to staff as soon as you can.

staff 4 > 5 > switch weapons > 4 > 3 > death shroud > 5 >4 > use wells > switch to staff ASAP

When it comes to PvP the ideal rotation can’t always be used. Sometimes you have to improvise. Most of the time you might have to cut out most of the rotation and go straight into Death Shroud if you see you didn’t get any stability before the push. If you go with the usual rotation you’ll be affected by all the line of wardings and static fields put down and fall behind the group. Pay attention to your boon bar. If you don’t see stability forego the entire rotation and start at the Death Shroud part.

Tips to use this Build:
Save staff 4 for when you have lots of conditions, setting up an AoE bomb, or when you have a large bleed stack on yourself. DO NOT JUST SPAM THIS SKILL.

When going into plague form, spam 2 and only 2 skill. The poison, blind, and chill is far better than the other 2 skills from plague form.

Don’t be in a hurry to put your wells on cooldown. Find a good spot to put them in where they will hit the max amount of players it can for its full duration and watch to see what your teammates are doing.

The great thing about Necromancer survivability is that not every stat point needs to be dumped into getting more armor and health. Death Shroud acts as a second life bar which protects your main life bar in sticky situations. Plague form and constant use of Death Shroud will increase your survivability considerably for those zerg fights. NEVER DIE WITH A FULL BAR OF LIFE FORCE OR PLAGUE OFF COOLDOWN. Thats just bad play.

Kill ambient creatures to raise your life force pool. Don’t go into combat without life force.

What do I do if I get CC’d and caught by the enemy melee train?
Use Spectral Armor immediately and Death Shroud. Spectral armor will not only break the stun but grant you protection which will lessen the damage and Death Shroud will give you 3secs of stability, immediately double dodge roll away before you get caught by an immobilize and then use death shroud 2 on an enemy that is away from the main zerg. Also remember that the food you’re using lessens incoming damage when you’re stunned by 20%. Don’t panic, there’s a good chance you can survive if you get caught.

Damage Mitigation and Avoidance in SWTAAAAAR….err SWTOR

One thing I’ve always never quite fully grasped was how the mitigation and avoidance mechanics work in this game. After doing a ton of research trying to figure this all out and going through tons of posts on the forums (i hate gaming forums) and misinformation trying to explain how the mechanics work I’ve finally figured it out and I will try and explain them as best and as simply as I can.

First off every ability in the game has an attack/ability type. The four different attack/ability types are:

• Melee (White Numbers)
• Ranged (White Numbers)
• Force (Yellow Numbers)
• Tech (Yellow Numbers)

Only MELEE and RANGED abilities will roll against your defense and shield chance. FORGET ABOUT ARMOR RATING WE HAVEN’T GOTTEN TO THAT PART YET

Now in the screenshot below I used Force Choke which is a force/yellow damage attack. Yellow damage numbers means that the ability will always hit and can never be absorbed by a shield or parried/deflected, defense and shield chance ratings have no effect on yellow damage.

The tooltip on the skills pane states that force choke is a force ability

In this other screenshot I used Vicious Slash which is a melee type ability and therefore does white damage. My enemy had a chance to parry my attack and assuming it had a shield equipped it also had a chance to have its shield absorb some of the damage. White damage abilities always have a chance to be parried/deflected or part of the damage absorbed by a shield

The tooltip on the skills pane states that Vicious Slash is a Melee ability

Now so far we haven’t said anything about the armor rating. This is because armor rating has nothing to do with attack type. An abilities attack type determines whether or not the ability will be rolled against your defense/shield chance stat. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ARMOR RATING.

So onto damage types. There are four different types of damage:

• Energy/lightsabers
• Kinetic/blasters
• Internal
• Elemental

Your armor only helps mitigate ENERGY and KINETIC damage

Once again in the screenshot  below I used Force Choke which deals Kinetic damage. Kinetic damage is mitigated by armor so even though my Force Choke bypassed my opponents defense and shield chance my opponents armor is mitigating the damage done by my Force Choke, not that it will help this mob very much anyway

The tooltip for Force Choke states that the damage type is Kinetic

Now Vicious Slash does weapon damage and since I’m playing a Sith Juggernaut I wield a lightsaber which is energy damage. Energy damage is mitigated by armor. So in this case Vicious Slash had to go through my opponents defense and shield chance ratings and once it passed, the damage was then mitigated by my opponents armor.

An abilities damage type determines whether or not the ability will be mitigated by armor. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DEFENSE AND SHIELD CHANCE.

One last example in case you haven’t quite got it yet

So lets say Bioware adds this new crazy ability into the game called ORMIGA SMAAAAAAASH!!! and the tooltip says it does elemental damage and the abilities pane says it is a melee type attack. Well since its a melee type attack the ability will have to go through my opponents defense and shield chance rating. If it passes it goes on to roll against my opponents armor but because the tooltip says it is elemental damage and armor does not mitigate elemental damage then ORMIGA SMAAAAAAASH!!! will bypass my opponents armor rating

Next post ill try and explain how critical hits and accuracy rating affect my defense/shield and armor. I can already imagine going through a bajillion different formulas people have come up with to explain the affect crit chance and accuracy rating have on armor and defense/shield chance. Leave a comment!

Does anyone know if any class has a force/tech ability that does internal/elemental damage?