I played some pvp with my new necro. Was not actually my first necro pvp experience; I had dabbled in power wells a bit before remaking that character into my mesmer.
I used a basic terrormancer concept: scepter/dagger + staff, plague signet/corrupt boon/flesh wurm, rabid amulet, 24404 for signet and staff traits. My initial impression is that I felt like a staff ele who traded direct damage and oh shit buttons for condi pressure and soft cc.
I don't mean to sound negative, though obviously that tradeoff is only viable in pvp. Terrormancer seems capable, pretty fun, and my results were good overall. The key aspect of the build is not in fact the damaging fears but rather the three ways of transferring your conditions to foes, and that's a nice mechanic when it's on demand and not like sigil of generosity. I think I'm getting a bit better with Death Shroud by treating it as a third skill bar, hence the ele reference. And I tried to differentiate my gameplay from staff ele by downing foes more decisively.
Yet the fundamental life of a necro in pvp is people will constantly attempt to body you. I tried to counter with rabid and two stunbreaks, though I'm not sure I'm in love with flesh wurm; may swap in spectral wall. Still it feels like overall necro survivability relies more on dodging, interrupts, downing your opponents and backup from your team. It's a rather high skill floor.
Next: minion master.
P/D is one of my favor sets. Dancing Dagger makes SO MUCH more sense on it.
Both dagger offhand skills make more sense to me with pistol. Cloak and dagger > run around > backstabbing feels incredibly awkward to me; I personally use stealth on steal to set up my backstabs, and if that's on cooldown I would still prefer to both stealth and approach some other way. However cloak and dagger as enemy gets too near > reposition safely away > unload just feels logical. The only problem with pistol/dagger is that shortbow is too good.
