Guild Wars 2

First, I should say that I main a power necro. I go staff and d/wh. I went zojia’s (zerk) on the ascended staff and dagger. Now, I’m having troubled deciding between an ascended wh or focus.

Along with which may be “better” than the other, I’m also considering how the choice would have the greatest benefit across other professions. Along with which might be better for the necro, which would would benefit the most other professions beyond necro? Decisions, decisons. What do you think?

are you doing pve? I find focus is nice
I mainly do wvw with mine, so I run a/d and staff\

The short daze on the wh is not all that useful in pve, especially with bosses, and the swiftness can be mitigated because the #5 skill causes an aoe attack around you, so if your running and happen to hit something, that swiftness pretty much gets wasted.

Focus is nice, it gives some regen, boon removal, chills, vulnerability, and reapers touch can do excellent damage, especially if your using it on one target. Plus its also 900 range. The cast times are a little slow though.

Well, to start, I’m not a Necromancer player, so my answer is going to contain more questions, but hopefully questions that point you in the right direction.

Do your Necromancer Focus or Warhorn skills inflict damage at all? I don’t think the Warhorn ones do.. one of the advantages of Ascended weapons is the increased base damage, but that’s meaningless for weapons that don’t actually inflict damage. For other classes, Ranger has one Warhorn skill that does damage, while neither of Warrior’s Warhorn skills can damage. Crafting an Ascended Warhorn, then, isn’t going to be terribly effective on any class.

A quirk you should be aware of is how Death Shroud is affected. When you use Death Shroud, the damage of your 4 and 5 skills in it is still affected by your off-hand weapon’s base damage. But even so, I don’t know that I’d consider that an excuse to craft an Ascended off-hand weapon. Go and compare the base damage of an Ascended Focus/Warhorn to the base damage of your Ascended Staff. The Staff has far higher damage as a two handed weapon. That means that while in Death Shroud, if you were on your Staff when entering it, skills 4 and 5 will do far more damage than if you were on Dagger/Warhorn when entering it. Getting an Ascended off-hand won’t noticeably change that, you’re better off just trying to make sure you’re swapped to Staff whenever you enter Death Shroud.

Painful as it is with the cost of Damask, you might simply be better off going for Ascended Armour rather than getting an Ascended off-hand weapon.

I did not know this! Thanks. Given also that the upcoming changes only affect one wh skill (1/2 sec cast reduction for locuts swarm) and what has been said here, I think I’m going with focus….goal is all three weapons and one more ring to go…then on to ascended armor.

happy to help, have fun