Post by Admin on Dec 28, 2023 12:36:10 GMT
Class: Necromancer
Specialization: Reaper
Type: Power Damage / Survival
Designed for: Open World, sPvP, WvW
Tested: Open World, Dungeons, Dragon Response Missions, sPvP, WvW, Fractals, Strikes
Sustained DPS: 8,000-9,000
Introduction:
Inspired by Devil May Cry Series, this is a cosplay-build of Dante. While not being as powerful as his twin-brother Vergil, Dante is quite a tough enemy. His extreme stamina is only rivaled by his cockiness. Surviving pretty much every encounter, no matter the size or strength of his opponents.
Necromancer is considered one of the tougher, newbie-friendly professions. The 2nd HP bar from the shroud-mechanic is quite neat. But most of the necromancer players I have encountered over the years just use this as an excuse to go full glass-cannon. Which often results in them dying as quickly as everyone else. Sometimes the 2nd HP bar is only visible for the duration of the blink of an eye.
This build focuses on a high survivability. Plenty of passive defenses, stun-breaks, cleanses while still offering a decent amount of damage and crowd-control.
Devil Trigger - Power Reaper
Gameplay:
1.) Greatsword
Your melee-weapon for closer range combat. For enemies above 50 % HP, you can stick to the auto-attack-chain + Gravedigger. Upon completing the auto-attack-chain, Gravedigger loses its remaining cooldown. An easy method is to just mash Gravedigger and keep auto-attack on skill 1. Once one of your enemies dropped below 50 % HP, Gravedigger has no longer a cooldown. Which means you can spam it infinitely. But keep in mind that this skill does not generate any Life Force for your Shroud.
Death Spiral (3) can be used when the Vulnerability stacks drop too much.
Nightfall is an AoE blind and should be used to cancel enemy attacks.
Grasping Darkness (5) is a 900 range pull (= crowd control).
2.) Axe + Warhorn
The auto-attack is good to stack Vulnerability.
Ghastly Claws (2) is a good skill to generate some Life Force quickly. Try not to waste it when your bar is full already.
Unholy Feast (3) is an AoE crowd-control + boon-rip. Can be used in combination with Wail of Doom (4).
Locust Swarm (5) can be used to boost up your HP regeneration. Keep in mind, the recovery effect applies to allied players as well.
3.) Shroud
Most players want to spend as much time in this form as possible. In this case however, try to limit it to 15-18 seconds. Then swap out and re-enter shroud when it is available again. The main reason for this strategy is the Soul Barbs passive, which drastically enhances your outgoing damage by 15 % for the first 15 seconds in Shroud and the first 15 seconds after leaving shroud. The boon-duration is optimized to maintain permanent self-quickness & protection if you play like this. It is not as strict as with the meta-builds, which means you are free swap when you feel comfortable.
As you deal more damage on chilled foes, you want to start your shroud activity with Executioner's Scythe (5) or at least right before using the powerful Soul Spiral (4) skill. It is also nice to use Death's Charge (2) while the ice-field is up to gain a Frost Aura for 5 seconds, which reduces incoming damage by 10 %. Infusing Terror (3) is another powerful AoE crowd-control skill.
Defenses:
- permanent Protection (= 33 % damage reduction)
- permanent ~ 20 Carapace (400 toughness)
- Frost Aura via Shroud => Executioner's Scythe + Death's Charge
- 225 toughness
Recovery:
- shouts in general
- "Your Soul is Mine!" healing skill
- Wail of Doom, Warhorn (5)
Note: The trick is to use the recovery-abilities at around 80 % HP. Each of the options is rather weak, but has a short cooldown. Try to keep your HP at maximum as long as possible. Swapping in and out of Shroud also buys you extra time. If you start to heal at around 50% or even 30 %, you will not survive much longer.
Utilities:
All of them are stun-breakers, but try to prioritize "You Are all Weaklings!".
