My Tanky DPS Necromancer For PvE

[Cheshire Rabbid.7430]

I have returned to the game and just want some thoughts on the build I made for me. I made my Necr be a bit tanky with minions take the damages and with the Necro ability to life steal. I also put forces with chile as I can help with putting vulnerability on my enemies and give me critically chance with it. As you can see I like using the minions but I don't know if I should use the flash wurm or the bone fiend. With that siad please take a look at my build and tell me what you think

[Etterwyn.5263]

Get your critical% up to 50% so you can make the most of Decimate Defenses. Change some of that Valkyrie to Marauder.

Unholy Sanctuary is not that great. IF you're going for tanky, Corrupter's Fervor is much much better. You can keep 10 stacks (300 armor) up very easily. So switch to that and put that 300 Toughness into offensive stats, that way you can kill stuff much easier.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRQQNAR3dnM0Adbit1A+1As3glfBDKpFA+ASrgWwUL+IGFviA-jxCBQBVSFEOcRAAwTAANKB1iyANqk7SqMoPdA5RzAWUKoQ1JAA-e

You lose ~2000 health (in PVE you won't miss it) and 120 power, but your base crit rate starts at 50% and will max out 100% with 25 stacks of vulnerability. You will max out your armor at just about the same amount with the Fervor trait. Your battles will go smoother if you can kill faster.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Etterwyn.5263 said:Get your critical% up to 50% so you can make the most of Decimate Defenses. Change some of that Valkyrie to Marauder.

Unholy Sanctuary is not that great. IF you're going for tanky, Corrupter's Fervor is much much better.

I don't know why people think this... Although Corrupter's Fervor is definetly an option for PVE, Unholy Sanctuary is perfectly viable...it's just 99% of people don't understand how it's supposed to be used.

[Etterwyn.5263]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Etterwyn.5263" said:Get your critical% up to 50% so you can make the most of Decimate Defenses. Change some of that Valkyrie to Marauder.

Unholy Sanctuary is not that great. IF you're going for tanky, Corrupter's Fervor is much much better.

I don't know why people think this... Although Corrupter's Fervor is definetly an option for PVE, Unholy Sanctuary is perfectly viable...it's just 99% of people don't understand how it's supposed to be used.

Do tell, then. If I were running a glass build I would take the trait. But isn't the point of a "tank" build not to take much damage? And seldom if ever do I not activate shroud in time to not get downed in pve.

I've soloed champs with Water sigils (pre nerf). Soloed with Blood sigils. The build is already overkill for sustain since minions will take all the heat. If you can get 300 toughness with a trait, that's 300 points you can put into offense.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Etterwyn.5263 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Etterwyn.5263 said:Get your critical% up to 50% so you can make the most of Decimate Defenses. Change some of that Valkyrie to Marauder.

Unholy Sanctuary is not that great. IF you're going for tanky, Corrupter's Fervor is much much better.

I don't know why people think this... Although Corrupter's Fervor is definetly an option for PVE, Unholy Sanctuary is perfectly viable...it's just 99% of people don't understand how it's supposed to be used.

Do tell, then. If I were running a glass build I would take the trait. But isn't the point of a "tank" build not to take much damage? And seldom if ever do I not activate shroud in time to not get downed in pve.

I've soloed champs with Water sigils (pre nerf). Soloed with Blood sigils. The build is already overkill for sustain since minions will take all the heat. If you can get 300 toughness with a trait, that's 300 points you can put into offense.

I mean for PVE, ya you'd want to take Corrupter's Ferver, since it's a much more passive form of sustain.

But Sanctuary basically has "more potential" in that it can be a much better source of sustain depending on the fights, mechanics, and how it's played.

The way i see it, Sanctuary has the potential to give you 20 thousand life force, when you don't have access to shroud (which is a window your allotted every 10 seconds.)

Consider the following Scenario

• Let's say your fighting some creature. You start with 20 thousand health, 0 Life Force, and a skill that takes your Life force from 0 to 100, with a 10 second cooldown.This creature now attacks you for 5k damage every 2 seconds. Lets say you instantly pop your life force skill, and enter shroud. For the next 8 seconds, you will tank those remaining 5k hits. Your 8 seconds are up and now you are forced out of shroud. Your Life force skill has 2 seconds of cooldown remaining before being used again, and your Shroud is now on cooldown for 10 seconds.

In this scenario you are looking at certain death within the next 8 seconds.

• Now let's say we have sanctuary. We follow the same scenario mentioned above. You're looking at "certain death" in the next 8 seconds. But because you have Sanctuary, you can use your Life force skill to get you from 0 to 100. When you get hit on that 8th second, Sanctuary will trigger, and you are now able to survive for another 8 seconds. Once those 8 seconds are up, you are forced out of shroud, and then after one more strike, you will die.

