health degeneration in pve

okay.. i was going to make a pve degen character [mesmer or necro] and was wondering if its effective for pve..
i havent used a necro or mesmer much so i dont know alot of things about them
can i spread degen around?
do i have to be spike only?
would i have to cast hexes on every enemy around?[/micro all the enemies with the same few skills each]

any information would be greatly appriciated

Health degen in PvE is pretty crappy to be honest. As a mesmer or as a necro you can do much better.

your answers and more here

how not to be a noob with degen

Use AoE Dots and skills that benefit from them like "theyre on fire" , Hypochondria , Epidemic .... Degen is armor ignoring , in NM can be pretty crappy but against lvl 28+ foes help a lot.

degen remains lame, spreading blind and dazed is better imho.
and cry of pain is armor ignoring to, just like clumsiness and ineptitude

Degen certainly has its place though, as with most things, you don't want to rely exclusively on it. Combined with other skills, it can be fairly effective, especially an AoE degen like Suffering.

The point is to keep throwing more degens (and other hexes) on the enemies than their healers can remove.

The problem with degen is it doesn't kill, and if it does, it takes a VERY long time to do so. If yuo max the degen out at -10 pips, that is doing 20 damage a second. Monsters in HM will have ~600 health. If they do not remove the degen, it would take 30 seconds to kill a 600 health monster from the degen alone. Most monsters should die in 5-10 seconds max, some you can kill even faster. Since monsters are not worried about energy management or skill recharge, there is no pressure like degen would cause a human in PvP.

The only use I have found for degen in PvE is the skills that provide a secondary effect. So if they offer a benefit outside of draining the monsters health. A few examples:

1) Provides a condition as well as the degen: [phantom pain][shrinking armor]
2) Provides a purpose other than the degen: [migraine][crippling anguish][lingering curse]
3) Provides a direct benefit to the caster: [life siphon][life transfer]
4) Provides a use for other skills: [cry of pain][searing flames][drain delusions][shatter delusions][signet of disruption]

Just degen for degen's sake is a waste of time and energy. Unless you are doing a farming type build and enjoy using it, I'd only use degen for a purpose other than damage.