This build focuses on putting conditions (bleed,poison,blind,weakness,cripple) on your foe.
Attack 1 (blood/rending/putrid curse). this applies 2 x stacks of bleed and 1 stack of poison.
Attack 2 (grasping dead). this applies 1 stack of bleed and 1 stack of cripple allowing you to both keep your distance and add another bleed.
These 2 attacks leave your opponent slowed and suffering from some conditions
When they get close to you simply blind them with Attack 4 (deathly swarm) this is 6sec condition with an 18 sec CD, continue your onslaught with Attack 5 (enfeebling blood) to reduce their damage and another stack of bleed. at this point in the fight you should have ~4 stacks of bleed on your target and they would have suffered from a poison and you would/should be at distance. at this point you should use Attack 3 (feast of corruption to give you some LF)
This is a very basic breakdown of the initiator to a fight, if everything goes according to plan. I’m not going to instruct you on how to continue the fight as this is situational. but what I am trying to demonstrate is a very basic method for applying conditions for a condition build, while at the same time keeping yourself out of harms way.
Traits:
I will only explain my Major trait choices as these are what I aim for.
- I have chosen Spiteful Spirit (10 points in Spite) as retaliation while entering DS is very good for mitigating as much damage against your opponent. please note we are not going a power build so any further in spite is wasted trait points.
- I have chosen Weakening Shroud (10 points in Curses) enfeebling blood is amazing, it applies 2x stacks of bleed and 1x stack of weakness
- I have chosen Banshee’s Wail (20 points in Curses) the reason for this is we will be using the Wail of Doom to daze our opponents and Locust Swarm to get to a safe distance, these are needed for survivability, the more frequent we can use them, the more we will survive to output damage from a distance.
- I have chosen Spectral Attunement (30 points in Curses) this was chosen as I have Spectral Armor and the fact there was no other traits that I would benefit from. Essentially this was needed for my maximum amount of condition damage from Curses Traits.
- Close to Death was simply to output more damage when our opponent is below 50% health
- Vampiric Precision was chosen to heal me as I crit
- Vital Persistence was chosen to keep me in DS form for as long as possible
All this can be seen from my link, the idea of this build is to output as much Condition damage while still being hard to kill. (if you are dead, you output little to no damage)
A good combo is Blood is Power then Plague Signet on your opponent – this does good damage provided they don’t wipe the effect.
Abilities to help me survive in this build are as follows:
Scepter: Grasping Dead (Cripple 5s)
Scepter: Feast of Corruption (Possibly the best and most overlooked attack that is never used correctly, the more conditions you have on a foe when you use this, buffs your LF) with LF you can enter DS = survive
Dagger: Deathly Swarm (Blind 6s)
Axe: Unholy Feast (Retaliation 3s)
Warhorn: Wail of Doom (Daze 2s)
Warhorn: Locust Swarm (Cripple 1s while Swiftness 10s)
And for my skills:
Consume Conditions (…)
Plague Signet (transfer my conditions to a foe)
Spectral Armor (Protection 6s) and (gain LF when taking damage)
Dont forget DS – if we can keep this building up all the time, we take no damage, we only take the damage that we build into DS. please note this is not a MM/DS build for pure tank/survive, it is a condition damage build with survivability.
To answer everyone’s thoughts on why I didn’t choose a staff.
- AoE is difficult to use in PvP (lets be honest, you can do a lot of damage to many enemy IF they are in your AoE and very little damage 1v1)
- you can stack bleed every (6sec) with Mark of Blood provided they actually walk over your mark
- Chillblains is great, I love it, but it is a (20sec) CD – no traits
- Reaper’s Mark is Fantastic, I love it, but it is a (40sec) CD – no traits
- Scepter/Dagger combo gives a more reliable condition stacking (hence this build) and allows for better survive (Grasping Dead 10sec CD, Deathly Swarm 18sec CD, Enfeebling Blood 25sec CD) – no traits