So what sanctuary did for you in the above scenario, was provide you an extra 8 seconds, when otherwise, that 8 seconds wouldn't have been available to you. In an spvp environment, this is actually really really strong. In PVE, time isn't really that important, which is why i say that Fervor is actually viable as well (probably a preferred choice for most.)

Irregardless of pve or pvp envirnment, those 8 seconds are a staple value that only sanctuary can provide. In a more realistic setting, the maximum potential time that this skill can give to you is 20 seconds. That's a lot of time...time for skills to go off cool-down, time for dealing damage in shroud, time for escaping a fight...Time to think about what to do next. Lastly, consider that Sanctuary's effect has a 30 second cooldown in itself. That means that if you mitigate enough damage, you can in PERPETUITY be immortal, because Sanctuary will trigger whenever you have a lethal blow, and if you limit all lethal blows to only 1 within a time frame of 30 seconds...well the math speaks for itself.

[Teratus.2859]

With 25 stacks of sigil perception and 25 stacks of vun on the enemy your crit chance will easily hit around 69% crit chance without you needing to invest anything in the precision stat.

I have a full Soldiers stat MinionMaster power tank that utalizes this method effectively giving me Paladin stats in PvE and WvW, Paladin Stats currently being a PvP exclusive stat set.The only difference between my stats and the PvP Paladin Stats is that my PvE stats are actually higher despite only 3 stats actively being used via weapons, armour and trinkets.

Paladin PvP amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak.2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, can cap 100% crit chance with Decimate Defences)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My Soldier MM Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

I run Blood and Death Magic along side Reaper to buff minions and through blood magic enhance them with lifesteal.With 10+ minions constantly feeing me lifesteal it makes me stupidly sustainy while still retaining a decent bit of damage potential. (I use Rise, Shadow and Fiend utilities)I can still knock out 20K, sometimes upto 30k Soul Spirals in Shroud if the circumstances are right which is pretty great for something that's extremely tanky.Great build to solo with but excells in groups that can buff you with 25 might, Spotter + fury, Regen and protect.. you'll be quite close to unkillable while still contributing to the damage and almost never, ever going down in the fight.Another plus is with blood magic your Soul Spiral will be capable of putting out 4K AoE healing without any healing power investment every time you use it to both your minions and allies, not to mention having the ability to pull and revive downed allies too so it's pretty easy to keep a small group alive in much of the PvE and dungeon/Fractal content with little effort.

I plan on making a more offensive variant of this build at some point, still working on the concept though.. Might even be a core Necro instead of Reaper.

[Teratus.2859]

@Etterwyn.5263 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Etterwyn.5263 said:Get your critical% up to 50% so you can make the most of Decimate Defenses. Change some of that Valkyrie to Marauder.

Unholy Sanctuary is not that great. IF you're going for tanky, Corrupter's Fervor is much much better.

I don't know why people think this... Although Corrupter's Fervor is definetly an option for PVE, Unholy Sanctuary is perfectly viable...it's just 99% of people don't understand how it's supposed to be used.

Do tell, then. If I were running a glass build I would take the trait. But isn't the point of a "tank" build not to take much damage? And seldom if ever do I not activate shroud in time to not get downed in pve.

Depends what kind of tank you're playing.Some tanks focus on avoiding/blocking damage, others focus on out-sustaining it.Necromancer doesn't have much in the way of avoiding damage outside of shroud form, sure minions can be used to manipulate aggro but that's less reliable than Ranger pets from my experience.Necros are more effective at out healing incoming damage via tons of small pockets of lifesteal being fed to you by all your minions, in that situation you want the enemy to ignore your minions and focus on you instead since the more minions you have, the more incoming healing thus the more damage you can straight up facetank while laughing at your enemies futile attempts to dent your HP bar.

[melandru.3876]

minion master theorycrafting.

now i've seen it all

the ONLY good minion mancer is an afk-farmer.if you play as a minion mancer in metas, people are not to happy with it.power reaper (zerker) is allready tanky as hell, you have double te health of anyone.scourge, is allready tanky as hell both condi and those masochists that play it power

but minion mancer, ye no..then even a soldier minion mancerthat's bearbow tier

"what howcome scar lane is still at 74?""ye we have 4 minion mancers here"

literally a conversation from yesterday's tangled depths man i wish i had screen'd it

[Anchoku.8142]

The Reaper-PowerMM build on Metabattle is more than tanky enough for open world PvE. Minions hold aggro much of the time, if you let them and forego the toughness stat.