Guild Wars: Necromancer builds

Interesting thread over at GWOnline about successful Necromancer builds. As you might expect, the quality is a bit variable. I'll post some here with my comments.

Firstly, several builds by tigercan:

Blood Necro (N/???)
PvE

Blood: 16 (12+1+3)
Curses: 10 (9+1)
Soul Reaping: 10 (9+1)

1) Shadow Strike
2) Dark Pact
3) Vamp Gaze
4) Offering of Blood {E}
5) Shadow of Fear (sub for enfeebling blood if with a SS nec)
6) Blood Ritual
7) Well of Blood
8) Res Sig (or rebirth if /Mo)

Solid. You can run almost anything in the Shadow of Fear slot but SoF is a reasonable choice. I've played exactly this build in PvE before.

Spiteful Necro (N/Me)
PvE

Curses: 16 (12+1+3)
Soul Reaping: 10 (9+1)
Blood: 10 (9+1)

1) Awaken the Blood
2) Arcane Echo
3) Spiteful Spirit {E}
4) Enfeebling Blood or Enfeeble
5) Desecrate Enchantments
6) Mark of Pain
7) Parasitic Bond
8) Res Sig

Looks reasonable. Mark of Pain is the variable slot here - I'd be tempted to throw it out and add something like Rend or Strip Enchantment. Maybe he had a good reason for running MoP but I'm not sure what it is since it won't trigger on Spiteful Spirit damage.

55HP Invinci-Necro (N/Mo)
PvE - credit to Godlike Satan

Curses: 16 (12+1+3)
Protection: 10
Healing: 8
Soul Reaping: 5 (2+3)

1) Prot Spirit
2) Healing Breeze
3) Guardian / Orision of Healing
4) Spiteful Spirit {E}
5) Shadow of Fear
6) Balthazar's Spirit
7) Essence Bond
8) Mending

The idea around these builds is abusing Protective Spirit - if you're using so many runes that your HP is 55, the max damage you can take in 1 hit is 5. This is classically a monk build but necro will work too. Once Prot Spirit is set up, Mending/Breeze and other regen means that you can out-heal almost any damage. Enchantment removal typically wrecks these kinds of build. There's another version of this floating around using Aura of the Lich to keep HP low. I'm not big on this version using Spiteful Spirit and Shadow of Fear because that's not exactly a combo.

Minion Master (N/Mo)
PvE (I use this for Ettin Farming)

Death: 16 (12+1+3)
Soul Reaping: 10 (9+1)
Healing: 9

1) Animate Bone Fiend
2) Animate Bone Horror
3) Blood of the Master
4) Verata's Sacrifice
5) Heal Area
6) Deathly Chill (switch for res sig when partying with others)
7) Deathly Swarm
8) Healing Breeze / Taste of Death

I wouldn't run Taste of Death unless I was using the Animate Bone Minions/Death Nova/Taste combo. If you're going to run a self-heal, Healing Breeze is a better bet.

Dark Bomber (N/???)
PvP

Death: 16 (12+1+3)
Blood: 15 (12+3)
Soul Reaping: 4 (3+1)

1) Aura of the Lich {E}
2) Dark Aura
3) Blood Renewal
4) Touch of Agony
5) Dark Pact
6) Consume Corpse
7) Plague Touch/Holy Veil/Contemplation of Purity (condition/hex protection)
8) Res Sig

I've tried these builds in arena and honestly they don't seem that wonderful. Any kind of degen is immensely painful (Conjure Phantasm being a top culprit) and your energy management is horrible. Consume Corpse is great n'all but in 4v4 there's just not enough dying to make it really worthwhile. CoP does provide some hex/condition defense but the trouble is you really need the 2 auras up to function. I always found myself in energy trouble when the auras ran out.

Here's a weak battery build from Muhummad Msabi:

Battery Build
16 Blood Magic
10 Soul Reaping
9 Healing Prayers

Blood Is Power (E)
Blood Ritual
Blood Renewal
Healing Breeze/Heal Area
Life Siphon
Well of Blood
Unholy Feast
Rez Signet

This could use some slimming down. Going healing with BiP isn't terrible due to the large sacrifices you're making. Personally, I don't like using Blood Renewal because the extra 25% sacrifice on that is too much without Aura of the Lich. On top of that, there's no need to run Blood Ritual and BiP, one or the other is much better. Here's my version of what he was trying to do:

16 Blood Magic
10 Soul Reaping
9 Healing Prayers

Blood Is Power (E)
Vampiric Gaze
Shadow Strike
Healing Breeze
Orison of Healing
Life Siphon
Well of Blood
Rez Signet

A +enchantment duration item is good for this. I don't think I'd run Heal Area because sometimes you want to run into your own well.
Here's an interesting one from gyMe:

Minion Master (N/R)

Blood Magic - 5 + 1
Death Magic - 12 + 3
Soul Reaping - 8 + 1
Wilderness Survival - 9

Serpent's Quickness
Veratas Sacrifice
Animate Bone Horror
Animate Bone Fiend
Healing Spring
Blood of the Master
Offering of Blood
Res Signet

Spicy! Not sure how well OoB will work with only 6 in Blood (normally I try to have at least 10 for OoB) but Serpents Quickness with Verata's Sacrifice should be nice.

There aren't any really good PvP builds there. The blood nuker will work but it's not great and as I mentioned I'm not a huge fan of the dark aura builds for PvP. Here's a much nicer PvP warrior hate necro from Silmor over at the Team-iQ boards:

Blacklight
Curses: 12+1+3
Soul Reaping: 6+1
Inspiration Magic: 11

Enfeeble
Faintheartedness
Spiteful Spirit
Parasitic Bond
Desecrate Enchantments
Inspired Hex
Drain Enchantment
Resurrection Signet

See the original post for detailed strategy on how to play that one.

For what it's worth, here's the PvE utility SS necro build I used at the Ring of Fire.

Tags: gaming, guild wars, PvE, PvP