Spectral Walk cleanses additional conditions for Life Force, but is also quite useful with its return-feature to get behind enemies or re-try difficult jumps in Jumping Puzzles.
Spectral Armor is a bit special. You do not see this skill often in Necromancer builds. It converts incoming damage into life-force, which does not sound very charming. We want to save HP, not sacrifice it. Now here is the deal. You can activate it just before entering Reaper Shroud, the effect remains active. This means you can generate extra Life Force while in Shroud, which should not be possible.
It does not generate enough Life Force to cover all of the incoming damage, but it extends the duration significantly when facing normal enemies. This method can also be used to survive lethal attacks that cannot be blocked or dodged normally.
Notes:
You can enhance the uptime of Carapace drastically with the Skale Venom effect. This is a unique utility-buff that needs to be re-applied every 10 minutes. ANet does not really like this. They blocked the use in a lot of places, but it still works great in Open World and a few instances. You build up most of your Carapace from applying Vulnerability to enemies. It usually sky-rockets when you enter shroud and just auto-attack and drops when on Greatsword. But with this trick, you can still maintain the stacks on a high level.
The baseline critical hit-chance is only 35.7 %, but you will crit with almost every hit. The Decimate Defenses trait in the Reaper specialization adds + 2 % critical hit-chance per Vulnerability stack on the target. So you can get ~ 85 % without fury. Fury gives +25 % critical hit-chance. But when you are playing alone, you will barely get that buff. The only source in this build is the elite-skill, which is an AoE crowd-control = do not spam blindly. If you really want to go for 100 % critical hit-chance, you can swap out the Trooper relic for the Relic of the Midnight King. But that will cost you the cleansing via shout.
Toughness. If you manage to maintain 30 Carapace - which is not very difficult, you end up with 825 extra toughness and a total of 1825. Resulting in ~ 22 % damage reduction. At the above mentioned 20 stacks, you get 625 toughness resulting in ~ 17 %. The damage-reduction sadly no longer adds up straight, so reaching 100 % will not happen. But it is still within the reasonable borders.
Specialization: Reaper
Type: Power Damage / Survival
Designed for: Open World, sPvP, WvW
Tested: Open World, Dungeons, Dragon Response Missions, sPvP, WvW, Fractals, Strikes
Sustained DPS: 8,000-9,000
Introduction:
Inspired by Devil May Cry Series, this is a cosplay-build of Dante. While not being as powerful as his twin-brother Vergil, Dante is quite a tough enemy. His extreme stamina is only rivaled by his cockiness. Surviving pretty much every encounter, no matter the size or strength of his opponents.
Necromancer is considered one of the tougher, newbie-friendly professions. The 2nd HP bar from the shroud-mechanic is quite neat. But most of the necromancer players I have encountered over the years just use this as an excuse to go full glass-cannon. Which often results in them dying as quickly as everyone else. Sometimes the 2nd HP bar is only visible for the duration of the blink of an eye.
This build focuses on a high survivability. Plenty of passive defenses, stun-breaks, cleanses while still offering a decent amount of damage and crowd-control.
Devil Trigger - Power Reaper
Gameplay:
1.) Greatsword
Your melee-weapon for closer range combat. For enemies above 50 % HP, you can stick to the auto-attack-chain + Gravedigger. Upon completing the auto-attack-chain, Gravedigger loses its remaining cooldown. An easy method is to just mash Gravedigger and keep auto-attack on skill 1. Once one of your enemies dropped below 50 % HP, Gravedigger has no longer a cooldown. Which means you can spam it infinitely. But keep in mind that this skill does not generate any Life Force for your Shroud.
Death Spiral (3) can be used when the Vulnerability stacks drop too much.
Nightfall is an AoE blind and should be used to cancel enemy attacks.
Grasping Darkness (5) is a 900 range pull (= crowd control).
2.) Axe + Warhorn
The auto-attack is good to stack Vulnerability.
Ghastly Claws (2) is a good skill to generate some Life Force quickly. Try not to waste it when your bar is full already.
Unholy Feast (3) is an AoE crowd-control + boon-rip. Can be used in combination with Wail of Doom (4).
Locust Swarm (5) can be used to boost up your HP regeneration. Keep in mind, the recovery effect applies to allied players as well.
3.) Shroud
Most players want to spend as much time in this form as possible. In this case however, try to limit it to 15-18 seconds. Then swap out and re-enter shroud when it is available again. The main reason for this strategy is the Soul Barbs passive, which drastically enhances your outgoing damage by 15 % for the first 15 seconds in Shroud and the first 15 seconds after leaving shroud. The boon-duration is optimized to maintain permanent self-quickness & protection if you play like this. It is not as strict as with the meta-builds, which means you are free swap when you feel comfortable.
As you deal more damage on chilled foes, you want to start your shroud activity with Executioner's Scythe (5) or at least right before using the powerful Soul Spiral (4) skill. It is also nice to use Death's Charge (2) while the ice-field is up to gain a Frost Aura for 5 seconds, which reduces incoming damage by 10 %. Infusing Terror (3) is another powerful AoE crowd-control skill.
Defenses:
- permanent Protection (= 33 % damage reduction)
- permanent ~ 20 Carapace (400 toughness)
- Frost Aura via Shroud => Executioner's Scythe + Death's Charge
- 225 toughness
Recovery:
- shouts in general
- "Your Soul is Mine!" healing skill
- Wail of Doom, Warhorn (5)
Note: The trick is to use the recovery-abilities at around 80 % HP. Each of the options is rather weak, but has a short cooldown. Try to keep your HP at maximum as long as possible. Swapping in and out of Shroud also buys you extra time. If you start to heal at around 50% or even 30 %, you will not survive much longer.
Utilities:
All of them are stun-breakers, but try to prioritize "You Are all Weaklings!".
Spectral Walk cleanses additional conditions for Life Force, but is also quite useful with its return-feature to get behind enemies or re-try difficult jumps in Jumping Puzzles.
Spectral Armor is a bit special. You do not see this skill often in Necromancer builds. It converts incoming damage into life-force, which does not sound very charming. We want to save HP, not sacrifice it. Now here is the deal. You can activate it just before entering Reaper Shroud, the effect remains active. This means you can generate extra Life Force while in Shroud, which should not be possible.
It does not generate enough Life Force to cover all of the incoming damage, but it extends the duration significantly when facing normal enemies. This method can also be used to survive lethal attacks that cannot be blocked or dodged normally.
Notes:
You can enhance the uptime of Carapace drastically with the Skale Venom effect. This is a unique utility-buff that needs to be re-applied every 10 minutes. ANet does not really like this. They blocked the use in a lot of places, but it still works great in Open World and a few instances. You build up most of your Carapace from applying Vulnerability to enemies. It usually sky-rockets when you enter shroud and just auto-attack and drops when on Greatsword. But with this trick, you can still maintain the stacks on a high level.
The baseline critical hit-chance is only 35.7 %, but you will crit with almost every hit. The Decimate Defenses trait in the Reaper specialization adds + 2 % critical hit-chance per Vulnerability stack on the target. So you can get ~ 85 % without fury. Fury gives +25 % critical hit-chance. But when you are playing alone, you will barely get that buff. The only source in this build is the elite-skill, which is an AoE crowd-control = do not spam blindly. If you really want to go for 100 % critical hit-chance, you can swap out the Trooper relic for the Relic of the Midnight King. But that will cost you the cleansing via shout.
Toughness. If you manage to maintain 30 Carapace - which is not very difficult, you end up with 825 extra toughness and a total of 1825. Resulting in ~ 22 % damage reduction. At the above mentioned 20 stacks, you get 625 toughness resulting in ~ 17 %. The damage-reduction sadly no longer adds up straight, so reaching 100 % will not happen. But it is still within the reasonable borders.